See also Google_Summer_of_Code_2010.
SAGA - QGIS interface¶
Proposed by: Paolo Cavallini
Connect QGIS and SAGA GIS via Python, see Google_Summer_of_Code_2010 and the thread on qis-developer.
This will make available in QGIS a wealth of new analyses, and improve the usability of SAGA, who has good modules but a difficult interface.
QGIS Orfeo Toolbox¶
Orfeo Toolbox (OTB) is targeting remote sensing image processing (mainly very high resolution). There were some developments in the past to bring some OTB functionalities inside QGIS. After discussion during the foss4g conference, developments were done to increase interactions between these 2 softwares. For now all new OTB command line interfaces can be wrap automatically as a QGIS plugin. -- from Manuel Grizonnet's email
3D Visualization¶
There have been some effort to add 3D visualization to QGIS, most recently osgEarth plugin has been started to bring true 3D. There are still many things that should be added or improved.
http://sourcepole.ch/2010/9/10/foss4g-2010-comparison-of-open-source-virtual-globes
http://www.sourcepole.ch/assets/2010/11/14/qgis_goes_3d.pdf
VisTrails visualization library¶
Integrate VisTrails library to QGIS.
http://biodiversity.ku.edu/blog/lab-notes/lifemapper-vistrails-better-science
Database Manager¶
Integrate PostGIS Manager, SpatiaLite Manager, RtSqlLayer and other related plugins to create a multi-db manager easily expandable to manage other spatial DBs.
Scripting¶
Make QGIS scriptable, in order to be able to do reperitive tasks with a simple scripting language. Qt includes a built in scripting interface based on ECMA standards for making applications scriptable.
Labelling Improvements¶
Proposed by: Tim Sutton
The 2nd generation labelling in QGIS is great as it hugely improves the quality of catography that can be produced. However there are still cases where the output of labelling is suboptimal, or it lacks some more advanced options:
- Labelling contours: It would be great to have labels for contours all follow the same plane so that it is easy to understand the change in height represented by the contours.
- Labelling by class: Often it would be useful to apply different label properties to each class in a layer. For example where I have contours with a rule based class to draw every 100m interval in a thicker line, it would be good to be able to assign labels to only that class.
- Convert labels to annotations. Currently labels are either rendered using user defined presets, or using data driven properties (by reading properties such as font size from a database table). It would be nice to be able to convert all labels into annotations and then manually tweak each label for optimal cartography.
Unified topological editing¶
Proposed by: Paolo Cavallini
We currently have two digitizers in QGIS:
- a pseudotopological one, based on rules, that works on most editable vector formats
- a fully topological one, limited to GRASS.
The idea is to unify the two, i.e. digitizing in full topology, then saving in simple feature (shapefile, PostGIS, SpatiaLite etc.) or in topology (GRASS, topological GML) as appropriate.
See also https://trac.osgeo.org/qgis/ticket/3483
This will eliminate redundancy, provide a more consistent editing environment, improving the quality of digitized data. It should be built as an improvement of the existing pseudotopology digitizer.
Generic Vector "Save As" Functionality¶
For saving selections or whole vector layers into files QGIS uses OGR library. Apart from OGR library, QGIS has native support for several other vector data providers, such as PostGIS, SpatiaLite and others. It would be nice to have export capability also for these vector data providers. That would enable users to simply export shapefiles (or other vector data formats) to PostGIS without having to use some third party tools.
This functionality will also open the possibility to do batch imports/exports between various data sources and optionally do some simple transforms such as reprojection.
Unified Add Layer Dialog¶
QGIS comes with a support for wide range of raster and vector data sources using modules called data providers. Each data provider comes with a dialog for loading the layers. This is slightly suboptimal and an unified solution would be preferred: just one dialog should take care of loading various data sources.
In the dialog there should be a tree with directory structure, popular locations, database connections and web connections. The main part of the dialog should show appropriate view based on the selection in the tree: directory contents, layer metadata and preview, connection settings etc. The dialog has to be designed with usability in mind - loading of layers is frequently used, so it should be simple, fast and requiring small amount of clicks in order to get layers loaded.
QGIS Mobile¶
Proposed by: Pirmin Kalberer
Port QGIS to Android and improve the GUI for using it on a Tablet PC. Qt, the base library of QGIS has been ported to Android recently: Necessitas (quickstart video). Other required libraries for building QGIS have to be compiled for Android first. With some UI improvements for using QGIS with a touch screen interface, this would be a first version of QGIS Mobile. Based on the QGIS core libraries, a prototype for an optimized UI for smaller Android devices with basic functionality could be part of this GSoC project.