QGIS » QGIS Application

This changelog is in t2t format - please keep it in the pre tags.

State of the art:

|

QGIS Visual Changelog 

for QGIS 1.5

% This document is in txt2tags format
% To generate html do:
% txt2tags -t html -o QGIS.1.5.0VisualChangelog.html <filename>.txt
% To generate moin moin do:
% txt2tags -t moin -o QGIS.1.5.0VisualChangelog.moin <filename>.txt

h1. Introduction 

Quantum GIS (QGIS) is a user friendly Open Source Geographic Information System (GIS), licensed under the GNU General Public License, that runs on Linux, Unix, Mac OSX, and Windows. QGIS is Open Source software and its free of cost. It supports vector, raster, and database formats (including the most common ESRI ShapeFile and geotiff). QGIS supports a wide variety of plugins to do things like display tracks from your GPS, and much more. They can be easily managed through the Plugin Manager.

As an open source project, we provide support for using QGIS via our mailing lists and bug tracker:
<pre>
 - For general enquiries subscribe to our users mailing list at http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-user
 - For developer related enquiries subscribe to our separate developers list at http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-developer
 - If you think you have found a bug, please report it using our bug tracker. When reporting bugs, please include some contact information in case we need help with replicating your issue. The tracker is available at https://trac.osgeo.org/qgis/
 -
</pre>

h1. Sponsoring 

We are always looking for sponsors to help with funding developer meetings and to drive the project forward. If you are interested in providing financial support to the project please visit the [QGIS Sponsorship Page http://qgis.org/en/sponsorship.html].

h1. Download your copy 

Binary and source code packages are available at http://download.qgis.org

h1. Whats New? 

[[""http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4083/4840772248_9f3994f351"".jpg] http://www.flickr.com/photos/linfiniti/4840772248/] (qgis 1.5 image courtesy of wikipedia).

Our last release had over 65 000 downloads for the windows standalone version alone. We aspire to further build on the popularity of the 1.4 release - our new 1.5 release includes around 350 bug fixes, nearly 40 new features. Once again, it is impossible to document everything here. Instead we will just highlight a couple of important new features for you. For a nice overview of the bugs that were fixed for this release, take a look at: [the 1.5 milestone in trac https://trac.osgeo.org/qgis/milestone/Version%201.5.0]

h1. Visual changes 

h2. Measure angles on the map 

QGIS now sports a new angle measurement tool!

[[""http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4017/4693812235_a93940f887"".jpg] http://www.flickr.com/photos/linfiniti/4693812235/]

h2. Map Composer 

The QGIS map composer is rapidly becoming a powerful way to generate high quality map layouts. This release adds various improvements including the ability to add attribute tables to the map composition.

[[""http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4016/4694446500_f448e15407"".jpg] http://www.flickr.com/photos/linfiniti/4694446500/]

h2. Python Console 

If you are a pythonista, you will appreciate the improvements that have gone into the new python console - complete with beautiful syntax highlighting and command history (accessed using the up and down arrow keys).

[[""http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4008/4693813289_fb5e508819"".jpg] http://www.flickr.com/photos/linfiniti/4693813289/]

h2. WMS Search Server 

Data discovery is now a little more flexible - you can specify a custom open search api compliant wms search engine in the proxy settings dialog. If you have implemented a wms search portal, let us know and we can potentially provide a default list of portals in the future.

[[""http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4062/4693813593_a84a99dc22"".jpg] http://www.flickr.com/photos/linfiniti/4693813593/]

h2. Symbology Updates 

Continual improvements are being made to the 'new symbology' implementation in QGIS (which will ultimately replace the old symbology implementation). For one thing symbol layer ordering is now preserved in saved project files. Also there is a new rule based renderer that allows you to flexibly create rule based classes based on a simple expression syntax.

[[""http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4042/4693813873_75134615c6"".jpg] http://www.flickr.com/photos/linfiniti/4693813873/]

You can now also use SVG graphics as the filler material for polygons using the new symbology implementation.

[[""http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1268/4694448382_393c6f8561"".jpg] http://www.flickr.com/photos/linfiniti/4694448382/]

When rendering point features, there is a new font marker that can use true type fonts to render the point marker (finally a use for those wingdings fonts again!).

[[""http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4021/4693814877_78eb57d04a"".jpg] http://www.flickr.com/photos/linfiniti/4693814877/]

Another handy new symbology addition is the ability to rotate point symbols using data defined in a field in your attribute table.

[[""http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4042/4693816799_871da23a45"".jpg] http://www.flickr.com/photos/linfiniti/4693816799/]

h2. Save vector as....anything 

Something that has been available internally to the QGIS API but never exposed to the user interface is the ability to save as any gdal/ogr supported vector format. QGIS 1.5 makes this feature now accessible via a right click on a legend item and choosing 'Save as' (vector layers only). Now it is effortless to convert a shp to a kml to a mif and all the way round back to a shp!

[[""http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4007/4694448782_aab573ddde"".jpg] http://www.flickr.com/photos/linfiniti/4694448782/]

h2. Map annotations 

Another nice arrival in our feature list is the ability to make map annotations. Annotations are georeferenced call out boxes that can be added to the map view. You can insert any text you like into the call out to describe the place the callout points to.

[[""http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4033/4693815593_966e91baa6"".jpg] http://www.flickr.com/photos/linfiniti/4693815593/]

h2. Spatial Selection Plugin 

A new core plugin (that is a plugin that ships with QGIS by default) was added to QGIS that lets you perform spatial selections. For example you can use the selected geometries of one layer to select features in another layer. Standard topological operators such as within, intersects, overlaps etc. are supported.

[[""http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4037/4693816097_c43ec119f6.jpg"".jpg] http://www.flickr.com/photos/linfiniti/4693816097/]

h2. Spatialite Support Improvements 

I used to demonstrate how cool spatialite was and lose people's interest with all the jumping around I had to do just to create a new spatialite database. Not anymore - QGIS now includes a nice GUI for creating a spatialite database.

[[""http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4010/4694451630_c10053f45e"".jpg] http://www.flickr.com/photos/linfiniti/4694451630/]

[[""http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4055/4693818051_6b1dabe199"".jpg] http://www.flickr.com/photos/linfiniti/4693818051/]

Well that brings us to the end of our whistle-stop GUI update tour. There are many other improvements which I haven't mentioned, so feel free to download yourself a copy and play around with QGIS to see what else is new & improved!

h1. Changelog 

Full changelog is provided here:

h2. Main GUI 

<pre>
 - There is a new angle measuring tool that allows you to interactively measure angles against the map backdrop.
 - Live GPS Tracking tool
 - User configurable WMS search server
 - Allow editing of invalid geometry in node tool
 - Choice between mm and map units for new symbology. Scaling to use new symbology in print composer as well
 - SVG fill symbol layer for polygon textures
 - Font marker symbol layer
 - Added --noplugins command line options to avoid restoring the plugins. Useful when a plugin misbehaves and causes QGIS      to crash during startup
 - Allow hiding of deprecated CRSes
 - Add point displacement renderer plugin - allows points to be shifted to avoid colliding with other points
 - Allow saving vector layers as ogr vector files
 - Raster provider: reduce debugging noise
 - Allow adding parts to multi points and lines
 - Text and form annotation tools are now in gui and app
 - Added possibility to place a set of default composer templates in pkgDataPath/composer_templates
 - Gradient color ramps now support multiple stops - for adding intermediate colors
 - Center map if user clicks into the map
 - New plugin for carrying out spatial selections
 - Data-defined size and rotation for single symbol renderer in symbology-ng
 - IdentifyAsHtml to raster layer and use it in identify
 - Export legend groups and layers with legendinterface and use this information to display groups in the composer legend.
 - Show selected feature count in status bar 
 - Query option added to layer menu to subset vector layers
 - Option to label only selected features (on the 'old' labelling tool)
 - Load/save queries created in the query builder.
 - Manual adding of categories in symbology-ng.
 - Georeferencer: possibility to configure if residuals should be showed in pixels or map units
 - Delimited text provider: allow empty values in numeric columns
 - Added rule-based renderer for symbology-ng
 - Ability to create spatial lite databases from within QGIS
 - Inclusion of GDAL Raster tools plugin into QGIS core
 - New python console (with history)
 - Add validation to capture tool
 - Allow postgres layers without saved username &amp; password by asking for credentials
 - Support NULL values in search strings
 - Optionally add new layers to the selected group
 - Map composer can add attribute Tables in layouts. It is possibile to show only visible features in composer table or all features
 - Identify tool attribute form now non-modal in view mode (since r12796)
 - Identified features' highlight disappear when window is deactivate or closed and reappears when reactivated.
 -
</pre>

h3. WMS and WMS-C Support 

<pre>
 - WMS-C support, new spatial authorities, wms selection improvements
 - Resolved EPSG dependency in spatial reference systems and included french IGNF definitions in srs.db
 - WWM provider makes requests asynchronously through QNetworkAccessManager now
 - WMS selection allows inserting of all layers of a branch
 - WMS has support for more mime types
 - Added load/save to WMS dialog
 - WMS-C scale slider gui added and more selection improvements
 -
</pre>

h3. API Updates 

<pre>
 - QgsDataProvider &amp; QgsMapLayer: add dataChanged() signal, so that a provider can signal that the datasource changed
 - Use QNetworkAccessManager instead of QgsHttpTransaction (including caching and dynamic authentification to website and proxies)
</pre>

<pre>
 - Allow opening layer properties from plugins
 - Support for custom plugin layers.
 - Allow refreshing of plugins programmatically
 - Support for custom plugin directories using QGIS_PLUGINPATH environment variables. More paths can be passed, separated by semicolon.
 - Legend interface added to retrieve layers in legend order
 - Support more GEOS operators
 -
</pre>