Hi, all. I spent last weekend learning to use QGIS, and as a result I have a fair amount of feedback. On the whole I'm quite impressed, especially when I want back to check some things in ArcMap afterwards on Tuesday; but there are also a lot of areas that seem to lack polish.
I took some notes along the way, which have turned into this email (which it took me all week to get finish writing up...oops!). But I expect the proper thing to do is to file bugs for all of them (assuming they are not duplicative) and then start submitting pull requests on Github to address them, at least where doing so is within my means. If there's a better path, I hope someone will let me know. I realize some of these issues may by GDAL or Qt 4.8 or other issues outside the scope of the QGIS project directly. I realize this email is way too long for anyone to reasonably go through. So I look at it more as an exercise for myself to put my thoughts in order before filing bugs. If someone has a better approach, please let me know. My goal is to contribute productively to the project. (I'm not sure that splitting it up into 10 seperate emails for each category would be productive?) Also, if this is more appropriate for qgis-developer@, please let me know that, too. Since I began last Saturday, I did this against QGIS 2.18.2, using William Kyngesburye's builds installed via Homebrew. Although I realize 2.18.3 came out this week. (From a brief glance at the release notes -- hard to find! -- it doesn't look like any of the changes are pertinent). I also belatedly realized I was using 2.14 manual, and I have a bunch of documenation comments, but the few I spot-checked remain issues in the github repo. I am not really a GIS person, but I am a data person and a programmer, albiet not a GUI programmer. I last used ArcMap abortively a few years ago, and I don't have much experience with Qt. My platform of choice is Mac OS X. I also have a lot of experience with Adobe InDesign, which maybe has a similarly complex UI to that of QGIS, although I think it has a tronger UI history. I also have very occasional experience with complex UIs like Pro-Engineer, Autocad, etc. That means I have a number of opinions about how software should work, and some of the places where QGIS departs from the OS's expectations are things that bother me. It might well be that the QGIS developers disagree with me on some points...which is totally fine; my opinions may be Wrong(tm). Some of these may be Mac-specific, although since QGIS allows selecting a system UI Style, it's fine to do Mac-specific things in the Aqua style. I welcome your feedback and I'm happy to contribute to the project. My platform was a 13" Retina MacBook Pro (OS X 10.10.5), with its built-in trackpad (no mouse), which also colors some of my thoughts on UI issues. I've tried to sort these into (loose) categories: GENERAL UI ISSUES ATTRIBUTES WINDOW LAYERS PANEL OTHER WINDOWS LAYER STYLING ACTUAL FUNCTIONALITY MENUS QUESTIONS MAP WINDOW TOOLS BUGS *'s are big bullet points, . are smaller issues, and %'s are non-issue comments along the way. ---------------------------------------- GENERAL UI ISSUES: * Pixelated app-icon. The very first thing I notice is the QGIS application icon is pixelated, as seen when switching apps with Cmd-TAB. This is kind of off-putting from the start -- first impressions are importnat. I guess the icon is getting replaced anyhow, but this is probably just an actual bug/failure to install the right icon in the right place. The Finder (e.g. Get Info on the app) properly displays a hi-rez icon for QGIS. * Tool icons don’t show keyboard shortcuts on hover (tooltips). When learning any complicated application, it's important to be able learn the keyboard shortcuts quickly and easily. One of the best ways is the tooltip. But QGIS's tooltips in its toolbars don't show keyboard shortcuts (except in the Attirbutes window, see below). * Tooltips are too slow for beginning users. I don't know if they're appropriate for experienced users (tooltips are a horrible UI for anything. But unfortunately we don't really have a better one out there for mastering a GUI). Clasically under OS X you can adjust the tooltip delay by hand for Cocoa applications. E.g.: defaults write org.qgis.QGIS2 NSInitialToolTipDelay -int 100 Unfortunately that doesn't work for QGIS, presumably because it is Qt-based. It looks like Qt 5 adds configurable tooltip durations http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qwidget.html#toolTipDuration-prop but it doesn't sound like there's a good application-independent way to configure it. I guess that means I'd like a tooltip delay preference in QGIS (in the development branch with Qt 5 support), or I suppose a general mechanism in Qt for overriding the tooltip delay. But I think there's a colorable argument that a complex application like QGIS needs a shorter tooltip delay than a simpler application can get away with. * Undo is very limited. For instance, I often found myself creating a layer group when I didn't want to, or having it end up in the wrong place (inside an existing layer group rather than at the toplevel of the layers panel), and wanting to undo it. I think the world's acceptance of limited undo has also gotten worse in recent years -- the prevalance of mobile apps with touchscreen UIs where people easily make errors means that everyone expects a fully-featured Undo. QGIS needs to do better. * Keyboard shortcut configuration is broken. . As a prelude, the first time you open the Configure Shortcuts window, it is super-small, and you have to expand it. But windows, esp. modal dialogs, should open at the appropriate size by default. At least where that size is something that works on all reasonably-sized screens, as is the case here. . At least for the preferred modifier for OS X, namely Cmd (Command), the Configure Shortcuts function is plain busted. It will not let me assign Cmd-Shift-G to Add Group. Although it does let me assign Ctrl-G. . It displays the wrong modifier for OS X. E.g. Add Vector Layer is Cmd-Shift-V, but it is displayed as Ctrl-Shift-V. . Not broken, but it sure would be nice to be able to export a shortcut set to a text file so you could search through it in a text editor. This feature is pretty handy in Photoshop and InDesign. At first I thought this just a matter of dealing with converting from the XML format that is the only choice, but actually the XML shortcut set only inclues *changes* from the defaults, not the whole thing. * Left keyboard arrow inside a hierarchical list (such as in a Layer Group in the Layers panel, but many other places) does not move the selection up one level of hierarchy to the parent, nor does it close the open layer group. It should do one of those things. Is this a Qt issue? * There apppears to be no indication of which subwindow/pane has the keyboard focus. . Although there is a blue highlight around a currently active widget, that's not prominent enough. For instance, there is visual no way to tell that the main Map Window has the keyboard focus, other than perhaps process of elimination because nothing has a blue highlight; although that's not reliable, as the currently selected widget might be scrolled out of view in some panel. And also a more prominent indicator is required. . The title bar of the currently active panel should change somehow to indicate it is active. And there should be some related mechanism for the Map Window. * There is no no keyboard shortcut to switch between panels, at least when the panels are docked. . After undocking a panel from the main window, keyboard panel navigation is...borked. Cmd-` ought to cycle through an application's windows, but it half-works. If a floating panel is selected, Cmd-` moves focus to the main window. But another Cmd-` does not move it back, nor does Cmd-Shift-` (which should cycle in the other direction through the ring of all windows). * The project's filename is not properly displayed in the window's title bar using the OS mechanism. That means there is no icon next to the filename, and and you cannot Cmd-click on the titlebar to open the enclosing folder in the Finder. * It is too easy to dock panels sometimes. If I start with the Layer Styling panel docked on the right, if I try to expand its width to the left, I can inadvertently dock it to the top the main window. I have not then been able to figure out how to re-dock it to the right, where it belongs. I can float it, but that's not the same. Had to quit and restart. * Having multiple vertically stacked widget groups that can have their own vertical scrollbars within a single panel is very confusing. Especially because you can resize these vertical widget groups -- sometimes accidently. It's possible to get a really messed up Layer Styling panel because of this. And it is worse beacuse there can be multiple apparently active vertical scrollbars in the same panel, e.g. the scrollbar for the top/main part of the Symbology pane, as well as for the Symbol List beneath "Symbols in group". That means the user doesn't know what the trackpad scrolling/mouse scroll wheel is going to do -- which one is going to scroll? (answer: the one you didn't want). This problem is also visible in, e.g. Preferences > System > Environment vars. * The "Step up" and "Step down" functions (e.g. up/down arrows for adjusting the point size of fonts or width of strokes/outlines, etc.) are sometimes scaled inadequately. . There should be an easy way to increase the stepsize. The usual UI idiom (sadly not discoverable!) is to shift-click the up/down arrows to multiply by 10x. The inverse is to option-click for finer control, typically 1/10x but maybe a different factor, or maybe an integer unit. . Perhaps it is the case that the default adjustment quantum is not correct. I am unsure. It matters a lot less when shift-click works. * Numerical adjustment boxes with multiple units should convert values when units are changed. For instance, if I have a font specified as 13 Points, and I switch the units to Map Units, then it should be stay 13 Map Units. It should convert, as appropriate, (for map units, of course that dependson the current scale/magnification). So also for pixels, millimeters, etc. . In this US, millimeter are not a common unit for design. It would be nice to have points (1/72" of an inch) available as well. Not just for fonts, but also for strokes/outlines. * The default font is Helvetica, which is fine, but for some reason QGIS won't show me any subfaces of Helvetica by default. If I switch to another font and then switch back to Helvetica, then I am given the proper face choices (Light, Regular, Oblique, &c.). Something's wrong with the font selection defaults (perhaps in Qt?) * When I select a new font, the font face defaults to the first face alphabetically, which is usually Bold. That is not correct. It should default to the default face, e.g. Regular or Roman or Black or whatnot. * When opening a medium-sized QGIS project, I initially get an a black-and-white quartered circle cursor, which seems like it's intended to be an hourglass, and that lasts for about 3 seconds. Then it switches to the OSX rainbow beachball ("spinning wait cursor") intermittently for a few seonds, and then QGIS responds. Appearence of the beachball means some kind of thread badness, I think -- it should only show up when the run loop is blocking for too long, and that shouldn't happen, so it's a bug in of itself. . Also, any wait longer than a second or so probably deserves a progress bar. . I also got confused why I started getting an "Updating Feature Counts" progress bar when I opened my project, but later I realized this was because I had enabled feature counts on a layer. I think I would rather that the feature count be cached rather than recalculated every time the project is opened. The cached number could be displayed differently (lighter greyer text?) to indicate QGIS wasn't confident in it (also, what happens if the shapefile changes out from under QGIS while it's running?). * View > Toogle Full Screen...does not really do what I want. I would like a way to make the Map Window consume all of QGIS's screen real estate, hiding any currently floating panels and taking the space of any docked panels. In the Adobe Creative Suite programs, TAB does this. Instead, in QGIS, Toggle FS seems to just allow QGIS to use the 24px normally occupied by my menu bar. Sure, sometimes that might be handy to do, but not as much as I'd like to be able to see the full map without all the panels. . F11 is bound to View > Toggle full screen, but OS X steals that keybinding for an OS function ("Show Desktop"). If it's not going to work, it shouldn't appear by default in the menu. . If you enter fullscreen mode and then Cmd-TAB to another app and go back to QGIS and toggle full screen some more, it's possible to screw it up. Right now I have QGIS in a state where Toggle FS switches between occupying the full screen (including the 24px of menu bar) or appearing right below the menu bar. But I can't get back to having a main window with window decorations that I can resize or move around the screen. Wacky. Restarting fixed it. * If you undock the Layers panel (and presumably others) and put it in the middle of the screen (for some reason), then if you restart QGIS, it can occlude the Recent Projects pane, making you think QGIS is hung. But it's really waiting for you to do something in the Recent Projects pane, it's just that you can't see it. Oops? Conclsuion: Recent Projects should be on top of floating panels? * Recent Projects shows the filename, but cuts the wrong side of the dots. If my filename is "2017.01.14 qgis learning.qgs," it shows me "2017", cutting off to the left of the first dot. But instead it should cut off to the left of the LAST dot. * With the Aqua UI (MacOS native) selected, the Cancel and OK buttons have the text shifted too high by a few pixels. It looks subtly bad/wrong. On OS X 10.10, the system font is Helvetica Neue. Sure enough, changing Preferences: General: Font to Helvetica Neue fixes the shift. Is this supposed to happen? . It is a bit annoying I cannot select a font (in Preferences: General) until I hit the radio button next to the font dropdown. That radio button should autoselect when you click in the Font dropdown. % As of OS X 10.11 and up, the system font changes to San Francisco. I'm not sure what kind of default is proper here. I don't have a handy more recent machine, although I could find one if necessary. * Preferences: Icon Size doesn't seem to honor the Cancel/OK button at the bottom of the window. If I choose 64px icons and then I hit Cancel, they stay 64px. LAYERS PANEL: * Importing layers from Browser Panel . It seems peculiar that this seems to be the most efficient way to import layers. Far more so than using the "recommended" and obvious way of Layer > Add Layer (or the toolbar). Those require having to think about what kind of layer the file you haven't yet selected is going to require, but this doesn't. . When bringing in multiple layers from the Brower Panel, the secondary-click menu is a bit confusing. If I select two layers and rightclick, I'm given both "Add Layer" and "Add Selected Layer" as options. But if I click "Add Layer," it doesn't add the *selected* layers, which is my UI expectation. Instead it adds the single layer the mouse happened to be on when I chose it. It would be better for "Add Layer" to be greyed out, or to stop having two seperate functions and merely display either "Add Layer" or "Add Layers" depending on whether one file was selected or more-than-one. . Drag-and-drop of a layer from the Browser to the Layers panel is confusing. The UI doesn't show you where the layer is going to end up -- there should be a visual indicator. . When the Layers panel is undocked, drag-and-drop into it doesn't seeem to work. And weird things happen with which items in both the Browser Panel and the Layers Panel are selected when you release an (unsucessful) drag-and-drop. * The Add Layer Group button is too hard to "read" -- the 16px version (default; even when the icon size pref is 24px) on a hidpi display just makes the green plus-sign in the corner far too small. All that detail in the overlapping layers is nice, but the plus sign needs to be a lot larger. I realize there's a desire not to confuse it with an "Add Layer" function, but still. * It is hard to know where the Add Layer Group function will put the new group -- it seems to appear at the bottom of the layer list, which may be out of view so you don't even know if anything happened. So inadverently you might repeat the operation trying to see if it worked. Or wondering if the new group appeared inside an existing subgroup and hunting for it. . I tend to think the new group should be added above or below the cursor / highlighted group. . But if it is going to appear at the end, then the group list should scroll automaticaly such that it is in view. * I had trouble finding the icon to delete layers. At first I thought there wasn't one. Ultimately I found it...I suppose this means that, emperically, I have a similar quibble with Remove Layer/Group as with Add. Although I think I may have been confused by the fact that it is Add and Remove rather than Add and Delete. And also that it's a bit odd to combine Remove Group and Remove Layer. Not sure. I think I would also expect a Trashcan icon rather than a red minus sign. * If I try to Remove a just-added empty group, QGIS gives me a warning dialog box. That seems wrong -- empty groups should remove without warning, otherwise it contributes to desensitizing the user to warnings, which is bad. * Which leads to...I inadvertently removed the wrong layer, and clicked OK and it was gone. Edit > Undo would not recover from this situation. Very unfortunate. * Reordering layers doesn’t work well in the GUI. . The mouse precision required to insert an item between two layer groups is way too fine. There should be more pixels available so you don't have to nail a 1px high sweet-spot. . The visual indication of where a dragged layer will fall is too subtle. It should be several pixels thicker. . There should be buttons in the Layers panel to move a layer Up and Down. * It is unfortunate that the icons for Expand/Collapse layers are Up and Down arrows. This leads to the confusing impression that they will move layers up and down the layer listing, but they don't. Since the hierarchical list widget shows depth with horizontal spacing, expand/contract are better done with horizontal arrows (if you're going to use arrows at all, which might not be best). * If I have styled a layer by Category, and then I expand the disclosure triangle in the Layers panel to show those categories, and then click on the layer and select it: then if I use the keyboard (or mouse, but that's more confusing) to go up/down by category with the arrow keys, the currently selected category doesn't highlight. But it is clearly selected -- hitting spacebar will toggle its visibility. So something is wrong here. * If I use Remove Layer/Group, I get warnings about "Legend Entries." Why/how is a layer a synonym for a legend entry? Is that just an error? * I would like the ability to select a group of layers and then sort them (alphabetically). * I'm surprised I cannot Select All Layers somehow, such that I can do things like Show Feature Count on all of them. I'd expect it in the context menu or maybe the menubar Layer menu... I realize shift-Click works. * Apparently double-clicking on a layer can be configured to do different things (Open Layer Properties, Open attribute table; Open Layer Styling Dock)? This is a bit strange. It seems that it should do one thing only, and there shouldn't be a preference to change it so radically. But in any event, all 3 are useful things to do, and there should be an easy and fast way to them. The obvious choice is modifiers. Cmd/Ctrl-click for the Attribute table, and Option/Alt-click for the layer styling dock. It's especially important to have a good way to open the Attributes panel beacuse on a Mac hitting F6 is mildly annoying -- effectively it's Fn-F6, unless you have decided to forgo the OS's media key functions (maybe appropriate if you spend a lot of time in apps that are heavy on function keys, which QGIS is not?). LAYER STYLING: * Switching a layer's symbology from fill to stroke seemed too hard. Maybe it's too much time in Adobe Land, it seems like a big production to remove a fill and add a stroke. . I found the labelling of stroke as "Outline" to be non-intuitive. This may be my Adobe background speaking, but I think it'd be a lot more clear as Stroke. . In the layer styling panel, you have to drill down to Simple Fill in order to get to these controls. This is nonobvious, beacuse the color is shown at the Fill level. It's also nonobvious because Fill and Stroke are pararalel concepts in most UIs. But in QGIS, Outline is subsidiary to Fill. . The fact that "Outline" and "Outline width" are separated by 3 other controls seems peculiar, esp. when some of those controls have to do with Fill but not Outline. Conceptually related controls should be grouped. . I really miss the "Swap Fill and Stroke" function in Adobe apps -- a little 45-degree curvy arrow next to the Fill and Stroke swatches. In Illustator, this is bound to a single keypress (X). In QGIS you have to swap them by hand. * In the Labelling and Symbology panels, if most of the widgets are inactive in the absence of a selected column ("Label with"), then all of those widgets should be dispayed inactively, e.g. greyed out. * The column dropdowns in Layer Styling are hard to use, for Fitt's Law reasons. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts's_law Most of the time, I think, people want to select an existing column from a list, rather than to type one in from scratch. But of a 328px wide "Column" widget, 310px are for the text field, and that leaves 18 px for the button. But you want the large button to be the thing people use most often (per Fitt's Law). . Ideally, clicking anywhere in the field should give you the dropdown, and then if you start typing, you can override the list with your own choice. This certainly makes sense when the column textbox is blank. When it's non-blank (a column is selected), I think this is also a reasonable way to go. However I don't have a UI precedent to offer for it. * In the Labelling pane, Rendering tab, the GUI looks very strange if you collapse the 3 disclosure triangles (Label optons, Feature options, Obstacles). Two float at the top and one at the very bottom. It's not clear why there should be disclosure triangles at all in this UI, given the presence of a vertical scroll bar. * In both the Layer Styling: Labelling pane and the Layer Properties window, the tabs have headings at the top like Text, Formatting, Buffer, etc. Those headings are in the same typeface as the widget beneath them, so they don't afford as headings. They should be in boldface, or separated, or something to indicate the hierarchy. * The overlap between Layer Properties and Layer Styling can be extremely confusing. The two UIs are similar enough that it's easy to get confused, and then easy to get frustrated when you can't find something that are sure was there. E.g. AutoApply is in the styling but not the properties. And the UIs widgets are slightly different. What is the reason for this inconsistency and can it be remedied? MENUS: * Layer > Labelling feels very weird. It pops up the Layer Styling panel, but its not a panel control, like View > Panels > Layer Styling. . If you already have the the Layer Styling panel open on the Labels pane, it appears to do nothing. This is confusing. (Should it be greyed out?) . It feels like it should have a checkmark next to it to indicate the panel is open. Although it's not clear to my why this function even exists. Where are the parallel Layer > Symbology or Layer > History menu items? * Why are some things Create Layer and others Add Layer? It seems like the distinction is not very clear. Esp. because Add Delimited Text Layer produces a dialog named "Create a Layer from a Delimited Text File." * I am troubled by the decision path for the Add Layer menu options (and toolbar icons). I have to think about what kind of file I want to add before I navigate to that file, which seems wrong. And QGIS clearly knows how to figure out what to do based on the file type -- it works from the Browser Panel, and works if I drag and drop a shapefile on the app. So why isn't there a simple Open File or Add Layer dialog that lets me choose any filetype and adds it as a layer as-appopriate? The specialized non-file interfaces can remain, or they could combined into a fancy dialog box. But for dealing with local files, the paradigm seems "off." * Add Vector Layer's workflow is not keyboard-friendly. If I want to open a shapefile, after the initial Cmd-shift-V, I have to hit TAB TAB TAB RET to get to Browse to open an NSOpenPanel (OSX's file open dialog), and once I've selected a file there, the Add Vector Layer window loses focus. So I actually have to click in the window to make it active before I can select OK. . It also has no title bar in its window; and it's missing a bunch of window decorations, too. * Settings > Style Manager also pops up a window with no title bar or upper window decorations. Weird... * In Style Manager, if you double click a marker icon, you get a very small 407x279px window. But the window should be much larger, like 320x630px at a minimum, to display all the widgets. In the initial small size, it's not completely obvious there are offscreen widgets, so it just feels confusing. You can miss Units, Transparency, etc. * Hierarchical menus are bad. They can be a necessary evil in a complex application like QGIS, but their use should be minimized where possible. Because of Fitt's Law, it is challenging for humans to mouse into hierarchical menus, and they make for a bad user experience. . Everything that is in View > Panels should instead just be in the top-level Window menu. This is both easier to access, and also where Mac users expect to find panel controls. See https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/OSXHIGuidelines/MenuBarMenus.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/20000957-CH29-SW1 . I'm less sure about View > Toolbars, but my off-the-cuff would be to put them in the Window menu as well. InDesign does that, but it really only has 3 toolbars vs. QGIS's 12, so it's not a direct comparison. * There is no Project > Revert function. Because of the limited Undo functionality, it should be easy to go back to the last saved version. Of course you can Project > Open, but a Revert function would be nice. * QGIS wants to always have a project open, which feels weird. Especially because at startup, it has no project open, and displays the Recent Projects window instead of the Map Window. So it feels like you ought to be able to get back to that state by closing the current project, i.e. a QGIS > Close command. But that doesn't exist. Why not? . I also tend to think that the app should not exit instantly when you click the red "close window" decoration in its main window. I realize it's not a document window, but it feels like one. So at least a dialog "Do you want to exit QGIS?" would seem meritted. . By comparison, most Mac apps let you close their document windows and leave you only with a menu bar. In InDesign's Application Frame mode, which is kind of like QGIS's model, you can X away the Application Frame, and then you have only the menu bar. And ID will bring it back if you open a document. MAP WINDOW TOOLS * Identify Results goes out-of-window. When I select Identify Features and click on a feature, I get a a 565px-wide Identify Results window, with about 700px worth of content. The "Feature" column takes up all 565px initially (more), so unless you happen to notice the [somewhat subtle, becuase of OS X Aqua] horizontal scrollbar at the bottom, it's easy to miss that QGIS even has a "Value" column, that just happens to be scrolled out of view. The default column width of Feature should be small enough that you can see there is a Value column. And ideally both should be somewhat balanced so they can be both read. 50/50%? . The Identify Results panel has controls at the bottom of it that affect the behavior of the Identify Features tool! This is definitely unexpected -- it is a Results panel, not a Control panel. One would normally expect such controls to be in the toolbar, (Photoshop does this with many tools, popping up tool-specific application bar). It's especially strange because these controls, which are not initially visible, affect the use of a tool which is visible. . Perhaps rename Identify Results to Identify? Better to relocate the controls to a toolbar? Or as a transition, do both? * The zoom tool icon design is...kinda clunky. I think it's mostly because it's more like a diamond with rounded off corner rather than a circle, like in most apps. Can we change it? . The difference in appearance between the toolbar icon and the canvas icon that selects it is...dissonant. They ought to be as similar as possible. . Normally I expect option-clicking the zoom in tool to give me zoom out functionality, and vice-versa. Doesn't seem to happen here. * The hand tool does not behave like the hand tool does in most other applications. In most apps, dragging with hand tool pans the canvas in the window, and a single click of the hand tool does nothing special. . But in QGIS, a single click of the hand tool recenters the map on the spot of the click. I realize that ArcMap does this too, but I definitely find it weird and off-putting, and it's not what the hand tool does in the software I'm used to. (UI guideline: if two things look the same but have subtly different characteristics, it will annoy users.) . I guess I would like a way to turn this feature off (or relegate it to option-click or something). Although I'm sure there are ArcGIS (and now QGIS) users who depend on it, so it probably has to be on by default? * Zoom to Full / Zoom to Selection sometimes seem not work. They appear to do nothing. Restarting QGIS fixes this. But when it get stuck like this, the map window just remains blank, live I've zoomed all the way in or out beyond the point of reason. (QGIS is not quite like The Powers of Ten, alas.) . On the other hand, usually I can select the Zoom tool from the toolbar and zoom in and get a reasonable view. I don't understand what triggers this. * On a trackpad, two-finger touch normally scrolls/pans a window. In QGIS, it zooms in and out. That's probably appropriate for a mouse with a scroll wheel, but it works very poorly on a trackpad. For one thing, the zoom is far too fast, and there isn't much control. . I'd tend to think for a trackpad, 2-fingers should pan the map window and a modifier (Option, etc.) would zoom. Adobe products use this model. For Microsoft products, the modifier is a pair: Cmd+Control. ATTRIBUTES WINDOW: * The toggle editing mode (hereafter TEM) icon misuses the "greyed out"/disabled convention, and this misuse is terribly confusing to users. A greyed out icon is supposed to mean it is UNCLICKABLE. Not that everything else is unclickable until you click this one icon. I think the proper icon here is a locked or unlocked padlock (and never grey). The other icons properly have an active/inactive state that goes with the toggle editing mode icon. . Also I find it disconcerting that a lot of my screen changes when I click the TEM icon. The addition of the Column / Expression / Update All/ Update Selected bar beneath the toolbar when TEM is clicked seems wrong. I suspect that bar should always be present, or otherwise toggle-able. Or perhaps it could have a tri-state: On, Off, or On-while-editible (today's behavior). . The TEM button seems to be global rather than window-specific. E.g. clicking TEM in the attribute window (de)activates the TEM icon in the Digitizing Toolbar, which is on by deafult. This is nonintuitive and causes flashing in parts of the UI where your eyes are not focused, which is distracting/annoying. I think it also violates expectations. . Clicking TEM in the attributes window also causes the main map window to redraw. Again, annoying flashing, and also it may have performance implicatinos. * Tooltips have keyboard shortcuts here! This is wonderful! And yet it underscores their lack elsewhere. * The Attributes Window should have its name in the title bar, as all windows should. * When opening a table with just a few columns (e.g. 4), they are often very small widths, truncating the display of data. Where there is excess space, QGIS should autofit the colum widths in this window. OTHER WINDOWS: * Query Builder (Cmd-F, Filter on a layer): Has a bright blue OK button in the bottom-right corner, indicating that it is the default function when you hit Return [or maaaaaybe Enter, aka Fn-Return]. But pressing either of those thigns doesn't work. Probably it needs: . Fn-Return should click the OK button. . Most user won't know that, so the OK button should have a tooltip making that clear. . As a last resort, the blue could be turned off, but that is a bad workaround, not a solution. . Cmd-. should always activate the Cancel button. It does nothing here. Escape should work, too. . The other buttons (Help, Test, Clear as well as Sample and All) should probably have keybindings too. This is easy to do without conflict since it's a modal dialog. . As an aside, this is an awesome window. It works great! And the Test function is super-useful. . I wonder if the Help wouldn't better off as an adjunct panel (sidebar?) that slides out to the right of the Query Builder window, rather than a seperate window itself. I think that would make it a bit easier to use. * View > Decorations > North Arrow. I think the most common adjustments for the arrow, if done visually with the slider, are to move it +/- 180 degrees from North. But the slider goes from 0-360 and starts at zero ,so to make a small change in the negative direction, you have to slide all the way to 354 or whatnot. Shouldn't this slider go from -180 to +180 with repect to North and start in the middle? . It is wrong for the angle slider to work when the Set Direction Automatically checkbox is checked. Either sliding the slider should turn off the checkbox, or the slider should be disabled/grey when the box is checked * Preferences: Colors has a single sub-pane, Standard Colors. Yet there is a disclosure triangle. This is wrong, there shoudn't be a disclosure triangle for one group of items. . Also, there is a field called Label for each color, but it is not filled in. Shouldn't these standard colors also have Standard Names (Standard Labels)? * In Preferences, there seem to be some border widgets missing. When General, the first pane is selected, the top of the window's continuous gray feels like it should be the border of the entire window, which is present on 2-and-a-fraction sides. (All top, all right, most of bottom). But then when you switch to another pane, you realize it is the highlighting of the General button that was causing the continous gray across the top, which is dissonant now. So I think the whole window needs an interior border? * Settings > Style Manager allows me to edit symbols, but not to copy or duplicate existing symbols. This seems peculiar -- I want to test out changes without destroying what I have already. * QGIS > About QGIS has lots of version stuff information, like the current version and What’s New, but no way to check for a newer version? So if you start QGIS and get a note about a newer version but dismiss it, looking in the About QGIS box is a likely place to find more about what you missed. Users expect a certain degree of a parallelism between the Splash and About windows, nd the splash window does provide new version checking. (I realize it is in Help > Check QGIS Version) * Plugins > Manage and Install: the one plugin I looked at was the "eastcustomlabeling" plugin. But when I followed the links to it from the Plugins dialog, I get 404 Not Found. http://hub.qgis.org/projects/easycustomlabeling Not sure if this is a larger issue or just this plugin? * There is a lot that I find a bit odd about the Print Composer and it's UI paradigm, but some small items: . Cmd-shift-V does something very different in the Print Composer -- Paste in Place instead of Add Vector Layer. I can kind of see why this might be happening, but the idea of having totally different keybindings in differnt windows of the same application seems pretty novel. And novelty in UI design results in confusion more often than not. . The first and most prominent button in the Print Composer window is Save Project. That seems strange -- both because (a) Save Project doesn't seem like it belongs in the composer at all (since it is global), esp. as the main window's Save Project button is still visible in the default composer window size; and (b) most people probably save with Cmd-S on the keyboard. Isn't there a more important button that could be in that special position, the "100% corner" as it were? . Project > New Composer Window: gives me a dropdown textbox hybrid widget for the new composer name. This seems odd -- I would pretty much never want to select the name of a previous composer window as the basis for my new one, would I? If you want a list of existing composers for some reason, give me a list widget above the textbox for the new composer. * The Layer Ordering panel is hard to use if there is more than one screen's worth of layers, and you want to move a layer fro mthe far bottom to the far top. It should have Send to Front, Send to Back functions for the selected layer, either as icon buttons, secondary-click menu options, or both. (Maybe those functions should appear in the regular Layers panel, too?) ACTUAL FUNCTIONALITY: % One of the first things I did was try to import some non-spatial data from an Excel spreadsheet into QGIS to use in conjunction with some shapefiles. This ended up being a lot more difficult than expected. I expected I would initially use a TSV (or CSV) file to bring it in. % Because of a longstanding bug/wart, Excel for Mac (at least my version) exports CSV files with CR (Ctrl-M, \015) as a line delimeter, rather than CR or CRLF. This was the classic Macintosh line delimeter back in the days of yore, which somehow survived the transition to OS X, but only in some rare cases. The result is if you save as Tab Delimited Text, you get a TSV with Ctrl-M. (There are some workarounds, of course...) * Add Delmited Text Layer will not properly recognize a CR-delimited TSV. This is annoying. It should, because of the history of such files under OS X, and because it's still unfortunately way too easy to create them. . I imagine that this is an ogr2ogr issue? % Having gotten past that, I then tried to create a virtual layer from my layer, either for filtering or joining, I can't recall. * Add Virtual Layer's Query Pane has a huuuuuge tooltip. The text here is very helpful, except you cannot see it while you are typing, because it is a tooltip. Classic failure of "instructions at point of need." See above suggestion of sidebar/sidecar Help window in the Query Builder window. This has a lot in common with it. % After apparently satisfying the Query Pane's constraints and hitting OK, then: * I got a multi-line error displayed at the top of the Map Window that was hard to read. I couldn't figure out how to easily scroll the error, and it seemed very hard to read. Something about the layer not being valid. * Maybe worse, the error disappeared before I could finish reading it. A bright red error message suggests something is really wrong. It shouldn't just time out. In fact, pretty much no error messages should ever time out while the user isn't actually doing soemthing (clicking or typing). * Back in the Query Pane, there's no handy enumeration of fields like there is in the Query Builder (Cmd-F). That small UI dissonance is disappointing. What's good for the goose is good for the gander? . I realize there's some kind of autocompletion of field names, and also that the Query Pane has to deal with multiple tables and their fields. But that is a reason why autocomplete is not adequate, and the information on field should be available in a more structured navigable way, like a hiearchical list. . This is doubly true because Query Pane is a modal dialog, so you can't go elsewhere and look stuff up. % In my example, my imported data came with an Address field, and I wanted to join it against spatial data also with an Address field. Unfortunately the imported data had the city name in the Address field, and the spatial data did not. (All rows were in the same city.) % So I figured that was no problem, I would just use a Calculated Field with a regular expression to remove the city name. Easy-peasy. * After opening the Field Calculator feature in the Attribute Window, and creating my field ("shortaddr"), I couldn't figure out how to see the definition of the field I'd created. If there's a way to add a calculated field in the Attribute Window, there should be a way to edit it. . Ultimately I figured out that I could edit it in Layer Properties: Fields. But that's not enough. * Then with my calculated field, I was all set to use it in the query in my Virtual Layer. But...apparently you cannot use calculated fields in Virtual Layers? Worse, you don't even get a sensical error message. It just basically doesn't work :( I tried to a join like: select ap.geometry, ap.address from ADDRESS_AddressPoints ap, sbu where ap.address=sbu.shortaddr No joy. Not enough debugging information. * As a result, I exported the layer with the virtual field to a shapefile, and then reimported that shapefile. Essentially un-virtualizing my virtual field. Surely there was a better way? % Next, I tried to do a Join in Layer Properties: Join to hook up my two layers. . I think ArcMap has an easily findable Join function -- something like the equivalent of Layer > Join. But in QGIS it is buried inside Layer Properties. Why isn't it more of a first-class function? Joins are powerful and important. That should be true in the UI too. % It made sense to me to join my small (100-row) imported attribute table (SBU) against my big spatial table (AddressPoints). * This doesn't work. The result of joining an attribute table against a spatial table is an attribute table with no spatial data. To get spatial data in the result, you have to start with the spatial table and join it against the attribute table. This seems wrong. % It also left me with thousands of rows I didn't care about or want. . There doesn't seem to be a concept like INNER JOIN vs. LEFT JOIN vs. RIGHT JOINT etc. in the Join function. Why not? It seems especially common that you might want to throw away the rows where a join was not actually successful. * Then I tried to filter my joined spatial layer. I got a dialog offering to make it Virtual Layer so that I could subset filter it. Unfortunately this didn't seem to work, but my notes don't accurately reflect what went wrong, and I can't reproduce it now. Sorry :( * But as a workaround, I exported the layer with the join to a shapefile (sound familiar), and then reimported that shapefile. Essentially statically duipicating my join. Fortunately my dataset was small so this wasn't a big deal. Then I could filter my table. % In my related research, I found documentation "on the Internet" indicating that when importing CSV files, it might be important to specify the field types, and that ogr2ogr introduces something called CSVT sidecar files for this. E.g. https://anitagraser.com/2011/03/07/how-to-specify-data-types-of-csv-columns-for-use-in-qgis/ http://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/38850/how-do-you-create-a-csvt-on-a-mac http://www.qgistutorials.com/en/docs/performing_table_joins.html (This seems totally nonstandard and not used by any other CSV-reading software, including "csvkit," nominally the standard). * But QGIS has such a *nice* UI for importing CSV files, it seems bizarre that it does not give you a UI to specify the field types and manipulate a CSVT sidecar file. #wishlist * Also, none of the sparse documentation on CSVT files seems to point out that ogr2ogr has support for creating a CSVT file on its own. It seems like a much better idea to edit the file it creates rather than trying to create it from whole cloth, especially for inexperienced users. The creation incanation is a bit ugly, though. (Who puts a destination in front of a source in a command-line tool? What is this, Intel assembler?) For instance: pb3:Programs jhawk$ ./ogr2ogr -f CSV -lco CREATE_CSVT=YES /tmp/2 /tmp/1.tsv pb3:Programs jhawk$ ls -l /tmp/2 total 40 -rw-r--r-- 1 jhawk wheel 16257 Jan 14 23:12 1.csv -rw-r--r-- 1 jhawk wheel 63 Jan 14 23:12 1.csvt . But it definitely seems workable for the QGIS GUI to leverage this support. % Next, I wanted to import some data from my local MySQL server. But unfortunately: * QGIS doesn't seem to have built-in MySQL support, even though the documentation suggsested otherwise? . I corresponded with William Kyngesburye about this and he clarified that this was a licensing issue (GPL virus issues), but I should be able to build the GDAL plugin. Unfortunately while the plugin seemed to build cleanly and get autoloaded by GDAL, it doesn't actually work: pb3:doc jhawk$ /Library/Frameworks/GDAL.framework/Versions/2.1/Programs/ogrinfo --debug ON MySQL:Voting voters | head GDAL: Auto register /Library/Application Support/GDAL/2.1/PlugIns/ogr_MySQL.dylib using RegisterOGRMySQL. GDAL: Driver MySQL that defines GDAL_DMD_OPENOPTIONLIST must also implement Identify(), so that it can be used FAILURE: Unable to open datasource `MySQL:Voting' with the following drivers. -> MySQL -> PCIDSK ... I'm not sure what's going on here, maybe I need to rebuild all of GDAL? Certainly it looks like the pfnIdentify field gets set: ogrmysqldriver.cpp:187: poDriver->pfnIdentify = OGRMySQLDriverIdentify; and that's what's being complained about in gcore/gdaldrivermanager.cpp: 442 if( poDriver->GetMetadataItem( GDAL_DMD_OPENOPTIONLIST ) != NULL && 443 poDriver->pfnIdentify == NULL && 444 !STARTS_WITH_CI(poDriver->GetDescription(), "Interlis") ) 445 { 446 CPLDebug("GDAL", "Driver %s that defines GDAL_DMD_OPENOPTIONLIST must also " 447 "implement Identify(), so that it can be used", 448 poDriver->GetDescription() ); 449 } * I'm a little less optimistic that even if this plugin worked, I would magically see "Add MySQL Layer" next to "Add PostGIS Layers..." in the QGIS UI. But I guess we'll bringe that gap when we come to it. % Having got my data mostly displayed as desired, I wanted to improve the display of labels. The obvious thing to do was to reposition my labels so they were outside of their polygon shapes and connect them to the polygon shapes with an arrow or line -- what ArcGIS calls a Line Callout. * QGIS doesn't have native support for line callouts. It seems like a serious omission. It looks like there are a number of really awkward workarounds involving creating spatial fields (lines, polygons) in the shape of the line callout, and then plotting layers with those. That seems...really convoluted and confusing and not user friendly. I also found some discussion of the EasyCustomLabelling plugin for this, but it appeared trickier to use than I was up for at the time. https://gisunchained.wordpress.com/2015/01/12/etiquetas-com-guias-em-qgis-e-postgis-labels-leading-lines-with-qgis-and-postgis/ has some instructions. % On the other hand, on Tuesday I went back and tried to do this in ArcMap and I couldn't make line callouts work there either. Although ArcMap has a much better UI for them, it's still -- well... MISC ISSUES: * QGIS logs to Console.app with some regularity: 1/16/17 19:41:52.779 QGIS[29578]: WARNING: The Gestalt selector gestaltSystemVersion is returning 10.9.5 instead of 10.10.5. Use NSProcessInfo's operatingSystemVersion property to get correct system version number. Call location: 1/16/17 19:41:52.779 QGIS[29578]: 0 CarbonCore 0x00007fff8bf042b7 ___Gestalt_SystemVersion_block_invoke + 113 1/16/17 19:41:52.779 QGIS[29578]: 1 libdispatch.dylib 0x00007fff8946ae73 _dispatch_client_callout + 8 1/16/17 19:41:52.780 QGIS[29578]: 2 libdispatch.dylib 0x00007fff8946ad86 dispatch_once_f + 117 1/16/17 19:41:52.780 QGIS[29578]: 3 CarbonCore 0x00007fff8be8d456 _Gestalt_SystemVersion + 987 1/16/17 19:41:52.780 QGIS[29578]: 4 CarbonCore 0x00007fff8be8c6e3 Gestalt + 144 1/16/17 19:41:52.780 QGIS[29578]: 5 QtCore 0x0000000108fbbc16 _Z41__static_initialization_and_destruction_0ii + 38 1/16/17 19:41:52.780 QGIS[29578]: 6 ??? 0x00007fff6e66bd4b 0x0 + 140735045614923 You're not supposed to call gestaltSystemVersion() anymore, for many years. Looks like it's Qt's fault though? * DOCUMENTATION ISSUES: * Where the are the QGIS 2.18.3 release notes? They are not easy to find from the website. It's easy to get to http://qgis.org/en/site/forusers/visualchangelog218/index.html but that doesn't cover the "dot" releases. Other links take you to http://hub.qgis.org/projects/quantum-gis which is not so helpful, at least not directly. Is there nothing more user-friednly than the ChangeLog? If not, at least someting should link to the ChangeLog: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/qgis/QGIS/382e70ed98ba7b498d9501c0746ff81cfb958611/ChangeLog % After I drafted the outline that led to many of the issues in this email, I figured I had best go through the QGIS documentation to see if I was missing anything totally obvious, and to give it a similar level of review. I think my patience for doing so fell off exponentially after the first 100 pages, however. And this is against the QGIS 2.14 PDF (sorry). * CRS on first reference. On p.32 is the first time it talks about a CRS, but never explains it is a reference system. Acronyms should be expanded on first reference (and possibly more than that in a manual prone to random-access use.) * Apple's OS is properly "Mac OS X" shortened to "OS X" not "OSX". (But I guess they're trying to rebrand as macOS). Docs should be consistent and use "OS X" everywhere, not "OSX" sometimes. * The use of the X symbol for |osx| is not a good choice, I fear. http://docs.qgis.org/testing/en/_images/osx.png It's nonstandard, it's doesn't trigger "Mac" in most people's minds. And worse, it does seem extremely reminscent of the X windows X. Probably that doesn't confuse Linux people who are tied to their penguin, but us old-timey non-Linux Unix/X11 people kind of cringe. Compare with https://www.x.org/wiki/logo.png I think a better symbol would be Apple's apple logo https://developer.apple.com/favicon.ico I'm sure that'd be fair use, also... * I'm probaly being hypersensitive, but I found this text in preamble/conventions.rst to be, well, kinda offensive: Larger amounts of text may be formatted as a list: |nix| Do this |win| Do that |osx| Do something else It can be read to imply that everybody should use Linux ("Do this") or Windows ("Do that") but not MacOS ("Do someting else"). I realize it wasn't meant that way, but it should probably be reworded ("Or, do this.") * Section 8.4 refers to the eyedropper tool as a "color picker". This is confusing and incorrect. A "color picker" is a complex GUI widget that lets you choose any color using sliders and number boxes, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Color_picker https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/content/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/OSXHIGuidelines/ControlsandViews.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/20000957-CH108-SW8 It is not a tool that lets you pick up a single color from a point on the canvas. That's usually called an eyedropper -- which is what the icon is. * Section 8.5 Blending modes doesn't put "soft light" in boldface like the others. * Section 8.7 Measuring doesn't expand UTM (Univeral Transverse Mercator) on first reference. And the expansion probably doesn't help most people, it probably needs a gloss? * Through the manual, settings are accessed via "Settings". But under OS X, you get there with QGIS > Preferences... . And the Title Bar of the Preferences window identifies it as "Options." As if were weren't confused already! . If this is platform-specific there should be a note about it. Maybe a macro. I guess there is a note in 7.1.14, but I didn't find it while reading. * Ctrl-$foo under Win/Linux is Cmd-$foo under OS X. The manual should acknowledge this somewhere, though maybe not everytime. (But maybe it should everytime? Because Macs do have Ctrl keys and they are available but do something slightly different. So...) * Sec. 4.1, View Data, talks about WMS and WFS without expanding or explaining them. . Maybe this is an unfair criticism because it does the same for OGR and ESRI, as well as SDTS and JPEG. But none of those bother me? * Sec. 12.1, s/driver/drivers/: "You should note also that some driver doesn’t support" * Sec 12.1.5 Importing Data into PostgreSQL assumes you know where ogr2ogr is installed. But in the default binary installation under MacOS, I don't think that's a good assumption -- it gets installed as /Library/Frameworks/GDAL.framework/Programs/ogr2ogr and I don't think it's normal for /Library/Frameworks/anything to end up in users PATHs. It's not as if the installation added a file to /etc/paths.d. . I think arguably there should be some a symlink from /usr/local/gdal to /Library/Frameworks/GDAL.frameworks, or something. Or perhaps, better yet, a symlink farm from /usr/local/bin/ to all the individual programs? Not sure. I guess this is a KyngChaos issue more than anything else? . Similarly, I previously had homebrew install the gdal package (as distinct from the gdal-framework homebrew cask). That leaves me with multiple ogr2ogr's on my system: pb3:~ jhawk$ locate ogr2ogr|grep /ogr2ogr$ /usr/local/Cellar/gdal/1.11.3/bin/ogr2ogr /usr/local/bin/ogr2ogr pb3:~ jhawk$ mdfind -name ogr2ogr | grep /ogr2ogr$ /Library/Frameworks/GDAL.framework/Versions/2.1/Programs/ogr2ogr /usr/local/Cellar/gdal/1.11.3/bin/ogr2ogr pb3:~ jhawk$ * The example ogr2ogr usage passes a password on the command-line. That's widely recognized as an extremely poor security practice: ogr2ogr -f "PostgreSQL" PG:"dbname=postgis host=myhost.de user=postgres password=topsecret" alaska.shp . I don't think using a password of "topsecret" as an ironic acknowledgement that this is a bad idea is an effective mitigation of the problem. * It seems like there is something consistently wrong with the figure crossreferencing code throughout the document. For instances, we often see text like "The Feature filtering dialog of the attribute table provides the following functionalities (see figure_composer_table_4):", but then the figure underneath is labelled "Figure 19.33: Attribute table Feature filtering Dialog." . It seems like "figure_composer_table_4" is an internal label that should not be shown to the user. . I'm not sure if it should be expanded as "(see Figure 19.33)" or more completely as "(See Figure 19.33: Attribute table Feature filtering Dialog)." Probably the latter? * "map units" are never explained. The sole reference to them is in 12.2.2 but it's not really sufficient. I found the meaning of map units to be confusing as I started to learn QGIS, and would have appreciated a clear explanation of it in the manual. * 12.3.1: s/where/were/: "QGIS treats the resulting subset acts as if it where the entire layer." * 12.3.2: "2.5 D" is used without defining it? I think it's a concept worthy of a few words. . Also, in the shapefile context, the docs say “2.5D”? Since I more commonly see "3D" or "3-D" than I do "3 D," I would tend to think that "2.5D" is correct and the usage should be made consistent? The AHD says 3D or 3-D: https://ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=3d M-W says 3-D: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/3d * Figure 12.26: In the 2 images on that figure, it would sure help to highlight visually the differences between them. * Grammar, p.109: "Overlapping symbols will simply obfuscate to other below. Besides, similar symbols won’t “merge” with each other.” * Grammar, p.113: "allows to set a layer as just an obstacle" * Formating, p.142: Fix the column width to avoid hyphenating azimuth(). * Section 12.4: Expressions fails to mention this is SQL[-derived] syntax. That’d be helpful for people to know. * Section 12.6: In formal written English, "it" is not an appropriate pronoun to use for a person: “The last person to save its edits wins.” However, it's true that English doesn't have standardized solutions for gender-neutral pronouns, but "it" is a bad solution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-person_pronoun#It_and_one_as_gender-neutral_pronouns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_neutrality_in_English#Pronouns . The usual solution (not wonderful, but better) is to use the plural pronoun ("their edits"); Or recast the sentence: "The last person who saves an edit wins." * Section 14.2, p.207: The "Set group WMS data" screenshot is Huge, and has no Figure number. * Section 14.2.3: "sudo su" incantation is basically...something you should never type. It tells the sudo to run su, but sudo has that functionality built in. Normally the correct way to get a shell via sudo is "sudo -s", although in some cases "sudo -i" might be more appropriate, depending on whether you want to execute root's dotfiles. In this case sudo -s is correct. See http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/218169/is-there-ever-a-good-reason-to-run-sudo-su * Chapter 17: What the heck is GRASS? Apparently GRASS intergrations integrate GRASS database? A gloss would help. * Chapter 19: the Print Composer. I am confused why this chapter comes so late in the book, after estoteric scripting stuff? I think most QGIS users want to print (or output to PDF), but far fewer are going to tackle batch processing, GRASS, etc. I'd think printing should come as soon after vector and raster data as reasonble (maybe, for parallelism, it has to come after OGC and GPS data too? But I don't think so...) * Sec. 19.1.3, p.304: The Zoom Out icon is used for Zoom In. * Sec. 20.13: It would be nice to define TIN and IDW before they are used. The definitinos are not far away (3 paragraphs down), but by page 379 of the manual, you are in serious danger of losing the reader. And they are at a deeper level of hierarhcy. I definitely got very tired and confused at this point. QUESTIONS: * It appears from the manual in Section 16.1.2 that a Master Password -protected authentication system will just erase your authentication database after 3 wrong attempts if you just hit RETURN, by DEFAULT? That seems horribly unfriendly to the user, for no gain in security. . Removing the default OK button would be start... . But still, that seems like a great way to lose data? * Why does QGIS use Transparency sliders instead of Opacity sliders? Isn't Opacity much more common in graphics software? * How come the 2.5 D Renderer doesn’t show up in my layer styling Symbology dropdown? Is it not supported under OS X? BUGS: * If I cycle through the all the UI preference choices in Preferenecs: Style (Windows, Motif, ..., Aqua), quitting-and-restarting each time, the result often is a seemingly corrupt QGIS setup that is more prone to crashing and confused behavior. I'm not sure exactly what goes wrong here, but this UI stuff seems...fragile. In order to reset preferences, it seems necessary to quit QGIS and run rm -r ~/.qgis2 defaults delete org.qgis.QGIS2 defaults delete com.trolltech I'm not really sure what trigger is, or what the fix is, but it just seems...fragile. Also it would be helpful if that were documented. I guess the trolltech stuff is from Qt? Ugh. % What's the right way to deal with crashes and backtraces? Do the QGIS developers want to see stack traces? Are there debugging symbols available? Or should I try to reproduce crashes in the current git checkout and analyze them myself? * tried to open attribute table of layer after being idle for several hours Application Specific Information: *** Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSInvalidArgumentException', reason: '-[NSThemeFrame drawRectOriginal:]: unrecognized selector sent to instance 0x7fcfaf8baae0' Performing @selector(qtDispatcherToQAction:) from sender NSMenuItem 0x6000004aac80 abort() called terminating with uncaught exception of type NSException Application Specific Backtrace 1: * Crash dragging the label styling panel to the left (and resulting in corrupt preferences). Stack overflow, all 512 frames loook like this: 511 QtGui 0x000000010a1c0e1e -[QCocoaWindow drawRectSpecial:] + 94 * In a corrupt preferences situation, sometimes QGIS half-hangs. Some parts of the UI are responsive, but pulldowns menus don't work. The menu bar flashes, but you can't pull anything down, Cmd-Q won't quit, etc. * Some kind of threading/contention hang again? No CPU consumption, but no responsiveness. Undocked the Layer Styling panel and moved it left, then tried to open the Attribute panel. There are menubar flashes, it behaves like there’s a model dialog offscreen or something (but there’s not?. * Got this: Application Specific Information: *** Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSInvalidArgumentException', reason: '-[NSThemeFrame drawRectOriginal:]: unrecognized selector sent to instance 0x7fd9f8c594a0' abort() called terminating with uncaught exception of type NSException ---------------------------------------- And that's all, folks. If you made it here, you get a special prize! --jh...@mit.edu John Hawkinson _______________________________________________ Qgis-user mailing list Qgis-user@lists.osgeo.org List info: https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-user Unsubscribe: https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-user