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Please note that this is a release in our ‘cutting edge’ release series. As such, it contains new features and extends the programmatic interface over QGIS 2.0. We recommend that you use this version over previous releases.
This release includes hundreds of bug fixes and many new features and enhancements that will be described in this manual. You may also review the visual changelog at http://changelog.linfiniti.com/qgis/version/21/.
Gradient fill support: The new gradient fill feature lets you create better cartography than ever before. The feature has numerous options providing for great flexibility in how you apply gradients to your features. These include:
column) for all gradient properties
Label support for palleted rasters: Rasters that use a fixed colour pallette (for instance, a land cover map) can now have category labels assigned which will be shown in the map legend and in the composer legend.
Colour ramps can be inverted: A new option has been added to symbology dialogs that deal with colour ramps to allow you to invert the colour ramp when it is created.
Copy and Paste in rule-based renderer: In the rule-based renderer, you can now right-click on a rule and then copy and paste the rule as a new rule.
On-the-fly feature generalisation: QGIS 2.2 introduces support for on-the-fly feature generalisation. This can improve rendering times when drawing many complex features at small scales. This feature can be enabled or disabled in the layer settings. There is also a new global setting that enables generalisation by default for newly added layers. Note: Feature generalisation may introduce artefacts into your rendered output in some cases. These may include slivers between polygons and inaccurate rendering when using offset-based symbol layers.
Anchor points can be set for marker layers: When defining symbology with marker layers (e.g., a point layer symbolized with SVG markers) you can now specify what part of the image should correspond to the ‘anchor point’. For example, you can indicate that the bottom-left corner of the image should coincide with the position of the feature. You can also use the data-defined properties to have this property set at render time based on an attribute in the data table for that layer (or an arbitrary expression).
Thematic maps based on expressions: Categorized and graduated thematic maps can now be created using the result of an expression. In the Properties dialog for vector layers, the attribute chooser has been augmented with an expression builder. So now, you no longer need to write the classification attribute to a new column in your attribute table if you want the classification attribute to be a composite of multiple fields, or a formula of some sort.
Expression support in symbol diagrams for size and attributes: You can now use an expression to define the size and attributes when using the diagramming capabilities of QGIS.
Else rule in rule-based renderer: The rule-based renderer now supports an Else rule that will be run if none of the other rules on that level match. Else rules can be nested just like any other rules. An example might be:
type = 'water' (style grey) ELSE (style red)
Inner stroke support for polygons: Support has been added for polygon strokes to be limited to the interior of the polygon (so as not to overflow into a neighbouring polygon).