[udig-devel] more comments on thursday's RC13 snapshot

[Adrian Custer <acuster@xxxxxxxxx>]

hey all,

A tiny bit more:

A) On re-open all my references are back to being relative with the
frightful /../../../ stuff. While I don't like the relative references,
they are perfectly okay IF THEY ARE SHOWN AS CORRECT, i.e. WITH A
LEADING DOT. Ugly is fine, wrong is NOT. ;-)


B) A quick look at CRS workflows.

I'm starting with a situation of having gps data in a shapefile for
which I have not created a .prj file. I'd like to end up with everything
being correct.

Start by importing the data to a catalog (btw, I'm finally gtting my
head around the correct language which should really be 'register the
data into uDig's register' so the menu should list "Register" but we
will get to that eventually). 

Continue by right clicking on the listing in the 'catalog', and pick
"Add to New Map"
==> Layers view shows the layer name, Map editor shows the shape
contents. Note that the CRS is 'Generic 2D' (good) and the icon in the
Layer's view has an explanation point (almost good) which would be
useful if a user could figure out how to find out what's going on. In
this case, in the properties layer, we can see info on the line for the
Coordinate Referencing System (good). 
  Conclusion: Missing full feedback on what happened. It's needed,
probably as a 'validation' step on registration of the shapefile.

A Bad, but apparently correct, fix. The user may choose to fix any
'problem' they detect by setting the CRS of the map to WGS84. The
coordinates now appear correct and perhaps (untested) overlays will work
correctly with other data which has .prj so the underlying problem may
persist hidden from the user waiting to bite them in a confusing way
later.

The correct fix is *not* to touch the 'map's' CRS but to fix the CRS of
the layer. Selecting WGS84 there fixes things correct (great) and, if we
haven't yet touched the map editor CRS, uDig asks the user if that
should be changed at the same time (fantastic). The only saddness is
that the user can't, at this point, create a .prj file.

In summary, (1) we need better feedback for missing .prj such as, at a
minium, a red warning in the status line when we select such an item in
the catalog or in the layer view and (2) we should offer to create the
shapefile.

It's hard to keep all this straight so we need to do so to be friendly
for our users. Perhaps this workflow fix is too much to tackle for 1.1,
then again, you guys are doing marvels,

--adrian