[Qgis-user] trip report from recent toot about plugin blog page

[Greg Troxel]

Recently I saw a toot announcing a blog post about new/updated plugins.
This is comments about my experience from that, hoping it is helpful.

1) It's great there was a toot (mastodon) instead of on some centralized
site where you have to agree to surveillance to be allowed to see it.

2) It directed me to

  https://blog.qgis.org/2024/06/24/plugin-update-december-23-to-january-24/

and on firefox/android, I got a cookie consent banner.  While I
understand that things are bit crazy either due to GDPR or fears about
it, the banner did not explain what sort of cookies.  As I'm sure you
all understand, a cookie set by blog.qgis.org that records dark mode vs
not, preferred language is totally ok, a cookie for self-hosted
analytics iffy, a cookie for surveillance-based analytics (google) bad,
and anything from a surveillance-based advertising company or data
broker, very bad.

I don't see this banener my desktop (uBlock Origin to the rescue), but
FWIW blog.qgis.org shows blocked loads from:

  https://static.cloudflareinsights.com/beacon.min.js/vcd15cbe7772f49c399c6a5babf22c1241717689176015
  https://s0.wp.com/wp-content/mu-plugins/widgets/eu-cookie-law/templates/style.css?m=1642463000i&cssminify=yes
  https://stats.wp.com/w.js?67
  https://widgets.wp.com/likes/master.html?ver=20240625#ver=20240625&origin=https://blog.qgis.org

I sort these into bad, semi-ok but annoying, iffy, and perhaps bad but
it would take me reading too much js to figure it out.

I am not a GDPR cookie expert, but my impression is that a "we use
cookies; you must click accept" is solidly noncompliant, that the user
must be able to reject non-essential (advertising/tracking!) cookies,
and that doing so must be just as easy as accepting.

3) I found the updates page interesting, but I also found that many of
the descriptions were really not that helpful.  For many, I couldn't
tell what plugin did.  Some had great descriptions.  Having read these,
it's clear to me that descriptions should be written assuming that the
reader is generally familiar with GIS and qgis, but has no idea what the
plugin does.

There were some that were great and I'd like to highlight those.

  OpenLog

  High performance drillhole visualization QGIS module supporting 3D,
  cross-section, and log views.

  MunsellRGB

  Munsell code to sRBG conversion.

Both very brief, but I immediately understand enough to know whether I
want to look further.  Both sound very useful -- but solve problems I
don't have.

Here's one that is partially helpful:

  Benthic Terrain Modeler

  Analyzes benthic terrain for the purposes of classifying surficial
  seafloor characteristics that may be used in studies of benthic
  habitat, geomorphology, prediction of benthic fish species
  distribution, marine protected area design, and more

I mostly understand, and I know enough to know it's not for me, and if
it were close I'd go read.  But I am wondering if this is doing
vectorization of raster data, or really what it is actually doing.  I
have no idea.

Another partially helpful one:

  PDD-QGis Tool

  Tool to download and visualize datasets from Plataforma de Datos by
  Itrend.

I figured out from a web search that this is data about risk/resilience
and natural disasters, and centered on Chile.   I am still unclear on if
this data is freely accessible, and if it qualifies as Open Data.   A
download helper is self-explanatory, but "visualize" raises the question
of what it does beyond qgis native.

Here are two that I did not find helpful at all:

  QSU2

  QSU2 for CFD simulations

  QAnnAGNPS

  This plugin integrates the AnnAGNPS model into QGIS

These also make me wonder if they are bridges to proprietary code, or
something that I could try to learn about.


There are some that aren't in English, which is fine.  But some of them
(and probably some with en descriptions) don't explain the geograhpic
scope of data, and thus if someone working elsewhere should not pay
attention.  I offer one not in English, and one in:

  GSI-AddressSearch

  国土地理院のAPIを利用して、住所を検索した結果の地点を表示します。住所
  検索した結果から選択してポイントを追加することもできます。国土地理院
  API（https://msearch.gsi.go.jp/address-search/AddressSearch）から取得
  したデータを加工して利用。This plugin allows the user to search for a
  address and get its coordinates using GSI API.

It's pretty clear reading between the lines that this is a geocoder
(address to coordinates) and 95%+ clear that it will only work in Japan.

  R-ABLE plugin

  R-ABLE plugin, developed within the EUHubs4Data project, providing
  access to the web services on agricultural land.

THere is no information on whether this is for the world or for EU.

Hope this helps more than it's anoying,
Greg