Hi Michael and others,
Michael, I am not blaming you and I know that you are careful with
theses things,... And yes, I know there was no feedback to Noder and
Union plugin. Because, I think, it was fine.
However, for the renaming a while ago.. I was travelling and did not use
OJ much since. Though, the original naming was partly from me - and that
maybe why I am now "more active" on that too.
And with respect to your note on that its very short before a major
release: Yes, its exactly why I am going trough it - and because I have
not seen descriptions of the changes earlier for any of the in-between
releases after 1.4.1 and started to look for "Transfer attributes" and
the polygon intersection functions in my recent work and when I was
trying to update documentation (But of course, maybe I did not read all
the change/release notes).
However, to come to the core points:
====================================
(i) Overlay Polygon Layers.
I thought about "merge" too, but you are right - its not just putting
them together. Though the term "Overlay" is not descriptive at the end,
but your argumentation w.r.t. text book definition of overlay is
correct. Not sure, maybe we leave it then this way.
(ii) Spatial Join -> Transfer Attributes to Layer
as you noticed, its DBMS speak. I really can't see why we should adopt
it, because the words "Spatial Join" indicates a "geometry" operation to
me. At least we should say "Spatial Join of Attributes" or so.
(iii) Spatial Join with Aggregation -> Transfer and Aggregate Attributes
to Layer
good comment by you on the aggregation, so I changed my proposal
(vi) Polygon Intersection (one layer):
I am going to add that function back - but to the "edit geometry"
submenu, as this seems to be the place to make ops within a layer that
are related to creating new datasets (well.. holds also for buffer, but...).
So - for everyone who reads until here:
please can I ask for the opinion on namening/re-naming back to earlier
changes?
stefan
Am 22.01.12 15:00, schrieb Michaël Michaud:
> Hi Stefan,
>
> GIS function classification is really a puzzle, and it is quite
> difficult to make everybody happy, but as I committed most
> of the changes you're talking about, I'll try to explain, then,
> we can do any change you guys, want to do.
>
> 1 - Announcement, votes and rules are necessary...
> but can only apply when there is some activity :
> I really tried to get feedback at the time of the changes
> you've mentionned, (as far as I can remember 1 or 2
> persons agreed and no one disagreed).
>
> 2 - Menu organisation
> I'm not completely satisfied with current organisation, but I
> think it is better now than one year ago.
> - We find most usual GIS Analysis tools in Tools>Analyis (which is good)
> except some in Tools>Edit Geometry (which, in my opinion, is not so good)
> - We removed One Layer/Two Layers submenu. I think this separation
> made sense, but it was not very user-friendly as the user had to answer
> one more question before he could find the menu item he was looking for
> - I have not hesitated much before I changed Run Database query to file
> menu, because all input/output are in File menu now, including database
> access, and in my opinion, searching Run Query tool in Layer menu was
> just a bad habit.
> Maybe I did not communicate enough about this change though ;o(
>
> 3 - Menu item names.
> I've to be more careful on this subject as my english is not so good
> However, as I understand gis terms, overlay applies quite well
> to "Overlay Polygon Layers..." menu item (a bit less to "Overlay...")
>
> Some definitions of Overlay :
> Overlay: A formal geometric intersection between two or more layers of
> spatially referenced data. A layer produced by an overlay will contain
> both the spatial data and the attribute data from the input layers.
> Polygon overlay : A process that merges spatially coincident polygons
> from two coverages, and their attributes, to create a third coverage,
> that contains new polygons and describes new relationships ...
> Overlay is the core part of GIS analysis operation. It combines several
> spatial features to generate new spatial elements.
>
> AFAIK, this is what Overlay Polygon Layers does, isn't it ?
>
> Currently, Overlay... menu item output is limited to intersections
> So for this one, Intersection would also apply
> Ideally, I would like a single Overlay menu item which would
> process all features (not only Polygons), and not limited to
> intersections (a mix of both plugins if you followed me), but this
> is out of scope now.
> For now, I agree "Intersection" would also fit what current
> "Overlays" plugin does.
> I don't agree with "Merge" as features are not merged, but divided
> as they intersect each others !
>
> About join versus transfer attribute, I agree with you that transfer
> attribute is more easy to understand for anyone who has not a
> strong dbms background.
> However, one of the tool do not "transfer" attribute but "aggregate"
> values, and the other one creates new features for each match
> which is exactly what a JOIN does (respectively with and without
> a group by statement) and what is a bit different from what one
> can expect with a name like "transfer attribute.
>
> That said, I'm very pleased to discuss these things with expert users
> and just regret that the discussion comes one week before a major
> release.
> If you organize a vote to make sure we do the right decision, I'll be
> pleased to vote and to accept the decision of the community,
> but remember, I asked 2 questions about new Noder and new Union
> plugin months ago, and I never get the 3 votes to make a decision !
>
> Regards,
>
> Michaël
>
>
>
>
>
> Le 22/01/2012 19:48, Stefan Steiniger a écrit :
>> Hi all,
>>
>> now, after having sent of the other email, I tried to analyse why I am
>> actually unhappy with what happened. It came out pretty simple:
>>
>> "I was used to the old naming and menu positions"
>>
>> furthermore, there was just right now an email on the user list about
>>
>> "Where is that function gone" (in this case datastore query).
>>
>> It highlights a couple of things, that we can summarize as "don't change
>> the "User API" without a clear announcement". But in detail:
>>
>> - if we change names, then users may not found the function anymore
>> - if we change the menu positions of functions, then users may not found
>> them anymore
>>
>> further:
>> - names should be descriptive
>> - names should adhere to standards (not necessarily to ArcGIS, but
>> sometimes...)
>>
>> I also recognized the following:
>> - ESRI never changed names of function as long as I remember, except
>> maybe when they moved from 8.x to 9.x and got a complete new user interface
>> - ESRI is using function names that are not very descriptive all the
>> time, but they try to restrict it to one word - which describes the
>> action, e.g. "eliminate", "dissolve", "union", "spatial join".
>> - I actually do not aggree with some ESRI naming of functions, since the
>> technical standards (OGC SFS) use actually different names (union vs.
>> intersection, dissolve vs. union). But I guess the reason is that the
>> standards are younger than ArcInfo/GIS.
>>
>> So, based on that I see a need for the next release notes (for 1.5.1) to
>> 1) describe somewhere what functions have been renamed and moved (quite
>> a bit).
>> 2) To introduce proper naming and location rules. And related to that I
>> think the location and naming of new functions need to be "approved" by
>> at least 3 people - and not changed anymore thereafter until a major
>> release ("X.X").
>>
>> Any further opinions?
>>
>> stefan
>>
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