Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Quantum GIS

  • Reference work entry
Encyclopedia of GIS

Synonyms

QGIS; Open Source; Qt libray; MapServer

Definition

Quantum GIS [1] is an opensource GIS written in C++ available under the conditions of the GPL license. It is based on the C++ crossplattform library Qt from Trolltech [4]. Therefore, it runs on most existing operating systems, including Linux, Unix, Mac OS X and Windows. The name ‘Quantum GIS’ has no special meaning, except that it starts with a Q, indicating that it uses the Qt library.

The main focus of QGIS is interactive two dimensional viewing of spatial data. However, there is also functionality for editing vector data and a GRASS plugin to use the analytical functionality of the GRASS program [3] from within the QGIS GUI. QGIS supports a large number of vector and raster formats, including PostGIS, GRASS, Shapefile, GML, WFS, GPX, WMS, GeoTiff, PNG, JPG and many others. QGIS supports reprojecting on-the-fly for vector data sets by using the PROJ4 library.

QGIS provides a plugin mechanism which can be used to add support...

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Institutional subscriptions

Recommended Reading

  1. QGIS (2006) Homepage of the QGIS project. http://qgis.org. Accessed 21 Dec 2006

  2. Sherman et al. (2006) QGIS user guide. http://qgis.org/releases/userguide.pdf. Accessed 21 Dec 2006

  3. GRASS (2006) Homepage of the GRASS project. http://www.grass.itc.it/. Accessed 21 Dec 2006

  4. Trolltech (2006) Qt documentation. http://doc.trolltech.com/. Accessed 21 Dec 2006

  5. QGIS WMS (2006) QGIS WMS server homepage. http://karlinapp.ethz.ch/qgis_wms/qgis_wms.html. Accessed 21 Dec 2006

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Cartography, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Marco Hugentobler

Authors
  1. Marco Hugentobler
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, 55455, USA

    Shashi Shekhar (McKnight Distinguished University Professor) (McKnight Distinguished University Professor)

  2. Management Science and Information Systems Department, Rutgers Business School Newark and New Brunswick Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, Newark, NJ, 07102, USA

    Hui Xiong (Assistant Professor) (Assistant Professor)

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2008 Springer-Verlag

About this entry

Cite this entry

Hugentobler, M. (2008). Quantum GIS. In: Shekhar, S., Xiong, H. (eds) Encyclopedia of GIS. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-35973-1_1064

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation