The Quantum GIS (QGIS) project is happy to announce that the Asia Air Survey Co., Ltd (AAS), a Japanese international consulting company, has become a Gold Sponsor. AAS has committed to providing 9,000 EUR (~$11,000 US) each of three years, beginning in November 2012. The AAS sponsorship is yet another indication that QGIS is a mature and stable project which continues to provide innovative open source GIS software. The QGIS Project Steering Committee (PSC) wishes to thank AAS for their continuing commitment.

It was ten years ago, on July 19, 2002, that QGIS was officially unveiled. That first release was primitive, supporting only PostGIS layers and having little in the way of navigation controls. Invoking the open source mantra of “release early and release often,” I announced it on Freshmeat and waited. Slowly it began to attract attention—not all of it positive. Some questioned why I was starting a new open source GIS project when there were others I could join.

Suppose you have a DBF (.dbf) file containing X and Y values that you want to import and save as a spatial layer. QGIS doesn’t support direct import of a DBF file as a map layer, however, we can use some command line magic to convert it to a CSV file and then use the Delimited Text plugin to get the job done. Your DBF file should have an id for each record and fields containing X and Y values.

Writing a QGIS plugin is not overly complicated but represents a bit of work. Using git in conjunction with your development efforts can make sure your investment in coding time is preserved. Development Tools The QGIS project team has set up a central location for plugin development which includes pretty much everything you need to develop and support your plugins, including: Issue tracking Wiki Documents Repository

Here’s a summary of recent additions and updates to plugins in the QGIS repository. FlowMapper (0.1.1) - Generates flow lines between discreet nodes for depicting spatial interaction data (e.g. migration). Query By Example (0.2) - Select features by location. Item Browser (1.6.0) - Browse a multiple selection with auto-zooming to feature and an option to open feature form. Custom Launcher (1.1.0) - Customize your own actions to launch your preferred apps or commands within QGIS.

An interesting visualization of QGIS development over the last eight years: http://woostuff.wordpress.com/2011/01/03/generating-a-gource-source-commit-history-visualization-for-qgis-quantum-gis/

The QGIS project has a number of support channels. Like many open source projects, these are loosely coupled. Recently the forum was made read-only and this has prompted a number of questions and concerns about how to receive support. This post outlines the ways in which you can get your questions answered. Home Page The QGIS home page has links to all the documentation and community resources. The navigation panel on the left has links to both the Community resources and the manual.

The forum (http://forum.qgis.org) has been closed for new registrations and marked read-only. Users have been encouraged to use http://gis.stackexchange.com instead. If you have an thoughts on the closure, good, bad, or otherwise, please comment.

Following up on my last post, Running Scripts in the Python Console, I created a plugin to simplify running scripts: The Script Runner plugin allows you to add your scripts to a list so they are readily available. You can then run them to automate QGIS tasks and have full access to the PyQGIS API. In addition, you can view information about the classes, methods, and functions in your module as well as browse the source:

The QGIS Python console is great for doing one-off tasks or experimenting with the API. Sometimes you might want to automate a task using a script, and do it without writing a full blown plugin. Currently QGIS does not have a way to load an arbitrary Python script and run it.[1] Until it does, this post illustrates a way you can create a script and run it from the console.

The raster calculator allows you to perform mathematical operations on each cell in a raster. This can be useful for converting and manipulating your rasters. Operators include: Mathematical (+, -, *, /) Trigonometric (sin, cos, tan, asin, acos, atan) Comparison (<, >, =, <=, >=) Logical (AND, OR) To perform operations on a raster or rasters, they must be loaded in QGIS.

This week we look at the OpenLayers plugin for QGIS. This plugin allows you to add a number of image services to your map canvas: Google Physical Streets Hybrid Satellite OpenStreetMap Yahoo Street Hybrid Satellite Bing Road Aerial Aerial with labels Installing the Plugin The OpenLayers plugin is installed like all other Python plugins. From the the Plugins menu in QGIS, choose Fetch Python Plugins.

This week we take a look at a how to plot a terrain profile using the Profile plugin. The plugin can be used with any raster format supported by QGIS. You can can display profiles from up to three rasters at once, allowing you to compare the results. To illustrate, we’ll create a simple profile using a DEM of a 1:63,360 quadrangle in Alaska. Installing the Plugin The Profile plugin is installed like all other Python plugins.

Day 0 - Things are hopping in Victoria. Yesterday I helped a big group of volunteers set up 160+ PCs for the Workshops and the Labs. People filtered in all day and the process of putting faces to names was interesting. Workshops start at 0900 today (Day 1) and run till 1600, then the OSGeo Annual General Meeting begins at 1630. I imagine by the end of the day, nearly the full contingent of conference attendees will be stalking the streets of Victoria.

This is an experience report–your mileage may vary_ I decided to give JUMP another try today. So I downloaded the latest release (1.2) and unzipped it into a directory. Looking at the JUMP Installation Guide reveals the document is written totally for Windows users. No problem, but I’m using a Mac. Looking in the bin directory there is a shell script named JUMPWorkbench-mac.sh. OK, make that executable and give it a go:

Marco Hugentobler at the Institute of Cartography, ETH Zurich has announced the QGIS MapServer project. From the website: “QGIS mapserver is a server module for geographic maps. The content of vector and raster datasources (e.g. shapefiles, gml, postgis, wfs, geotiff ) is visualized according to the request parameters. The generated map image is sent back to the client over the internet.“ This project is very much in the early stages, as it requires a specific development version of QGIS.

Is desktop GIS software a rusty old car with no wheels? Bouncing around the blogosphere sometimes leaves you with that impression. All the excitement these days seems to center around mashups, hacks, and mapping in your web browser. It’s definitely cool stuff. A number of folks think this is the future of GIS, even when it comes to doing analysis. Part of this trend stems from a desire to deliver mapping to the masses.

Here is the process I used to quickly build (OK, but it was faster than usual) QGIS HEAD on Feisty Fawn. What’s QGIS HEAD? It’s the current development version that includes the tasty Python bindings that allow you to write both QGIS plugins and stand-alone mapping applications. With apt-get or synaptic, install the following: bison fftw3 fftw3-dev flex g++ libgeos-c1 libgeos-dev libgeos2c2a libpq-dev libpq5 libqt4-core libqt4-dev libqt4-gui libqt4-qt3support libqt4-sql libreadline5-dev libsqlite3-dev libtiff4-dev proj pyqt4-dev-tools python-qt4 python-qt4-dev python-sip4 python-sip4-dev qt4-designer qt4-dev-tools qt4-doc qt4-qtconfig sip4 sqlite3 tcl8.

And so it begins. Chad has made a plea to Microsoft to help sort out issues with the latest World Wind release and Vista. The new security features are causing problems and I suspect that World Wind won’t be the last project to have to deal with it. So far the QGIS project has yet to get an experience report from anybody using Vista. Who knows what that will bring….

a great divide separates the typical open source developer and user. each has differing expectations, assumptions, and priorities. the interaction between developer and user can be helpful, cordial, confrontational, or antagonistic. of course this all stems from being on opposite sides of the fence. the key to a successful relationship is communication and understanding (not exactly a new revelation). unfortunately its not possible for one developer to communicate directly with thousands of users.