Oslandia is the main partner of OPENGIS.ch around QField. We are proud today to forward the announcement of the new QField release 3.3 “Darién”. This release introduces a brand new plugin framework that empowers users to customize and add completely new functionalities to their favourite field application.

The plugin framework comes with other new features and improvements for this release, detailed below.

Main highlights

One of the biggest feature additions of this version is a brand new drawing tool that allows users to sketch out important details over captured photos or annotate drawing templates. This was a highly requested feature, which is brought to all supported platforms (Android, iOS, Windows, macOS, and, of course, Linux) with the financial support of the Swiss QGIS user group.

Also landing in this version is support for copying and pasting vector features into and from the clipboard. This comes in handy in multiple ways, from providing a quick and easy way to transfer attributes from one feature to another through matching field names to pasting the details of a captured feature in the field into a third-party messenger, word editing, or email application. Copying and pasting features can be done through the feature form’s menu as well as long pressed over the map canvas. Moreover, a new feature-to-feature attributes transfer shortcut has also been added to the feature form’s menu. Appreciation to Switzerland, Canton of Lucerne, Environment and Energy for providing the funds for this feature.

The feature form continues to gain more functionalities; in this version, the feature form’s value map editor widget has gained a new toggle button interface that can help fasten data entry. The interface replaces the traditional combo box with a series of toggle buttons, lowering the number of taps required to pick a value. The German Archaeological Institut – KulturGutRetter sponsored this feature.

Other improvements in the feature form include support for value relation item grouping and respect for the vector layer attributes’ « reuse last entered value » setting.

Finally, additional features include support for image decoration overlay, a new interface to hop through cameras (front, back, and external devices) for the ‘non-native’ camera, the possibility to disable the 3-finger map rotation gesture, and much more.

User experience improvements

Long-time users of QField will notice the new version restyling of the information panels such as GNSS positioning, navigation, elevation profile, and sensor data. The information is now presented as an overlay sitting on top of the map canvas, which increases the map canvas’ visibility while also achieving better focus and clarity on the provided details. With this new version, all details, including altitude and distance to destination, respect user-configured project distance unit type.

The dashboard’s legend has also received some attention. You can now toggle the visibility of any layer via a quick tap on a new eye icon sitting in the legend tree itself. Similarly, legend groups can be expanded and collapsed directly for the tree. This also permits you to show or hide layers while digitizing a feature, something which was not possible until now. The development of these improvements was supported by Gispo and sponsored by the National Land Survey of Finland.

Plugin framework

QField 3.3 introduces a brand new plugin framework using Qt’s powerful QML and JavaScript engine. With a few lines of code, plugins can be written to tweak QField’s behaviour and add new capabilities. Two types of plugins are possible: app-wide plugins as well as project-scoped plugins. To ensure maximum ease of deployment, plugin distribution has been made possible  through QFieldCloud! Amsa provided the financial contribution that brought this project to life.

Our partner OPENGIS.ch will soon offer a webinar to discover how QField plugins can help your field (and business) workflows by allowing you to be even more efficient in the field.

Users interested in authoring plugins or better understanding the framework, can already visit the dedicated documentation page and a sample plugin implementation sporting a weather forecast integration.

A question concerning QField ? Interested in QField deployment ? Do not hesitate to contact Oslandia to discuss your project !

QField 3.3 has been released, and with it, we are proud to introduce a brand new plugin framework that empowers users to customize and add completely new functionalities to their favourite field application. That’s on top of a bunch of new features and improvements added during this development cycle. What preceded this moment was just the beginning!

Main highlights

One of the biggest feature additions of this version is a brand new drawing tool that allows users to sketch out important details over captured photos or annotate drawing templates. This was a highly requested feature, which we are delighted to bring to all supported platforms (Android, iOS, Windows, macOS, and, of course, Linux) with the financial support of the Swiss QGIS user group.

Also landing in this version is support for copying and pasting vector features into and from the clipboard. This comes in handy in multiple ways, from providing a quick and easy way to transfer attributes from one feature to another through matching field names to pasting the details of a captured feature in the field into a third-party messenger, word editing, or email application. Copying and pasting features can be done through the feature form’s menu as well as long pressed over the map canvas. If copy pasting ain’t your style, a new feature-to-feature attributes transfer shortcut has also been added to the feature form’s menu. Appreciation to Switzerland, Canton of Lucerne, Environment and Energy for providing the funds for this feature.

The feature form continues to gain more functionalities; in this version, the feature form’s value map editor widget has gained a new toggle button interface that can help fasten data entry. The interface replaces the traditional combo box with a series of toggle buttons, lowering the number of taps required to pick a value. If you enjoy this as much as we do, send a virtual thanks to German Archaeological Institut – KulturGutRetter, which sponsored this feature.

Other improvements in the feature form include support for value relation item grouping and respect for the vector layer attributes’ “reuse last entered value” setting.

Finally, additional features that are sure to please include support for image decoration overlay, a new interface to hop through cameras (front, back, and external devices) for the ‘non-native’ camera, the possibility to disable the 3-finger map rotation gesture, and much more.

User experience improvements

Long-time users of QField will notice the new version restyling of the information panels such as GNSS positioning, navigation, elevation profile, and sensor data. The information is now presented as an overlay sitting on top of the map canvas, which increases the map canvas’ visibility while also achieving better focus and clarity on the provided details. While revisiting these information panels, we’ve made sure all details, including altitude and distance to destination, respect user-configured project distance unit type.

The dashboard’s legend has also received some attention. You can now toggle the visibility of any layer via a quick tap on a new eye icon sitting in the legend tree itself. Similarly, legend groups can be expanded and collapsed directly for the tree. This also permits you to show or hide layers while digitizing a feature, something which was not possible until now. The development of these improvements was supported by Gispo and sponsored by the National Land Survey of Finland.

Plugin framework

Last but far away from least, QField 3.3 introduces a brand new plugin framework using Qt’s powerful QML and JavaScript engine. With a few lines of code, plugins can be written to tweak QField’s behaviour and add breathtaking capabilities. Two types of plugins are possible: app-wide plugins as well as project-scoped plugins. To ensure maximum ease of deployment, we have enabled project plugin distribution through QFieldCloud! We extend our heartfelt thanks to Amsa for the financial contribution that brought this incredible project to life.

Stay tuned for an upcoming webinar and a dedicated post that will dive into how QField plugins can revolutionize your field (and business) workflows by allowing you to be even more efficient in the field.

Users interested in authoring plugins or better understanding the framework can already visit the dedicated documentation page, a sample plugin implementation sporting a weather forecast integration and our latest blog article.

Today marks the 2.1 release of Trajectools for QGIS. This release adds multiple new algorithms and improvements. Since some improvements involve upstream MovingPandas functionality, I recommend to also update MovingPandas while you’re at it.

If you have installed QGIS and MovingPandas via conda / mamba, you can simply:

conda activate qgis
mamba install movingpandas=0.18

Afterwards, you can check that the library was correctly installed using:

import movingpandas as mpd
mpd.show_versions()

Trajectools 2.1

The new Trajectools algorithms are:

• Trajectory overlay — Intersect trajectories with polygon layer
• Privacy — Home work attack (requires scikit-mobility)
  • This algorithm determines how easy it is to identify an individual in a dataset. In a home and work attack the adversary knows the coordinates of the two locations most frequently visited by an individual.
• GTFS — Extract segments (requires gtfs_functions)
• GTFS — Extract shapes (requires gtfs_functions)
  • These algorithms extract public transport routes (GTFS shapes) and route segments between stops (GTFS segments) from GTFS ZIP files using gtfs_functions.Feed.shapes and .segments, respectively.

Furthermore, we have fixed issue with previously ignored minimum trajectory length settings.

Scikit-mobility and gtfs_functions are optional dependencies. You do not need to install them, if you do not want to use the corresponding algorithms. In any case, they can be installed using mamba and pip:

mamba install scikit-mobility
pip install gtfs_functions

MovingPandas 0.18

This release adds multiple new features, including

• Method chaining support for add_speed(), add_direction(), and other functions
• New TrajectoryCollection.get_trajectories(obj_id) function
• New trajectory splitter based on heading angle
• New TrajectoryCollection.intersection(feature) function
• New plotting function hvplot_pts()
• Faster TrajectoryCollection operations through multi-threading
• Added moving object weights support to trajectory aggregator

For the full change log, check out the release page.

Read More

Focused on stability and usability improvements, most users will find something to celebrate in QField 3.2

Main highlights

This new release introduces project-defined tracking sessions, which are automatically activated when the project is loaded. Defined while setting up and tweaking a project on QGIS, these sessions permit the automated tracking of device positions without taking any action in QField beyond opening the project itself. This liberates field users from remembering to launch a session on app launch and lowers the knowledge required to collect such data. For more details, please read the relevant QField documentation section.

As good as the above-described functionality sounds, it really shines through in cloud projects when paired with two other new featurs.

First, cloud projects can now automatically push accumulated changes at regular intervals. The functionality can be manually toggled for any cloud project by going to the synchronization panel in QField and activating the relevant toggle (see middle screenshot above). It can also be turned on project load by enabling automatic push when setting up the project in QGIS via the project properties dialog. When activated through this project setting, the functionality will always be activated, and the need for field users to take any action will be removed.

Pushing changes regularly is great, but it could easily have gotten in the way of blocking popups. This is why QField 3.2 can now push changes and synchronize cloud projects in the background. We still kept a ‘successfully pushed changes’ toast message to let you know the magic has happened

With all of the above, cloud projects on QField can now deliver near real-time tracking of devices in the field, all configured on one desktop machine and deployed through QFieldCloud. Thanks to Groupements forestiers Québec for sponsoring these enhancements.

Other noteworthy feature additions in this release include:

• A brand new undo/redo mechanism allows users to rollback feature addition, editing, and/or deletion at will. The redesigned QField main menu is accessible by long pressing on the top-left dashboard button.
• Support for projects’ titles and copyright map decorations as overlays on top of the map canvas in QField allows projects to better convey attributions and additional context through informative titles.

Additional improvements

The QFieldCloud user experience continues to be improved. In this release, we have reworked the visual feedback provided when downloading and synchronizing projects through the addition of a progress bar as well as additional details, such as the overall size of the files being fetched. In addition, a visual indicator has been added to the dashboard and the cloud projects list to alert users to the presence of a newer project file on the cloud for projects locally available on the device.

With that said, if you haven’t signed onto QFieldCloud yet, try it! Psst, the community account is free

The creation of relationship children during feature digitizing is now smoother as we lifted the requirement to save a parent feature before creating children. Users can now proceed in the order that feels most natural to them.

Finally, Android users will be happy to hear that a significant rework of native camera, gallery, and file picker activities has led to increased stability and much better integration with Android itself. Activities such as the gallery are now properly overlayed on top of the QField map canvas instead of showing a black screen.

The GRASS GIS 8.3.2 maintenance release contains more than 30 changes compared to 8.3.1. This new patch release includes important fixes and improvements to the GRASS GIS modules and the graphical user interface (GUI), making it even more stable for daily work.

The post GRASS GIS 8.3.2 released appeared first on Markus Neteler Consulting.

According to the definition of software quality given by french Wikipedia

An overall assessment of quality takes into account external factors, directly observable by the user, as well as internal factors, observable by engineers during code reviews or maintenance work.

I have chosen in this article to only talk about the latter. The quality of software and more precisely QGIS is therefore not limited to what is described here. There is still much to say about:

• Taking user feedback into account,
• the documentation writing process,
• translation management,
• interoperability through the implementation of standards,
• the extensibility using API,
• the reversibility and resilience of the open source model…

These are subjects that we care a lot and deserve their own article.

I will focus here on the following issue: QGIS is free software and allows anyone with the necessary skills to modify the software. But how can we ensure that the multiple proposals for modifications to the software contribute to its improvement and do not harm its future maintenance?

Self-discipline

All developers contributing to QGIS code doesn’t belong to the same organization. They don’t all live in the same country, don’t necessarily have the same culture and don’t necessarily share the same interests or ambitions for the software. However, they share the awareness of modifying a common good and the desire to take care of it.

This awareness transcends professional awareness, the developer not only has a responsibility towards his employer, but also towards the entire community of users and contributors to the software.

This self-discipline is the foundation of the quality of the contributions of software like QGIS.

However, to err is human and it is essential to carry out checks for each modification proposal.

Automatic checks

With each modification proposal (called Pull Request or Merge Request), the QGIS GitHub platform automatically launches a set of automatic checks.

Example of proposed modification

Result of automatic checks on a modification proposal

The first of these checks is to build QGIS on the different systems on which it is distributed (Linux, Windows, MacOS) by integrating the proposed modification. It is inconceivable to integrate a modification that would prevent the application from being built on one of these systems.

The tests

The first problem posed by a proposed modification is the following “How can we be sure that what is going to be introduced does not break what already exists?”

To validate this assertion, we rely on automatic tests. This is a set of micro-programs called tests, which only purpose is to validate that part of the application behaves as expected. For example, there is a test which validates that when the user adds an entry in a data layer, then this entry is then present in the data layer. If a modification were to break this behavior, then the test would fail and the proposal would be rejected (or more likely corrected).

This makes it possible in particular to avoid regressions (they are very often called non-regression tests) and also to qualify the expected behavior.

There are approximately 1.3 Million lines of code for the QGIS application and 420K lines of test code, a ratio of 1 to 3. The presence of tests is mandatory for adding functionality, therefore the quantity of test code increases with the quantity of application code.

In blue the number of lines of code in QGIS, in red the number of lines of tests

There are currently over 900 groups of automatic tests in QGIS, most of which run in less than 2 seconds, for a total execution time of around 30 minutes.

We also see that certain parts of the QGIS code – the most recent – are better covered by the tests than other older ones. Developers are gradually working to improve this situation to reduce technical debt.

Code checks

Analogous to using a spell checker when writing a document, we carry out a set of quality checks on the source code. We check, for example, that the proposed modification does not contain misspelled words or “banned” words, that the API documentation has been correctly written or that the modified code respects certain formal rules of the programming language.

We recently had the opportunity to add a check based on the clang-tidy tool. The latter relies on the Clang compiler. It is capable of detecting programming errors by carrying out a static analysis of the code.

Clang-tidy is, for example, capable of detecting “narrowing conversions”.

Example of detecting “narrowing conversions”

In the example above, Clang-tidy detects that there has been a “narrowing conversion” and that the value of the port used in the network proxy configuration “may” be corrupted. In this case, this problem was reported on the QGIS issues platform and had to be corrected.

At that time, clang-tidy was not in place. Its use would have made it possible to avoid this anomaly and all the steps which led to its correction (exhaustive description of the issue, multiple exchanges to be able to reproduce it, investigation, correction, review of the modification), meaning a significant amount of human time which could thus have been avoided.

Peer review

A proposed modification that would validate all of the automatic checks described above would not necessarily be integrated into the QGIS code automatically. In fact, its code may be poorly designed or the modification poorly thought out. The relevance of the functionality may be doubtful, or duplicated with another. The integration of the modification would therefore potentially cause a burden for the people in charge of the corrective or evolutionary maintenance of the software.

It is therefore essential to include a human review in the process of accepting a modification.

This is more of a rereading of the substance of the proposal than of the form. For the latter, we favor the automatic checks described above in order to simplify the review process.

Therefore, human proofreading takes time, and this effort is growing with the quantity of modifications proposed in the QGIS code. The question of its funding arises, and discussions are in progress. The QGIS.org association notably dedicates a significant part of its budget to fund code reviews.

More than 100 modification proposals were reviewed and integrated during the month of December 2023. More than 30 different people contributed. More than 2000 files have been modified.

Therefore the wait for a proofreading can sometimes be long. It is also often the moment when disagreements are expressed. It is therefore a phase which can prove frustrating for contributors, but it is an important and rich moment in the community life of a free project.

To be continued !

As a core QGIS developer, and as a pure player OpenSource company, we believe it is fundamental to be involved in each step of the contribution process.

We are investing in the review process, improving automatic checks, and in the QGIS quality process in general. And we will continue to invest in these topics in order to help make QGIS a long-lasting and stable software.

If you would like to contribute or simply learn more about QGIS, do not hesitate to contact us at infos+qgis@oslandia.com and consult our QGIS support proposal.

The GRASS GIS Annual Report for 2023 highlights a year of significant achievements and developments in the GRASS GIS project, which celebrated its 40th anniversary. Here’s a summary of the report: Community Meeting: The GRASS GIS Community Meeting was held in June at the Czech Technical University in Prague, bringing together a diverse group of […]

The post GRASS GIS Annual Report 2023 appeared first on Markus Neteler Consulting.

We are very happy and enthusiasts at Oslandia to forward the QField 3.0 release announcement, the new major update of this mobile GIS application based on QGIS.

Oslandia is a strategic partner of OPENGIS.ch, the company at the heart of QField development, as well as the QFieldCloud associated SaaS offering. We join OPENGIS.ch to announce all the new features of QField 3.0.

Get QField 3.0 now !

Shipped with many new features and built with the latest generation of Qt’s cross-platform framework, this new chapter marks an important milestone for the most powerful open-source field GIS solution.

Main highlights

Upon launching this new version of QField, users will be greeted by a revamped recent projects list featuring shiny map canvas thumbnails. While this is one of the most obvious UI improvements, countless interface tweaks and harmonization have occurred. From the refreshed dark theme to the further polishing of countless widgets, QField has never looked and felt better.

The top search bar has a new functionality that allows users to look for features within the currently active vector layer by matching any of its attributes against a given search term. Users can also refine their searches by specifying a specific attribute. The new functionality can be triggered by typing the ‘f’ prefix in the search bar followed by a string or number to retrieve a list of matching features. When expanding it, a new list of functionalities appears to help users discover all of the tools available within the search bar.

QField’s tracking has also received some love. A new erroneous distance safeguard setting has been added, which, when enabled, will dictate the tracker not to add a new vertex if the distance between it and the previously added vertex is greater than a user-specified value. This aims at preventing “spikes” of poor position readings during a tracking session. QField is now also capable of resuming a tracking session after being stopped. When resuming, tracking will reuse the last feature used when first starting, allowing sessions interrupted by battery loss or momentary pause to be continued on a single line or polygon geometry.

On the feature form front, QField has gained support for feature form text widgets, a new read-only type introduced in QGIS 3.30, which allows users to create expression-based text labels within complex feature form configurations. In addition, relationship-related form widgets now allow for zooming to children/parent features within the form itself.

To enhance digitizing work in the field, QField now makes it possible to turn snapping on and off through a new snapping button on top of the map canvas when in digitizing mode. When a project has enabled advanced snapping, the dashboard’s legend item now showcases snapping badges, allowing users to toggle snapping for individual vector layers.

In addition, digitizing lines and polygons by using the volume up/down hardware keys on devices such as smartphones is now possible. This can come in handy when digitizing data in harsh conditions where gloves can make it harder to use a touch screen.

While we had to play favorites in describing some of the new functionalities in QField, we’ve barely touched the surface of this feature-packed release. Other major additions include support for Near-Field Communication (NFC) text tag reading and a new geometry editor’s eraser tool to delete part of lines and polygons as you would with a pencil sketch using an eraser.

Thanks to Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Groupements forestiers Québec, Amsa, and Kanton Luzern for sponsoring these enhancements.

Quality of life improvements

Starting with this new version, the scale bar overlay will now respect projects’ distance measurement units, allowing for scale bars in imperial and nautical units.

QField now offers a rendering quality setting which, at the cost of a slightly reduced visual quality, results in faster rendering speeds and lower memory usage. This can be a lifesaver for older devices having difficulty handling large projects and helps save battery life.

Vector tile layer support has been improved with the automated download of missing fonts and the possibility of toggling label visibility. This pair of changes makes this resolution-independent layer type much more appealing.

On iOS, layouts are now printed by QField as PDF documents instead of images. While this was the case for other platforms, it only became possible on iOS recently after work done by one of our ninjas in QGIS itself.

Many thanks to DB Fahrwgdienste for sponsoring stabilization efforts and fixes during this development cycle.

Qt 6, the latest generation of the cross-platform framework powering QField

Last but not least, QField 3.0 is now built against Qt 6. This is a significant technological milestone for the project as this means we can fully leverage the latest technological innovations into this cross-platform framework that has been powering QField since day one.

On top of the new possibilities, QField benefited from years of fixes and improvements, including better integration with Android and iOS platforms. In addition, the positioning framework in Qt 6 has been improved with awareness of the newer GNSS constellations that have emerged over the last decade.

Forest-themed release names

Forests are critical in climate regulation, biodiversity preservation, and economic sustainability. Beginning with QField 3.0 “Amazonia” and throughout the 3.X’s life cycle, we will choose forest names to underscore the importance of and advocate for global forest conservation.

Software with service

OPENGIS.ch and Oslandia provides the full range of services around QField and QGIS : training, consulting, adaptation, specific development and core development, maintenance and assistance. Do not hesitate to contact us and detail your needs, we will be happy to collaborate : infos+qfield@oslandia.com

As always, we hope you enjoy this new release. Happy field mapping!

Who are we?

For those unfamiliar with Oslandia, OpenGIS.ch, or even QGIS, let’s refresh your memory:

Oslandia is a French company specializing in open-source Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Since our establishment in 2009, we have been providing consulting, development, and training services in GIS, with reknown expertise. Oslandia is a dedicated open-source player and the largest contributor to the QGIS solution in France.

As for OPENGIS.ch, they are a Swiss company specializing in the development of open-source GIS software. Founded in 2011, OPENGIS.ch is the largest Swiss contributor to QGIS. OPENGIS.ch is the creator of QField, the most widely used open-source mobile GIS solution for geomatics professionals.

OPENGIS.ch also offers QFieldCloud as a SaaS or on-premise solution for collaborative field project management.

Some may still be unfamiliar with #QGIS ?

It is a free and open-source Geographic Information System that allows creating, editing, visualizing, analyzing, and publicating geospatial data. QGIS is a cross-platform software that can be used on desktops, servers, as a web application, or as a development library.

QGIS is open-source software developed by multiple contributors worldwide. It is an official project of the OpenSource Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo) and is supported by the QGIS.org association. See https://qgis.org

A Partnership?

Today, we are delighted to announce our strategic partnership aimed at strengthening and promoting QField, the mobile application companion of QGIS Desktop.

This partnership between Oslandia and OPENGIS.ch is a significant step for QField and open-source mobile GIS solutions. It will consolidate the platform, providing users worldwide with simplified access to effective tools for collecting, managing, and analyzing geospatial data in the field.

QField, developed by OPENGIS.ch, is an advanced open-source mobile application that enables GIS professionals to work efficiently in the field, using interactive maps, collecting real-time data, and managing complex geospatial projects on Android, iOS, or Windows mobile devices.

QField is cross-platform, based on the QGIS engine, facilitating seamless project sharing between desktop, mobile, and web applications.

QFieldCloud (https://qfield.cloud), the collaborative web platform for QField project management, will also benefit from this partnership and will be enhanced to complement the range of tools within the QGIS platform.

Reactions

At Oslandia, we are thrilled to collaborate with OPENGIS.ch on QGIS technologies. Oslandia shares with OPENGIS.ch a common vision of open-source software development: a strong involvement in development communities, work in respect with the ecosystem, an highly skilled expertise, and a commitment to industrial-quality, robust, and sustainable software development.

With this partnership, we aim to offer our clients the highest expertise across all software components of the QGIS platform, from data capture to dissemination.

On the OpenGIS.ch side, Marco Bernasocchi adds:

The partnership with Oslandia represents a crucial step in our mission to provide leading mobile GIS tools with a genuine OpenSource credo. The complementarity of our skills will accelerate the development of QField and QFieldCloud and meet the growing needs of our users.

Commitment to open source

Both companies are committed to continue supporting and improving QField and QFieldCloud as open-source projects, ensuring universal access to this high-quality mobile GIS solution without vendor dependencies.

Ready for field mapping ?

And now, are you ready for the field?

So, download QField (https://qfield.org/get), create projects in QGIS, and share them on QFieldCloud!

If you need training, support, maintenance, deployment, or specific feature development on these platforms, don’t hesitate to contact us. You will have access to the best experts available: infos+mobile@oslandia.com.