[Qgis-user] My first weekend with QGIS (UI)

[John Hawkinson]

Nathan Woodrow <madmanwoo at gmail.com> wrote on Sat, 21 Jan 2017
at 20:20:20 +1000 in <CAAi8Yg98gyVOA1NAYDGGkvztfY7+Rri7zZM=XJ6GYnGtT8JmQg at mail.gmail.com>:

> You are right that this is best sent to the dev list as that is where we
> all hang out, the user email is mainly for end users who may or may not be
> involved in the development.  I will forward this to the dev list for more
> feedback for you.

Looks like it never made it there. I asusme it's OK to keep going on 
qgis-user.

> > * There is no no keyboard shortcut to switch between panels, at least
> >   when the panels are docked.
> 
> I have thought about this before.  It's easy to do just need to work
> out a good workflow for the shortcuts that makes sense. I have
> thought about Ctrl+1,2,3,4 etc but unsure

This is somewhat of an architecture-specific issue.  OSX defines a
shortcut for cycling windows within an application.  Cmd-` to cycle
forward through the ring buffer (ordered by most recently used), and
Cmd-~ (aka Cmd-Shift-`) to cycle in the reverse direction.
Windows doesn't have this, so would have to come up with its own
shortcut but the answer is easy for OSX.

http://superuser.com/questions/435602/shortcut-in-windows-7-to-switch-between-same-applications-windows-like-cmd
suggests that maybe Ctrl-TAB is the right choice under Windows.
Not really sure.

And of course, since Cmd-` half-works in OSX, there's clearly some
kind of Qt integration or window parenting issue.

> > * 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.
> 
> See comment about widget padding on OS X.

See my comment to Nyall -- I didnt' mean the appearance of the widgets,
I meant the magnitude of the default stepsize functionally -- and upon
review, I wonder if it should perahps be a logarithmic rather than
linear, at least for map units.

Although...I probably need a better grounding in what map units actually
are. I assume they are relative to the scale that a map is
rendered at in the composer, although I've seen funny shifts in size
between the composer and the map window which leads to confusion. Not
sure about this...Maybe I should...read the ArcGIS documentation on
map units, since there doesn't seem to be much for QGIS...

> > * View > Toogle Full Screen...does not really do what I want. I would
> >   like a way to make the Map Window consume all of QGIS's screen real
> >   estate, hiding any currently floating panels and taking the space of
> >   any docked panels. In the Adobe Creative Suite programs, TAB does
> >   this. Instead, in QGIS, Toggle FS seems to just allow QGIS to use
> >   the 24px normally occupied by my menu bar. Sure, sometimes that
> >   might be handy to do, but not as much as I'd like to be able to see
> >   the full map without all the panels.
> 
> Shift+Tab in QGIS 3.0 will hide all dock panels and give the map all the
> screen space.

That sounds like it's exactly the funcionality I'm seeking, yes.
I'm curious what Tab is bound to and why Shift-Tab is used (but
I should just try out 3.0 and find out!).

> I quite like the idea that Visual Studio has with Full-Screen and
> Presentation Mode which do different things
> Maybe we can use that style of full screening.

Well, I'm not entirely sure what it would mean for QGIS?
Hiding panels is one thing, Hiding the Menu bar and Dock (OSX)...seems
a lot less useful. I guess it's helpful when presenting on a video
projector where you want everything as big as possible and screen rela estate
is precious...anyhow, not complaining, jsut unsure.

> > * Apparently double-clicking on a layer can be configured to do
> >   different things (Open Layer Properties, Open attribute table; Open
> >   Layer Styling Dock)? This is a bit strange. It seems that it should
> >   do one thing only, and there shouldn't be a preference to change it
> >   so radically.
> 

> They are options mainly because people wanted them to do different
> things,

I think the UI desire here is really strong. People be able to access
these 3 different functinos via clicking, because clicking is the 
primary way to access layer selection.  I really think access via
click-with-modifier is important, because click-then-keypress
is much slower and less convenient than cmd/ctrl-click or
option/alt-click. 

> however part of the move into 3.0 is to remove options like this
> because it confusing for training, and IMO we just need to do one
> thing and not have options for every moving part.

I agree its not great to have options that change UI behavior like this.

> Functions keys are using a far bit in other platforms, I'm
> generaelly not a fan of Apple moving people way from them for this
> reason however it's still a valid point and you should still have
> good shortcuts on each platform.

Fan or not, it's definitely a reality (and then there are laptops with
a touchbar instead of function keys...). And even under Windows,
function keys are hard for good typists to hit without stopping to
look at the keyboard. But I'm not saying QGIS should get rid of them,
jsut that the F6 shortcut felt a lot like a quiet wolf in the
wildnerness.

> LAYER STYLING:
...
> > * The overlap between Layer Properties and Layer Styling can be
> >   extremely confusing. The two UIs are similar enough that it's easy
> >   to get confused, and then easy to get frustrated when you can't find
> >   something that are sure was there. E.g. AutoApply is in the styling
> >   but not the properties. And the UIs widgets are slightly different.
> >   What is the reason for this inconsistency and can it be remedied?
> 
> 
> Layer styling was a close to feature freeze of 2.16 feature that was
> added by me.  I simply ran out of time for the cut out to move
> everything and since then haven't had time to relook.  The general
> plan was to move all style related things into the style panel and
> kill the layer properties Style and Label tabs, however this takes
> time, more UX thought, etc.

Got it! That makes a lot of sense. Duplication during transition times
seems totally reasonable.

> MENUS:
> > * Layer > Labelling feels very weird. It pops up the Layer Styling
> >   panel, but its not a panel control, like View > Panels > Layer
> >   Styling.

> Is for me in 2.16 and above. That action just calls show panel on Layer
> Style.

Yes, it does this. When I said it's "not a panel control" I meant
it is not a toggle and does not have a checkmark next to it to
indicate status.


> > . If you already have the the Layer Styling panel open on the Labels
> >   pane, it appears to do nothing. This is confusing. (Should it be
> >   greyed out?)
> 
> It will select the label tab in the style panel. Does for me at least.
> This action is a hang over from < 2.16 when it used to open a dialog for
> labels.
> Now calls Layer Styling dock. Was left into order to move people to
> the layer style dock and get used to doing it there.

Got it, another transition element...

> > * Why are some things Create Layer and others Add Layer? It seems like
> >   the distinction is not very clear. Esp. because Add Delimited Text
> >   Layer produces a dialog named "Create a Layer from a Delimited Text
> >   File."
> 
> History and some providers don't let you make new layers. Create is make a
> new layer from nothing
> e.g a new shapefile, add is load an existing one.

This isn't a very satisfying answer. Why is Add Delimited Text called
Create in the dialog box? It suggests this is a distinction without a
difference and that it confuses developers, too.

> > * The zoom tool icon design is...kinda clunky. I think it's mostly
> >   because it's more like a diamond with rounded off corner rather than
> >   a circle, like in most apps. Can we change it?
> 
> hmm looks pretty round to me. We can change it easy as long as there
> is something good to replace it with.

See http://imgur.com/a/XMQ1m
That's two images, the first is the actual size comparison between
QGIS's zoom cursor and Adobe Acrobat's zoom cursor,
and then a 1600% blowup.

Notice the flats on the top/bottom/left/right of QGIS's.
Also the much weaker antialiasing.

I'm surprised to see the cursors defined in a C file
https://github.com/qgis/QGIS/blob/8ac1460d0e760b288ca20e88529737c3b5cde137/src/gui/qgscursors.cpp
rather than an image, which suggests something about the design process?
Or maybe not.


> > * The hand tool does not behave like the hand tool does in most other
> >   applications. In most apps, dragging with hand tool pans the canvas
> >   in the window, and a single click of the hand tool does nothing
> >   special.
> 
> Panning works here fine

Sorry, panning works fine. I'm just noting the behvaior difference.

> > * Plugins > Manage and Install: the one plugin I looked at was the
> >   "eastcustomlabeling" plugin. But when I followed the links to it
> >   from the Plugins dialog, I get 404 Not Found.
> >   http://hub.qgis.org/projects/easycustomlabeling
> >   Not sure if this is a larger issue or just this plugin?
> 
> 
> Plugin author issue to update links to their plugin homepage.

Presumably the hub.qgis.org URL was correct at one time.
Seems like there should have been a redirect...

> > * But QGIS has such a *nice* UI for importing CSV files, it seems
> >   bizarre that it does not give you a UI to specify the field types
> >   and manipulate a CSVT sidecar file. #wishlist
> 
> 
> Add Delimited Text is generally the better way to import CSV files, it's
> smarter and under our direct control.
> I'm aware of the fact that QGIS uses ogr for csv and sometimes it uses Add
> Delimited Text. I would like to see us just use
> our method going forward to avoid the whole CVST mess.

I had assumed it was using ogr under the wraps. Interesting.

> > % Next, I wanted to import some data from my local MySQL server. But
> >   unfortunately:
> 
> 
> > * QGIS doesn't seem to have built-in MySQL support, even though the
> >   documentation suggsested otherwise?
> 
> We default to ogr for this. I see you know this my the next comment. Best
> to talk to GDAL devs about this
> who build on OS X

Well, I guess I meant it seems odd to have menu and browser panel
options for DB2, MSSSQL (does that work under OSX?), PostGIS, SpatiaLite,
but not for MySQL.

Having gotten the plugin working, it does work from Add Vector Layer:
Database.


> * How come the 2.5 D Renderer doesn’t show up in my layer styling
>   Symbology dropdown? Is it not supported under OS X?
> 
> Polygons only. Should work on all platforms.

OH! Doh! Missed that when replying to Nyall. Yes, it's fine.

> Best course of action is to turn them into actionable tickets so they can
> be worked on. If you have the skills and time to fix some yourself even
> better.

Excellent.

--jhawk at mit.edu
  John Hawkinson