History

QGIS 1.7.0 'Wroclaw' Change Log

QGIS Project Updates

As well as building you a shiny new version of QGIS, we have been working hard on our general project infrastructure. Noteworthy changes include:
  • A new website for devlopers to publish their plugins via is now available at http://plugins.qgis.org.
  • A new site for sharing code snippets (both C++ and Python) at site http://snippets.qgis.org.
  • We have revived our community user map which is now available at site http://users.qgis.org - please feel free to add your dot on the map - we always get a kick out of seeing just how many people are using QGIS from far-flung corners of the globe!
  • We have set up a new blog 'planet' site at http://planet.qgis.org - let us know if you want your QGIS related blog added there.
    Separately from the above, we should mention two other important updates to our project. Firstly, we have moved our bug tracker from trac to redmine. The bug tracker url has changed to http://hub.qgis.org/. This is important as it allows us to create a unified destination for reporting bugs on QGIS Desktop, user contributed plugins (plugin authors need to establish a project on our redmine site first), as well as other aspects of our project. Your login should work as per usual (assuming you have an OSGEO login already). For the most part old tickets from trac can now be accessed simply by adding the old ticket number to this url: http://hub.qgis.org/issues/<ticket no > for example: http://hub.qgis.org/issues/3772.
    The second important update is relevant mainly to coders and folks who like to compile QGIS from source. The source code repository has been moved from an OSGEO hosted SVN repository into a GitHub based GIT repository. GIT is a next-generation distributed source code management tool and allows considerably more flexibility in managing and sharing code and changes to code. The QGIS codebase can now be accessed at http://github.com/qgis/Quantum-GIS.

Future release plans

This will most likely be the last public point release in the 1.X series. What does that mean for you? It means that we will probably not be release a QGIS 1.8 or beyond in the 1.X series as all new development work is now going to be focused on our next major release, QGIS 2.0. In the mean time, we will continue to stabilise the work in the 1.7 release and release those improvements as minor releases (i.e. 1.7.1, 1.7.2 etc) while work on 2.0 is underway. As always we will post announcements when new releases are made.

What's new in Version 1.7.0 'Wroclaw'?

This release includes over 277 bug fixes and many new features and enhancements. Once again it is impossible to document everything here that has changed so we will just provide a bullet list of key new features here.

Symbology labels and diagrams

  • New symbology now used by default!
  • Diagram system that uses the same smart placement system as labeling-ng
  • Export and import of styles (symbology-ng).
  • Labels for rules in rule-based renderers.
  • Font marker can have an X,Y offset.
  • Line symbology:
  • Option to put marker on the central point of a line.
  • Option to put marker only on first/last vertex of a line.
  • Allow the marker line symbol layer to draw markers on each vertex.
  • Polygon symbology:
  • * Rotation for svg fills.
  • * Added "centroid fill" symbol layer which draws a marker on polygon's centroid.
  • * Allow the line symbol layers to be used for outline of polygon (fill) symbols.
  • * Labels
  • * Ability to set label distance in map units.
  • * Move/rotate/change label edit tools to interactively change data defined label properties.

New Tools

  • Added GUI for gdaldem.
  • Added field calculator with functions like $x, $y and $perimeter.
  • Added 'Lines to polygons' tool to vector menu.
  • Added voronoi polygon tool to Vector menu.

User interface updates

  • Allow managing missing layers in a list.
  • Zoom to group of layers.
  • 'Tip of the day' on startup. You can en/disable tips in the options panel.
  • Better organisation of menus, separate database menu added.
  • Add ability to show number of features in legend classes. Accessible via right-click legend menu.
  • General clean-ups and usability improvements.
  • CRS Handling
  • Show active crs in status bar.
  • Assign layer CRS to project (in the legend context menu).
  • Select default CRS for new projects.
  • Allow setting CRS for multiple layers at once.
  • Default to last selection when prompting for CRS.

Rasters

  • Added AND and OR operator for raster calculator
  • On-the-fly reprojection of rasters added!
  • Proper implementation of raster providers.
  • Added raster toolbar with histogram stretch functions.

Providers and Data Handling

  • New SQLAnywhere vector provider.
  • Table join support

Feature form updates

  • Make NULL value string representation configurable.
  • Fix feature updates in feature form from attribute table.
  • Add support for NULL values in value maps (comboboxes).
  • Use layer names instead of ids in drop down list when loading value maps from layers.
  • Support feature form expression fields: line edits on the form which name prefix "expr_" are evaluated. Their value is interpreted as field calculator string and replaced with the calculated value.
  • Support searching for NULL in attribute table.
  • Attribute editing improvements
  • Improved interactive attribute editing in table (adding/deleting features, attribute update).
  • Allow adding of geometryless features.
  • Fixed attribute undo/redo.
  • Improved attribute handling.
  • Optionally re-use entered attribute values for next digitized feature.
  • Allow merging/assigning attribute values to a set of features.
  • Allow OGR 'save as' without attributes (for eg. DGN/DXF).

Api and Developer Centric

  • Refactored attribute dialog calls to QgsFeatureAttribute.
  • Added QgsVectorLayer::featureAdded signal.
  • Layer menu function added.
  • Added option to load c++ plugins from user specified directories. Requires application restart to activate.
  • Completely new geometry checking tool for fTools. Significantly faster, more relevant error messages, and now supports zooming to errors. See the new QgsGeometry.validateGeometry function

QGIS Server

  • Ability to specify wms service capabilities in the properties section of the project file (instead of wms_metadata.xml file).
  • Support for wms printing with GetPrint-Request.

Plugins
  • Support for icons of plugins in the plugin manager dialog.
  • Removed quickprint plugin - use easyprint plugin rather from plugin repo.
  • Removed ogr convertor plugin - use 'save as' context menu rather.

Printing

  • Undo/Redo support for the print composer