Quantum GIS

TS:Lars welcome to the second in the 'qgissers' interview series where we interview QGIS developers and users to find out their thoughts on QGIS, life the universe and everything. Can you start by giving us a brief introduction of yourself?

My name is Lars Luthman, I am 24 years old and live in Stockholm, Sweden. I am a student, currently working on my master's degree in "computer science and engineering" at KTH (the Royal Institute of Technology) and also studying some math and physics at Stockholm University.

TS: I believe you are the owner of a certain celebrity dog that graces the splash screen of the current (0.6) release of QGIS?

Actually, he is my parents' dog. The picture on the splash screen is about one year old, he is much larger now - my mother has to keep him leashed around kids because he will knock them down when he tries to play with them.

TS:How long have you been involved with QGIS developement, and what areas are you working on?

I first discovered QGIS early last year when I was looking for a program to display raster tilesets and GPS data, I don't remember exactly when. I think I started hacking on it soon after that. I have worked on the GPX data provider, which loads GPS data in an XML file format, and the GPS plugin, which is a collection of tools for GPS data. I have also fixed some minor bugs in the main program, and I'm writing the Swedish translation.

TS: I think the GPS stuff you have implemented has certainly raised QGIS's interest factor amongst users looking for a free GIS system. One often heard request is for a live feed from a GPS. Have you any plans in this direction and what kind of things would we be able to do with it?

Since I don't have a PDA or a laptop to run QGIS on a live GPS feed wouldn't be of much use to me at the moment, and I wouldn't be able to do any good tests with it. So it's not something that I'm planning to work on right now. I can imagine that it would be really useful if you had a portable computer though, and if I ever get one I will probably look into it (unless someone else implements it before that, which I suspect will happen).

TS: We realise translation is a tedious process....how long does the translation process take on average for a new release. What advice would you offer to people thinking of embarking on a new translation for QGIS? Or is it tedious?

The amount of new strings to translate has been very different for the different releases. Some of them has been very quick and painless, and some releases have been very tedious - lots of long descriptive texts and many new terms instroduced. Since I don't really have a GIS background I have to look up many of the words that are used in QGIS to find the correct translations. I also suspect that the translations would be much faster if I learned more about the Qt Linguist tool, but I never get around to it.

Translations can be very tedious, but the releases are pretty far apart so it's not too bad. I can't really give any good advice to translators, except maybe to read a bit about GIS in your native language before you translate - that might save some time later.

GS: What do you see as the major strong and weak points of QGIS?

Strong points - the flexibility in the plugin and provider architecture. Writing plugins is fun and reasonably easy. And the nice people on the development team - I can't remember a single time when someone has been rude or unhelpful on the channel or the mailing list.

Weak points - until now, the lack of projection support. I use GPX files a lot, and the GPX standard requires that the WGS84 geographical coordinate system is used, but many of my raster maps use other coordinate systems. I've solved by writing some import and export scripts in Perl that does projections and inverse projections, but it's not optimal.

TS: So what new stuff can we expect from you in the upcoming 0.7 release?

I've just implemented deletion of features in GPX layers - 0.6 only supported addition. I will also implement editing of feature attributes in GPX layers. There have also been reports that the GPX provider uses a _lot_ of memory for loading large files - much more than the size of the actual file. I will try to look into this and see if it can be fixed.

I would also like QGIS to be able to select a symbology automatically when a new layer is loaded - particularly to select a SVG marker renderer with the right GPS waypoints icons for GPX layers. I don't know if I will have time to look at this before the 0.7 release though.

GS: What critical features do you think the 1.0 release should include?

The 1.0 release should have projection support, of course - but that will come already in 0.7. Better printing abilities - and people are working on that too now. Some basic geometric and set operations, like taking the intersection, union, and difference of polygons and other objects, merging and splitting layers, converting layers between formats. I would also like to see scripting support.

TS: There have been unconfirmed reports that you crossed a large of tract of Swedish mountain range wearing 1 shoe and eating baked beans out of a tin in such large quantities it was bordering on the illegal. I recently saw a shoe (right shoe with large hole around big toe area) for sale on e-bay...would you like me to put in a bid for you? Do you think it could be your shoe?

I am speechless...[long pause...] Seriously, I can't think of an answer. [prodding for an answer by Gary...] I have both the shoes here, fixed with some plastic glue (although I only use them for walking around in the neighbourhood). So it must be someone elses.

TS: Lars, we would like to thank you for making such a brilliant contribution to QGIS and for taking the time out for this interview!

Thank you.