Respect/Set "preferred" units for Layouts View/Map Composer

[qgib]

Author Name: Brett Carlock (@Saijin-Naib)
Original Redmine Issue: 21753

Redmine category:map_composer/printing

---

I have a layout that needs to be ANSI D, and it is defined as such for the page properties.

I am trying to set everything on the page up using Survey Inches (inches in tenths), but all tools default to mm and the ruler (which is very helpful normally) stays in mm, which doesn't help me to easily verify spacing/alignment of features.

Furthermore, my X/Y cursor position display on the bottom right has also remained in mm, again, making it difficult for me to verify my layout by moving the cursor over a point of interest.

Similarly, setting the Grid and guide defaults for Grid spacing and Grid offset are also in mm units, which is inconsistent with my document and preferences for this project. However, being as these are "static" values, there isn't much cost for me to manually convert from survey inches to mm, but I still would prefer for this all to be a bit more seamless.

Use case is re-creating a legacy paper layout in QGIS by using an ANSI Engineer's scale (inches in tenths) designed/destined for print output on ANSI D paper, as is convention here.

Thanks!

[openSourcerer9000]

Any update on this? It seems this has been an issue since the dawn of QGIS...

[gioman]

Any update on this? It seems this has been an issue since the dawn of QGIS...

@openSourcerer9000 QGIS development is mostly driven by its users needs, if a feature request/improvement is not being implemented it frequently means that there is not enough critical mass supporting it...

[Saijin-Naib]

Any update on this? It seems this has been an issue since the dawn of QGIS...

Not so far, no. I don't have the resources to fund someone to fix it, so I wouldn't be surprised if this gets auto-closed shortly.

[openSourcerer9000]

I mean there's a reason the founder of ESRI is on the forbes list. US companies spend A LOT on GIS technology, the benefit of which seems to be lining this guy's pockets.

Maybe if this simple bug got fixed and the layout manager worked properly in US units, then these companies would have the option to switch to QGIS and actually see a benefit from spending $100K+ on GIS tech each year.

...but if it's too much of a hassle to fix this bug which would create this demand, I guess the software will just stay as some niche European thing rather than become the industry standard.

[nyalldawson]

@openSourcerer9000

but if it's too much of a hassle to fix this bug which would create this demand, I guess the software will just stay as some niche European thing rather than become the industry standard.

This negotiation tactic works ok when I use it with my toddler, but has a negative effect when you attempt to use it with adult professionals to try to trick them into doing your work for free.

Our time is valuable, please respect that. If you don't want to use qgis, we respect that too.

[Saijin-Naib]

@openSourcerer9000 ,

Without straying too far from the topic, there is a bit of a chicken & egg problem with FOSS GIS adoption in many US institutions that are historically ESRI-entrenched.

UX papercuts like this don't necessarily help the cause of people trying to provide QGIS as a replacement, but I doubt any Manager's decision to use or not use a FOSS GIS stack was predicated on default units in a Layout Manager. We have larger barriers to adoption than this, to be frank.

Given that my continual push to switch to FOSS GIS at work has put me at odds with management, any such improvements would have to be funded as a private citizen from my end.

Are you interested in helping me crowd-fund this feature with a core developer with lots of UI/UX experience in the Layout Manager, like @nyalldawson ?

[openSourcerer9000]

I'm sorry if that came off as disrespectful, I just wanted to share the perspective that the causation may be opposite: not accommodating US units for the last 20 years due to low development resources, may be a contributing factor to the low resources problem.

@Saijin-Naib For now I was able to recreate an exhibit template in mm, since the workaround of editing the .qpt file directly was causing problems, and the scalebar does indeed work with feet. I did a presentation on the atlas book feature, and now I'm tasked with providing identical exhibits in QGIS before our office will adopt it.

I'm hoping no one will notice everything's in mm, but if so that may very well be the barrier to us adopting it. I literally haven't found another pro with ArcMap over QGIS. To people who don't work with GIS, GIS means exhibit creation. At some point down the line, I could imagine our office being at a crossroads of either upgrading everyone's version of arcmap from 10.2, or paying one guy to fix this Layout Manager bug. Our organization contributes code to open source projects, it's possible a discussion like that may come up at some point.

[nyalldawson]

@openSourcerer9000

Thanks for the clarification, no offence taken! We just tend to get a bit aggressive when users don't understand the open source model and how things like this work.

For reference: it would be quite straightforward to add a "default unit" setting for a layout. But the deeper issue is that many layout based sizes currently ONLY accept mm sizes, and don't even give the drop down selector to change the unit. (E.g. item position/sizes have the unit choice, but something like legend item spacing doesn't and it's all hardcoded to mm). I was originally hoping to slowly upgrade each of these settings to support different units on a one-by-one, on-demand basis, but to date haven't had the opportunity to do this .

[eshattow]

I'm looking for US Survey Feet as a unit of distance measurement in the project settings, is this not implemented? It is specified by regional government to use this unit. The 1/100th discrepancy over, say 1mi distance, compounds into more than just a rounding error when trying to do math on several such measured distances for verification.
Edit: oh I see it was auto-closed for lack of input #26969

[pwflint]

Similar FR to #31538 but upvoting again here for the sake of posterity.

PWF