QGIS Quickstart review feedback

[camerons]

I've just completed the QGIS Quickstart review and have inserted a number of comments on ways to improve it - mostly along the lines of:

• It needs more screen shots
  
• Can we describe what steps are being done for
  
• Pick one pluggin, GRASS or Sextente, and a "sexy" or commonly used algorithm and show why it is used and how to use it.
  

These comments are embedded in track changes here:

​http://trac.osgeo.org/osgeo/changeset?new=9720%40livedvd%2Fgisvm%2Ftrunk%2Fdoc%2Fen%2Fquickstart%2Fqgis_quickstart.rst&old=9622%40livedvd%2Fgisvm%2Ftrunk%2Fdoc%2Fen%2Fquickstart%2Fqgis_quickstart.rst

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A few errors (inaccuracies) in QGIS Quickstart.

Chapter "Edit QGIS project":

1) Read:

"Check ne_10m_populated_places in the Layers tree"

But in TOC layer name is "ne_10m_populated_places_

simple"

2) By default group layer "Water" is active.

Chapter "Using the GRASS Toolbox":

1) Read about NVIZ:

"In the new module tab that pops open, select the elevation map as the map

for elevation." But the layer "elevation" is unavailable in list, because it was not opened in QGIS.

2) NVIZ crashed with the error:

"G_malloc: unable to allocate 240080400 bytes at gsds.c:575

Finished with error"

[hamish]

Hi,

some feedback on the feedback.

• the logic behind showing how to start both the GRASS and SEXTANTE toolboxes is that they both open doors to long hallways of dozens (hundreds!) of extra analysis tools to explore. Demoing how to load a qgis plugin is just a secondary lesson to how to open those doors.

• the logic in showing how to start NVIZ is both to show how to use one of the plugin tools, but mainly demonstrating how you have a 3D (+) visualization suite right at your fingertips, just a bit buried if you don't know how to get to it.

• the logic in demonstrating the OSM toolbox is simply that it is our richest dataset on the disc and the plugin (at medium scale) is quite a beautiful thing to see on the screen. try it!

• ne 10m populated places simple layer name fixed in r9829.

• I don't see anything wrong with how the "Water" layer in the NE is selected, seems about right.

• Loading the GRASS example leads first to a message saying it was created with an earlier version of QGIS, and once you press OK it crashed out with a core dump. Eventually I got it to not crash, but then I get a dialog about needing to fix 5 bad layers. Unless someone is going to fix it, I suggest to remove that sample file. The GRASS toolbox itself seems fine (e.g. load raster slope map and vector archsites points map from Spearfish looks nice)

• The elevation map was missing from the list because it was mistakenly removed in an earlier edit to the quickstart. It's back now.

• NVIZ crashed with an out of memory error because the computational region was never set from the missing elevation map. With the elevation map back and the red border button pressed for it, it all works fine.

I've just checked-in a number of edits to the quickstart to deal with the toolbox issues with r9836. Issues earlier in the quickstart document remain outstanding.

Hamish

[hamish]

see also #1078

[hamish]

probably done, please have a read through and check for typos/spelling/functionality/etc.

Hamish

[camerons]

Review completed for osgeolive 6.5. Some outstanding issues in comments for addressing in osgeolive 7.0 release.

[astrid_emde]

• was reviewed for version 11.0
• screenshot added, toolbox example added
• steps are described
• ​https://github.com/OSGeo/OSGeoLive-doc/blob/master/en/quickstart/qgis_quickstart.rst