[Qgis-user] My first weekend with QGIS.

[Nyall Dawson]

Hi John,

Right - time for my 2c!

On 21 January 2017 at 10:26, John A Hawkinson <jhawk at mit.edu> wrote:

> I took some notes along the way, which have turned into this email
> (which it took me all week to get finish writing up...oops!).

First off - thanks for taking the time to do this. This kind of
feedback is invaluable to us as a project, and infinitely more useful
than a "QGIS is frustrating!1!!" twitter post.

> But I expect the proper thing to do is to file bugs for all of them
> (assuming they are not duplicative) and then start submitting pull
> requests on Github to address them, at least where doing so is within
> my means. If there's a better path, I hope someone will let me know.
> I realize some of these issues may by GDAL or Qt 4.8 or other issues
> outside the scope of the QGIS project directly.

If you're wanting to get more involved, I'd strongly suggest fetching
latest master from homebrew. Instructions are here:
https://github.com/qgis/homebrew-qgisdev . You'll likely find that
some of the issues you encounter in 2.x have been addressed in master,
either as a result of bug fixes or the updates in the underlying
libraries (eg qt5).


> * Tool icons don’t show keyboard shortcuts on hover (tooltips). When
>   learning any complicated application, it's important to be able learn
>   the keyboard shortcuts quickly and easily. One of the best ways is
>   the tooltip. But QGIS's tooltips in its toolbars don't show keyboard
>   shortcuts (except in the Attirbutes window, see below).

Fixed by Nathan Woodrow following your email:
https://github.com/qgis/QGIS/commit/6d53f83d621e1cf98c18278f0a0801042a9f07d1

(FYI this also annoyed me!)


>   I guess that means I'd like a tooltip delay preference in QGIS (in
>   the development branch with Qt 5 support), or I suppose a general
>   mechanism in Qt for overriding the tooltip delay.

I'm -1 to adding options in the GUI for settings like this. It just
makes the options dialog huge and scary. If it's an issue I'd say we
should pick a good shorter delay value and hardcode it for the OSX
build.

> * The "Step up" and "Step down" functions (e.g. up/down arrows for
>   adjusting the point size of fonts or width of strokes/outlines,
>   etc.) are sometimes scaled inadequately.

This annoys me too - can you let me know specifics and I'll address
them. I try to fix each one as I find it, but often forget...

> . There should be an easy way to increase the stepsize. The usual UI
>   idiom (sadly not discoverable!) is to shift-click the up/down arrows
>   to multiply by 10x. The inverse is to option-click for finer
>   control, typically 1/10x but maybe a different factor, or maybe an
>   integer unit.

Interesting thought. I'm going to look into this. I'd find it useful too.

> * Numerical adjustment boxes with multiple units should convert
>   values when units are changed. For instance, if I have a font
>   specified as 13 Points, and I switch the units to Map Units, then it
>   should be stay 13 Map Units. It should convert, as appropriate, (for
>   map units, of course that dependson the current
>   scale/magnification). So also for pixels, millimeters, etc.

Ditto here. Sounds like a good way to prevent 1 mm becoming 1 degree
map unit and blowing out to a stupidly huge size.

>
> . In this US, millimeter are not a common unit for design. It would be
>   nice to have points (1/72" of an inch) available as well. Not just
>   for fonts, but also for strokes/outlines.

Done - https://github.com/qgis/QGIS/commit/66f5d065cc2d27a053405ab74ac37113e627cd43

I also added inches -
https://github.com/qgis/QGIS/commit/46f2ea13eeca912c980e55b1e0b805fb9c1cb96e

> * The default font is Helvetica, which is fine, but for some reason
>   QGIS won't show me any subfaces of Helvetica by default. If I switch
>   to another font and then switch back to Helvetica, then I am given
>   the proper face choices (Light, Regular, Oblique, &c.). Something's
>   wrong with the font selection defaults (perhaps in Qt?)

I can't reproduce this - it may be an OSX specific issue. Can you
outline exact steps to reproduce?

> * When I select a new font, the font face defaults to the first face
>   alphabetically, which is usually Bold. That is not correct. It
>   should default to the default face, e.g. Regular or Roman or Black
>   or whatnot.

Eww... i hated that too. Just never got round to fixing it before. Fixed now:
https://github.com/qgis/QGIS/commit/012515c3e64f10a5495c32939e526fcda16b52dc

> * Recent Projects shows the filename, but cuts the wrong side of the
>   dots. If my filename is "2017.01.14 qgis learning.qgs," it shows me
>   "2017", cutting off to the left of the first dot. But instead it
>   should cut off to the left of the LAST dot.

Fixed by Jürgen following your email:
https://github.com/qgis/QGIS/commit/fe450c595daf13d00affde18e1918eae781b37bd


> . When bringing in multiple layers from the Brower Panel, the
>   secondary-click menu is a bit confusing. If I select two layers and
>   rightclick, I'm given both "Add Layer" and "Add Selected Layer"
>   as options. But if I click "Add Layer," it doesn't add the
>   *selected* layers, which is my UI expectation. Instead it adds the
>   single layer the mouse happened to be on when I chose it. It would
>   be better for "Add Layer" to be greyed out, or to stop having two
>   seperate functions and merely display either "Add Layer" or "Add
>   Layers" depending on whether one file was selected or more-than-one.

Agreed. Silly UI behaviour. Fixed now:
https://github.com/qgis/QGIS/commit/a0166d94c7dc8cad8c9540ae86cb68352b04a7f8

> * If I try to Remove a just-added empty group, QGIS gives me a warning
>   dialog box. That seems wrong -- empty groups should remove without
>   warning, otherwise it contributes to desensitizing the user to
>   warnings, which is bad.

Fixed by Nathan following your email:
https://github.com/qgis/QGIS/commit/2bedaf869c639b43a0f0f93f42e20208a79e057c

> . I found the labelling of stroke as "Outline" to be
>   non-intuitive. This may be my Adobe background speaking, but I think
>   it'd be a lot more clear as Stroke.

Hmm... maybe. We mix the terms "outline" and "border" a lot, so maybe
"stroke" is a good choice to consolidate these.

> * QGIS wants to always have a project open, which feels
>   weird. Especially because at startup, it has no project open, and
>   displays the Recent Projects window instead of the Map Window.  So
>   it feels like you ought to be able to get back to that state by
>   closing the current project, i.e. a QGIS > Close command. But that
>   doesn't exist. Why not?

+1 . I often want to get back to the nice recent projects window!

> . Normally I expect option-clicking the zoom in tool to give me zoom
>   out functionality, and vice-versa. Doesn't seem to happen here.

Fixed now:
https://github.com/qgis/QGIS/commit/ea2ff06c79786b380275b99a1c52f3bc73d97c1c


> * On a trackpad, two-finger touch normally scrolls/pans a window.
>   In QGIS, it zooms in and out. That's probably appropriate for a
>   mouse with a scroll wheel, but it works very poorly on a trackpad.
>   For one thing, the zoom is far too fast, and there isn't much
>   control.

That's fixed in 3.0

> * Settings > Style Manager allows me to edit symbols, but not to copy
>   or duplicate existing symbols. This seems peculiar -- I want to test
>   out changes without destroying what I have already.

Good idea! I'd find this useful too.

> . Cmd-shift-V does something very different in the Print Composer --
>   Paste in Place instead of Add Vector Layer. I can kind of see why
>   this might be happening, but the idea of having totally different
>   keybindings in differnt windows of the same application seems pretty
>   novel. And novelty in UI design results in confusion more often than
>   not.

In this case I'd rather leave the composer shortcut and change the
main app shortcut. Ctrl+Shift+V is a common shortcut used across many
apps for paste in place.

> . Project > New Composer Window: gives me a dropdown textbox hybrid
>   widget for the new composer name. This seems odd -- I would pretty
>   much never want to select the name of a previous composer window as
>   the basis for my new one, would I? If you want a list of existing
>   composers for some reason, give me a list widget above the textbox
>   for the new composer.

Hmm this is odd. I'll fix it. Remind me if I forget!

> * I got a multi-line error displayed at the top of the Map Window that
>   was hard to read. I couldn't figure out how to easily scroll the
>   error, and it seemed very hard to read. Something about the layer
>   not being valid.

I agree - very annoying.

> * QGIS doesn't have native support for line callouts. It seems like a
>   serious omission. It looks like there are a number of really awkward
>   workarounds involving creating spatial fields (lines, polygons) in
>   the shape of the line callout, and then plotting layers with those.
>   That seems...really convoluted and confusing and not user friendly.
>   I also found some discussion of the EasyCustomLabelling plugin for
>   this, but it appeared trickier to use than I was up for at the time.
>   https://gisunchained.wordpress.com/2015/01/12/etiquetas-com-guias-em-qgis-e-postgis-labels-leading-lines-with-qgis-and-postgis/
>   has some instructions.

See https://github.com/qgis/QGIS-Enhancement-Proposals/issues/47 -
funding is being sought to make this happen.

> * Why does QGIS use Transparency sliders instead of Opacity sliders?
>   Isn't Opacity much more common in graphics software?

Actually we mix and match ;) Yay for consistency!

>
> * How come the 2.5 D Renderer doesn’t show up in my layer styling
>   Symbology dropdown? Is it not supported under OS X?

It's a layer renderer, not a symbol layer style. You should see it
listed along with categorised/graduated renderers.

> And that's all, folks.
> If you made it here, you get a special prize!

Wheeeee - and you get the prize that you've already made QGIS 3 a
better application. Thanks!

Last thoughts:

1. all the UX discussion is currently happening at
https://github.com/qgis/qgis3_UIX_discussion/issues . That's where the
cool UI kids hang out.
2. while we have developers who use OSX, a lot of their focus is on
packaging and distributing for OSX. I don't think there's anyone
actively working on OSX specific UI issues or bugs. Unfortunately, we
have many more Linux/Windows developers and users than OSX devs, so
the OSX version has fallen behind in terms of stability and visual
polish. Many of the issues you described simply aren't present on
Windows/Linux builds. Please don't let that stop you reporting them,
as it's still the only way they'll get fixed. It's just that it's the
blunt truth that you'll get a much more polished application if you
run the Windows or Linux build.

Thanks once again!
Nyall