[Gvsig_english] Re: setup development environment

[Benjamin Ducke]

Hi Jorge,

> 
> You'll need experience with previous versions of gvSIG in order to work directly to the SVN. I'm preparing those notes right now.

Yes. We will just send in patch files until that level of experience has
been gained. Thanks for preparing those notes. They will be very
welcome.

> 
> Can you send us a brief summary of those problems you experienced? I'm not talking about lacking features but real bugs or inappropriate behaviors.

All my observations relate to version 1.1.2. I have listed them below.
You will see that DBMS and table management is what gives us most
problems right now, possibly because we work with fairly extensive
external database structures.


Cheers,

Ben


===========
BUGS
===========

* DBMS AND TABLE MANAGEMENT *

Information about Database active database connections gets stored as 
plain, readable text strings in the XML project file. This includes the 
password(!)

Case sensitivity: when editing field names in the attribute table, 
“NAME” and “name” are treated as though they were the same field name. 
Thus, if you want to rename “Label” to “LABEL”, you get an error message.

Case sensitivity: in PostGIS connections (and perhaps other places?), 
table names are converted to all lower case before comparisons. Thus, a 
table named “myTable” cannot be linked to, even though it exists but
“mytable” will work. This is not proper behaviour, as SQL is case
sensitive.

PostGIS: gvSIG cannot connect to tables with geometries created in 
QuantumGIS, but it works OK the other way around. There seems to be 
something that QGIS tolerates but gvSIG does not.

Deleting features based on selected rows in the attribute table: opening 
a layer for editing, then using the “Delete row” function in that 
layer's attribute table menu seems to not work. Instead, select the 
row(s) linked to the features to be deleted. Features will be selected. 
Now activate the editing window again and delete all selected features 
(DEL key). Small annoyance here: the attribute table view does not get 
refreshed properly and it may look as though the operation failed. Just 
hit ESC to refresh the view on the currently selected field.

In the "Join" wizards, the buttons after the first step become so small 
that their labels cannot be read.

"Table -> Link": Dialog box says "Select origin table of the join" 
(instead of "link"). Anyway, it should be called the "target" table, 
really! Or: "Table to join/link records to"/"Table to join/link records 
from".

Joining an ODBC table to a table ("external" or attribute) in the 
"Table" list works. However, the fields are prefixed "link_" instead of 
join. "Table" menu shows "Remove joins" option correctly.

Linking an ODBC table to a table in the "Table" list silently fails (no 
additional records in the table). However, the "Table" menu shows 
"Remove links" option correctly. Perhaps it is a 1:1 only mapping which 
requires exactly one record with the same primary key in both tables? In 
that case, there should be a proper error message.

GvSIG will happily load Shapefiles with missing DBF files. These files 
must really be considered broken and troubles will start sooner or 
later. Although they show up in the layer list, they will be marked as 
faulty, activating them will throw an error “Reload” will not work and 
Sextante will crash in any case (as it goes through all layers in the 
project checking their types to see which tools should be made 
available). It would be better for gvSIG to refuse loading incomplete 
Shapefiles altogether.

* LAYER MANAGEMENT *

After adding groups, saving a project fails with "Fallo guarando el 
Proyecto en: com.iver.cit.gvsig.project.documents.table.ProjectTable". 
HOWEVER, exiting and then confirming to save the resources saves everything!

Layers that are part of groups cannot be selected individually in the 
“Selection by layer” dialog and perhaps in other places, as well. Bug or 
feature?

Layer styles cannot be saved and loaded into a new layer, if it has the 
exact same attributes. This is a known bug that will be fixed in gvSIG 
2.0 (it appears to work after a restart of gvSIG, though).

Sometimes, a layer will disappear when selecting records in the 
associated attribute table. Select “Reload” from the layer context menu 
to restore it. However, sometimes that does not work either. The problem 
is frequent with layers that have external table data joined in. It gets 
when restoring a project with such layers in it.

Symbols: choosing different "Begin" and "End" colors does not result in 
any changes until "Computer intervals" is pressed.

* GEOPROCESSING TOOLS *

Merging layers with integer attributes results in the merged attribute 
being of type double (??).

Creating more than one buffer zone using the “Buffer” geoprocess does 
not work. You get only one buffer that is the size of all the buffers 
requested plus some spurious geometries.

* GEOMETRY EDITING *

"Finish edition" always asks about saving changes to tables and shapes, 
even if none were made.

Stepping through the editing command console history using CURSOR 
UP/DOWN gives: “java.lang.StringIndexOutOfBoundsException: String index 
out of range: 2993”.

* ANNOTATION LAYERS *

GvSIG thrashes the disk when cancelling the annotation dialog.

Attempting to open the “Properties” of an annotation layers results in 
the following error message: “java.lang.ClassCastException: 
com.iver.cit.gvsig.fmap.rendering.Annotation_Legend cannot be cast to 
com.iver.cit.gvsig.fmap.rendering.SingleSymbolLegend”

Many problems with current labelling functions. Fonts changing size when 
rotation applied. Annotation layers not printing or being exported to 
PDF ...

Attribute tables of annotation layers: cannot query or sort by any field 
if added to the Table view by using the "Show table of attributes" 
function, but if added as an external dbf table, all is OK!

* EVENT LAYERS *

In the “Add event layer” dialog, the input fields for northing and 
easting are both labelled “null”. Sometimes they do get displayed, but 
in the wrong order: “X:” is really the Northing, “Y:” the field for the 
Easting!

* PROJECTIONS *

Projection definition for ESRI:54004 does not work.

* USER INTERFACE ANNOYANCES *

Some dialogs are not resizable, which is bad because there is too much 
information to fit into them (e.g. the list view in the dialog for 
choosing a projection system.

When detaching a group of icons from the main toolbar, it is impossible 
to drop them back off anywhere but at the right-most position in the 
toolbar. However, after a program restart, everything get reset to 
defaults, anyway.

Since the link and join functions are only accessible when activating a 
table, they should be executed by default on the currently active table. 
A single dialog would then be much simpler then the current wizard 
interfaces.

There are no useful error messages in the case when an ODBC connection 
fails.

It seems strange that layers in a View cannot directly be added to the 
locator map.

Grouping layers would be easier if it was possible to select 
non-adjacent layers using CTRL + left click

Layers cannot always be moved to the place wanted, because the layer 
list does not autoscroll during drag operations. There is no good visual 
indication (like a horizontal line) to show where a layer that is being 
dragged will end up. Worse: if all layers are part of a group, there is
no possibility to drag a layer to the outside of any group. The only
work around is to add another layer to the layer list, thus creating
a "drop target".

When creating a new group, the default name should be marked for 
overwrite, so the user does not have to delete it every time before 
entering a new name.

Editing commmands: the tool names are too long! There need to be 
abbreviations, like "rect" instead of "rectangle" (or even just "R"), 
otherwise the user will wast too much time.

Editing mode has its own selection tools, but the other selection tools 
are still available, which can be confusing at times.

There should be a warning if the user edits a shapefile layer that has a 
different SRS then the current view.

* MAP LAYOUT AND PRINTING *

Map layout and printing have been reported as being broken by many of
our users. I have not yet the time to make a detailed list of all
problems encountered, or check whether they are really user errors, but
they include:

- unable to set line thickness < 1.0
- wrong margins
- unfilled polygons come out filled anyway on print-outs
- problems with font scaling in scale bar display
- contents of locator map not aligned properly to its graphic frame
- wrong margins


-- 
Benjamin Ducke
Senior Applications Support and Development Officer

Oxford Archaeology Ltd
Janus House
Osney Mead
OX2 0ES
Oxford, U.K.

Tel: +44 (0)1865 263 800 (switchboard)
Tel: +44 (0)1865 980 758 (direct)
Fax :+44 (0)1865 793 496
benjamin.ducke at oxfordarch.co.uk




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