[Qgis-user] Report Layout strange behaviour with photos

Tue Sep 15 15:59:26 PDT 2020

On Tue, 15 Sep 2020 at 19:17, Bernd Vogelgesang
<bernd.vogelgesang at gmx.de> wrote:
>
> Hi Andreas,
>
> hope I did not sound too negative. For sure I would like to help in some
> way. I give money in nearly every crowdfunding project, though I even
> don't need most functionalities there.
> Around the report function, there is quite a sounding silence in the
> lists and the web, so I assume that few people use it, or feel too
> stupid to ask cause they don't get it to work properly.
>
> What I already tried, was to collect issues on github for the Report
> But already there the problems begin: There is not a label for it (only
> a general "Print Layout") and report is a very common word)
> This may be intended as the reporting seems to be the younger brother of
> the Atlas, but makes it not easier ;)

There's now https://github.com/qgis/QGIS/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aissue+label%3AReports,
and I've trawled through and tagged everything I could find (I may
have missed some though!)

There's a wishlist Google docs which has been a WIP collaborative
effort for a while detailing possible future enhancements to reports
(and layouts). Here's a quick summary of the current contents:

**General layout improvements**

- Show print margins for pages
- Coloured and named snapping guides
- Better guide snapping feedback (following the Illustrator approach)
so that it's easier to see exactly what a smart guide is snapping
features to
- Add a wizard for automatic guide setup (e.g. for easy creation of
grid based designs)
- Allow negative guide placements to create guides which are aligned
at “right edge - value” (e.g. -5 = 5mm from right side of page,
regardless of page size)
- Switch all the remaining items to use QgsTextRenderer for text -
allowing buffers, shadows, background shapes. (Remaining items are
legends and label items)
- Make more layout item size settings unit aware, and add user-facing
setting for setting the default layout unit
- “Smart shapes”, e.g. annotation style “balloons”
- Support icons in rows for attribute tables (i.e. show the
conditional formatting icons in attribute tables when they are
activated)
- Double click resize handles to auto size items (e.g. expand/shrink a
label item to fit the text. Double clicking the right handle would
expand the item to the right, double clicking the left would expand it
to the left, etc...)
- Expand Processing layout tools to add extra algorithms for working
with layouts -- e.g. create layout from template, export report, etc
- Easier dynamic text insertion into layouts for beginners -- e.g.
drag and drop dynamic page number, file path, author labels to the
layout
- Ability to drag and drop atlas fields to the page to auto-create an
appropriate layout item. E.g. a layout label showing the field value,
or a picture item populated by the field (if the atlas layer's form
setup is set to use a file reference widget)

** Reports **
- Expression based filters for sections
- Expression based custom sort order for field groups
- Relation based sections (repeat section for all related features)
- Support “aggregated” geometries for headers/footers in sections
- Support for non-full page repeating sections
- Support for "expanding" content (.e.g label items which grow to fit
the available text, causing the section's size to vary
feature-by-feature) (this one continues on from the previous point)
- Reorder report sections via drag and drop
- Add user-defined notes to sections describing the logic (not
included in the outputs, only visible while designing the report)
- Copy/paste groups and sections between different reports (or for
duplicating within the same report)

Feel free to add further ones :) At this stage it's just a wishlist,
which would be culled down to a package of works at a later stage...

Nyall

>
> Before I would be able to create a QEP, I would need someone to explain
> me the parts in Report that I maybe simply do not understand.
>
> So, count me in (at least a bit ;) )
>
> Bernd
>
>
> On 15.09.20 08:30, Andreas Neumann wrote:
> > Hi Bernd,
> > The report functionality definitely needs some love. There is a great
> > base now, but it needs to improve.
> > Would you volunteer to collect missing things regarding reports in a QEP
> > and then help organize a crowd-funding? Even if you can't fund this
> > yourself, it would help a lot to come up with a sound proposal /
> > specification, that some interested developer can submit a quote and we
> > can look around for funders.
> > There are quite a few successful examples in the past where someone who
> > missed a functionality in QGIS but couln't finance it came up with a
> > sound proposal and then we could find a developer and funders based on
> > that initiative.
> > Or you could organize this as a joint effort - e.g. through the german
> > QGIS user group.
> > Greetings,
> > Andreas
> > On 2020-09-14 23:09, Bernd Vogelgesang wrote:
> >
> >> On 14.09.20 22:30, Håvard Tveite wrote:
> >>> Including photos / images in reports is covered by the documentation.
> >>>
> >>> See:
> >>> https://docs.qgis.org/testing/en/docs/user_manual/print_composer/create_reports.html#including-pictures-in-a-report
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> It worked for me.
> >>> It should now also be possible to use images stored in a BLOB field.
> >>>
> >>> Håvard
> >>
> >> Thanx for answering. Indeed there is something about adding photos, but
> >> actually this version of the doc is somehow not showing up in google
> >> searches:
> >>
> >> Furthermore, I did not have the problem of having to construct a path to
> >> the image. The full path is already in the data (from the nice toolbox
> >> function for geotagged images). The report just did't eat the path.
> >> After dozend and dozends of attemps, QGIS somehow seemed to give up on
> >> refusing them, and now miraculously is accepting the path.
> >>
> >> The problem, that all images where repeatedly showing in all section got
> >> solved too. In the level up for the subplots, I had to use the field
> >> unique for each subplot and not that for the plot, as I wrongly assumed.
> >> Having it set wrongly didn't influence the correct print of the plots
> >> and then their subplots, but had influence on the follwing photos. Pfuh,
> >> the logic behind, how the report "knows "what to print in lower levels
> >> is actually not really obvious, It seems to figure this out on its own.
> >>
> >> So, seems I get it working.
> >>
> >> Major flaws:
> >> There is only the possibility to select an existing field for a layer in
> >> report groups. So the data has to be prepared for each and every
> >> possible usage beforehand. Having the possibilty to use expressions here
> >> would be phantastic. So now, when you find out that you had not the
> >> right variables for your job in the data, you have to stop working on
> >> the report and fumble the stuff into the attributes. I worked around
> >> this problem by setting up a nice model to prepare my data, but not
> >> everyone has the knowledge to do so.
> >>
> >> Found no way to add sections within the "tree" or to move anything. Once
> >> you laid out a design and forgot a title page or mid-sections, you seem
> >> to have to restart from scratch. No way to manipulate it later.
> >>
> >> Found no way so far to add page numbers.
> >>
> >> All in all. Spent 2 days now on this 30 page report and I hope I will
> >> remember next time how to glue things together.
> >> This could be a really powerful tool for lazy people having to do boring
> >> reports frequently. So far, no time was gained, and I had to use extra
> >> doses of alcohol not to give up.;)
> >> Hopefully developers will give it a little more love some day to make it
> >> a bit smoother, then it will really rock!
> >>
> >> On 14.09.2020 18:20, Bernd Vogelgesang wrote: Hi there,
> >>
> >> I'm really eager to finally figure out how to create a photo
> >> documentation with QGIS.
> >>
> >> Everything needed is prepared and in place. I have overview coverages of
> >> plots with sub-plot over an aerial image. The maps are nicely produced
> >> to a report as groups. On each overview, the belonging sub-plots follow
> >> as individual maps.
> >>
> >> Now I would like to show pictures taken on the sub-plots.
> >>
> >> First issue: I add a new group photo-points and as field I select the
> >> referencing field for the sub-plot. Edit body, add picture frame. When
> >> setting the full file path for the images (stored as field "photo" in
> >> the point file, generated with "Import geotagged photos") there is only
> >> a red cross shown, and the selection in the dialog jumps from raster to
> >> svg. On export as pdf, there is a warning "Picture source is missing or
> >> corrupt".
> >>
> >> I redid this several times, to no avail, but once in a sudden, a preview
> >> image was shown, though I did not change the slightest thing in the
> >> settings. I swear!
> >>
> >> Second issue: Now that it finally accepted the path, exporting the
> >> report now produced a page for each picture under each sub-plot, instead
> >> of filtering those which actually fit there (and how it does with the
> >> sub-plots within the plots!)
> >>
> >> Has anyone an idea what might be wrong here. Documentation on this
> >> matter or examples are unfortunatly nonexistent.
> >>
> >> Linux Mint, 3.14.1
> >>
> >> Cheers,
> >>
> >> Bernd
> >>
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