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Announcing the release of QGIS 1.3.0 'Mimas'

Submitted by Tim Sutton on Sun, 2009-09-20 00:00.

Introduction



Quantum GIS (QGIS) is a user friendly Open Source Geographic Information System (GIS), licensed under the GNU General Public License, that runs on Linux, Unix, Mac OSX, and Windows. QGIS is Open Source software and its free of cost. It supports vector, raster, and database formats (including the most common ESRI ShapeFile and geotiff). QGIS supports a wide variety of plugins to do things like display tracks from your GPS, and much more. They can be easily managed through the Plugin Manager.



As an open source project, we provide support for using QGIS via our mailing lists and bug tracker:



Sponsoring



We are still looking for sponsors to help us cover the costs of holding our second QGIS developer meeting in Vienna, Austria from 5-9 November 2009. If you are interested in supporting us, please visit: http://qgis.org/en/developer-meeting.html for more details!


Whats new in Version 1.3.0?





Please note that this is a release in our 'cutting edge' development release series. As such it contains new features and extends the programmatic interface over QGIS 1.0.x and QGIS 1.2.0. If an unchanging user interface, programmatic API and long term support is more important to you then cool new and untested features, we recommend that you use a copy of QGIS from our Long Term Support (LTS)1.0.x release series. We have removed the 'unstable' designation from our development release series because it creates the incorrect impression that these release are more likely to crash. The development releases are usually quite stable to run, but introduce new features and API additions which some people may wish to avoid.



This release includes over 30 bug fixes and enhancements over the QGIS 1.2.0 release. In addition we have added the following new features:



OSM plugin & provider updates:



  • new OSM style files.
  • new icons.
  • dialog text updated and completed.
  • Saving OSM into file functionality was improvements.
  • fixed some problems with encoding... ascii to utf-8.
  • all OSM layers are automatically removed after disabling OSM plugin in plugin manager.
  • other OSM related bugfixes.



Other notable features and improvements in this release



  • Marker size is now configurable when editing a layer.
  • Incorporation of the analysis library into the mainstream release.
  • Identify features across multiple layers.
  • Added a new plugin for carrying out raster terrain analysis (computing slope aspect, steepness etc).
  • A reshape tool to apply to line/polygon geometries. The part of a geometry between the first and last intersection of the reshape line will be replaced.
  • Added snapping to current layer in measure dialog.
  • Added ability to select the primary key for views.
  • Zoom to a coordinate by entering it in the status bar coordinate display.



The issue with crashing or hanging when zooming into polygon datasets on some operating systems should now be resolved.


Download your copy



Binary and source code packages are available at http://qgis.org/en/download/current-software.html


Visual changes



Here are some of the most noticeable changes in this release:



Reshape features. The reshape tool allows you to change the geometry between two vertices.







Measure snapping. When using the measure tool you can now snap to vector features.






Terrain modelling. We are starting to slowly add more native (i.e. non GRASS based) analytical tools to QGIS. In this release, a new plugin was added for carrying out terrain modelling activities.






Marker Sizes. The marker sizes and display behaviour is now more configurable to give you the digitising environment you prefer.




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