[Gvsig_english] gvSIG build 1216: ANNOYANCES

[Benjamin Ducke]

This list contains issues that I would consider non-critical in so far as gvSIG "works" 
without them being fixed and users can find their ways around them. However, these 
annoyances are constant sources of irritation and frustration for users and they might 
prevent gvSIG from being considered a viable alternative to closed source GIS products. 
If they can be fixed, the user experience will be a lot more positive from the start.

Ben


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JAVA (1.6) ISSUES

ANNOYANCE: Only the "Plastic XP" look works really well on Linux. All other Java Looks produce empty spaces on the icon bar for inactive icons, wasting a lot of space (have not tried this on any other operating system). If this can be fixed, we can distribute gvSIG with Java 1.6.10 and the "Nimbus" look enabled by default, which will make it look a lot more modern and slick (would also look great with the new icons design). The Nimbus look currently has one more problem: it results in a Spanish error message every time I try to add a layer to a view (see screenshot). However, just clicking "OK" will bring up the "Add layer" dialog just fine.


EDITING

ANNOYANCE: The snapping options are spread out across two different screens in the "Editing properties" dialog. One part is in the default screen, the other under "Snapping". Would be better to have everything under "Snapping".

ANNOYANCE: Cursor movement gets very, very slow when moving across a geometry with many vertices (e.g. one created using the Spline tool).

ANNOYANCE: When drawing lines, the "Close" and "Terminate" options are both important, but for polygon layers, they have the same result. So maybe "Close" should be removed from the context menu in that case?


PROJECT MANAGER

ANNOYANCE: There are two buttons labeled "Properties" on the panel. This regularly confuses our users. Please rename the Button on the bottom to "Edit...". This makes better sense, anyway, since the session properties are already visible in the panel.

ANNOYANCE: The "Comments" text field in the Session properties always shows the whole comment as a single line. This does not work well for longer comments. Better make the text wrap.

ANNOYANCE: It is not immediately clear what the "Color" selection button in the Session properties is good for. A more verbose button label ("Color of ...") would help.


GUI: LAYER LIST (TOC)

[What is the layer list in the data view going to be called? Table of Contents (TOC)? Somehow, I fear that will result in trouble from a major GIS producer...]

ANNOYANCE: Drag and drop in the layer list is currently a bit annoying (sorry) and too time-consuming, due to the following issues:

1. The layer list does not automatically scroll when the mouse pointer hits its top or bottom end during a drag and drop operation. Thus, placing a layer in a very long TOC can be a lot of work.

2. There is no visual indication of where a layer will be dropped (like a horizontal divider line). Thus, it always a bit of a "blind guess" operation.

3. There is no way to completely disable screen refresh, which would make rearraning a lot of layers a much faster and smoother procedure.

4. Dropping a layer into a group causes a long delay before the group is refreshed.

5. If all layers in the TOC are in some group, then it is impossible to take any one layer in drag it outside all groups, into the top level of the TOC. There is no drop target for this operation: the layer will always end up in a group again! The only work around right now is to add a new layer temporarily to have a drop target outside any group. A convenient thing for the user may be to have an option "remove from group" in the context menu of a layer in a group (right underneath "bring to front"?).

6. When adding new layers, there should be an option to place them into the currently active group instead of the top level. This would really speed up creating highly structured projects with many groups.


GUI: GENERAL

ANNOYANCE: Generally, the fact that icons are hidden/shown depending on what window is active has the disadvantage that icons move around the screen and the icon bar gets resized all the time. This makes it very difficult to locate icons quickly.

ANNOYANCE: The "Help" menu is somewhere in the middle of the menu bar. It should always be at the very right end of it, separated by as much horizontal space as necessary from the rest of the menu items.

ANNOYANCE: Clicking on the close [X] button of an inactive window results in the window being raised and activated instead of closed immediately.

ANNOYANCE: The currently active tool changes when activating another windows. Example: the default tool for a window of type "View" seems to be the zoom tool. Let's say I want to use the "Identify" tool in ten different Views. I activate the tool in one View, identify some features, then activate the next View window. The tool changes to the default Zoom tool and I have to activate Identify again. I think the active tool should stay active when switching between windows of the same type.


GUI: ICON TOOLBARS

ANNOYANCE: Icon toolbars are currently a bit limited. It's good that they can be activated/deactivated using "Show->Toolbars". BUT:

1. "Show->Toolbars" always shows all icons as active even if they are not visible. I think this conflicts with gvSIG's method of hiding icons and menu entries depending on which window is active. It is confusing. Might be better to grey out inactive icons but still display them if they are set active in "Show->Toolbars".

2. Toolbars can be dragged around and placed somewhere else on the screen, but their layout is always horizontal, they cannot be arranged into vertical bars at the screen edge.

3. Upon program exit, all changes to toolbars are forgotten.


TABLES

ANNOYANCE: When a layer with joined fields is exported to a new Shapefile, the fieldnames have to be truncated to a maximum of 10 characters. This is OK, as it is required by the DBF standard. However, the user should at least be warned about this. Also, the field names are still prefixed "link_". This seems to be a waste of characters, since the join cannot be undone anymore after exporting to a new Shapefile, anyway. Thus, I recommend dropping the "link_" prefix for exported Shapefiles and using the full 10 characters to retain as much of the original fieldname as possible.

ANNOYANCE: If a layer is opened in editing mode, the "Table" menu shows "Insert row". Clicking on it gives an error message, which is correct for an attribute table. However, to avoid confusion it would be better to gray out this option for attribute tables and make it inactive.


EXPRESSION CALCULATOR FOR FIELDS

ANNOYANCE: There is no proper text wrapping for the "Description" text in the "Information Field". This makes reading the description for a function hard

ANNOYANCE: The "Calculate expression" dialog needs to be resizable.


RASTER LAYERS

ANNOYANCE: Every time any tool is selected from the "raster tools" toolbar, the raster layers get refreshed.

ANNOYANCE: The tools in the "raster tools" toolbar are not accessible via the main menubar, only via the icons. For people who don't like small icons (like myself), this is annoying, especially on high-resolution screens.

ANNOYANCE: The menu item "Teledeteccion" contains functions that are also in the "raster tools" toolbar, but sometime under different names (e.g. the raster calculator). I think these tools need to be integrated fully into the "raster tools" (maybe under a new category).

ANNOYANCE: "Analysis View": in the "Cursor Zoom", the cross-hair cursor always snaps to the edges of pixels, not their centers, so it is hard to tell which pixel the cursor is actually over. It would be useful to have e.g. a red frame around the currently active pixel to be sure which one it actually is.

ANNOYANCE: "Analysis View": the "Cursor Zoom" needs to be resizable.

ANNOYANCE: "Raster calculator": for complex operations, the dialog needs to be resizable. Most importantly, it must be possible to resize the panel containing the "ELEMENTOS" tree.


TOPOLOGY EXTENSION

ANNOYANCE: In the dialog to create a topology, the fields "Name", "Cluster tolerance" and "Max number of errors" are required to be filled in. However, the user is told so only at the end of the process. Would be better to prevent the user from leaving the first settings page without specifying all required options. All required options should have defaults (cluster tolerance=0 and maximum errors=0 ?).

ANNOYANCE: I highlight the group with the faulty topology and run "evaluar topologia" on it. This correctly marks the topology as defective in the TOC. I now open "Errores topologicos". However, the list of rules is empty and neither "UPDATE" nor "BATCH_FIX" will do anything. Is there a way to actually select or highlight features with bad topology in the data view?

ANNOYANCE: Topology tools should be registered in their own category "Topology" in the Geoprocessing toolbox (right now they are all in "Data conversion").


SYMBOLOGY: GENERAL

ANNOYANCE: Applying a different type of symbology deletes all former settings. So if for example the user has created a nice symbology as "Category->Expressions", then decides to quickly try "Category->Unique values", all the work is lost! There shoule be at least a warning allowing the user to save the old symbology settings to a file first!


SYMBOLOGY: TYPE "Multiple attribute:Quantity by category"

ANNOYANCE: This type of symbology requires at least two numeric attributes. It is a bit confusing that the menu item "Multiple attribute" this shows up in the symbology list (but without any children, so unusable) for layers that do not support this style. Might be better to have an inactive child "not applicable" in those cases, so users understand that it would be available for different layers.


SYMBOLOGY: TYPE "Quantities:Dot density"

ANNOYANCE: The default dot size is "0.0". I don't think that is very useful. Better to default to "1.0".

ANNOYANCE: It is unclear what the "Border" symbol setting does, because the preview is not working.


LABELING

ANNOYANCE: "Edit style" dialog: one of the four "precedence" tools should be selected and active by default (maybe highest?). Currently the dialog requires the user to understand that a tool needs to be activated first. This would be more obvious with an active default tool. The symbols are a little cryptic. Maybe the buttons should be labelled "1", "2", "3" and "0" additionally?

ANNOYANCE: "Fixed height" and "Fixed color" should be the default settings for mode "Label attributes defined in table". The option "Text height field" should be moved below "Fixed height".

ANNOYANCE: Height and "Units for labelling" should default to "8", "pixels", "in the paper" (also in the "Label class properties" dialog).

ANNOYANCE: Dialog "Label class properties": "Label expression" is too hard to understand for the user. Having to specify a field name in [] brackets seems problematic. Better to let the user choose labelling field from a drop-down list.

ANNOYANCE: In general, when there is an error in a filter or expression field for the labels, then the corresponding error message is repeated for every single feature in the map. Thus, the user can either close thousands of error messages or close the whole project and restart gvSIG. Would be better if the error message appeared only once!


MISC PROBLEMS

ANNOYANCE: "Add event layer" does not have an icon (only a red square).



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