QGIS User Guide, Release 2.18

Foreword

QGIS is an Open Source Geographic Information System. The project was born in May of 2002 and was established as a project on Source Forge in June of the same year. We’ve worked hard to make GIS software (which is traditionally expensive proprietary software) a viable prospect for anyone with basic access to a personal computer. QGIS currently runs on most Unix platforms, Windows, and macOS. QGIS is developed using the Qt toolkit (https://www.qt.io) and C++. This means that QGIS feels snappy and has a pleasing, easy-to-use graphical user interface (GUI)

QGIS aims to be a user-friendly GIS, providing common functions and features. The initial goal of the project was to provide a GIS data viewer. QGIS has reached the point in its evolution where it is being used by many for their daily GIS data-viewing needs. QGIS supports a number of raster and vector data formats, with new format support easily added using the plugin architecture

QGIS is released under the GNU General Public License (GPL). Developing QGIS under this license means that you can inspect and modify the source code, and guarantees that you, our happy user, will always have access to a GIS program that is free of cost and can be freely modified. You should have received a full copy of the license with your copy of QGIS, and you also can find it in Appendix GNU General Public License. 

Preamble

This document is the original user guide of the described software QGIS. The software and hardware described in this document are in most cases registered trademarks and are therefore subject to legal requirements. QGIS is subject to the GNU General Public License. Find more information on the QGIS homepage, http://www.qgis.org. The details, data, and results in this document have been written and verified to the best of the knowledge and responsibility of the authors and editors. Nevertheless, mistakes concerning the content are possible.
Therefore, data are not liable to any duties or guarantees. The authors, editors and publishers do not take any responsibility or liability for failures and their consequences. You are always welcome to report possible mistakes. This document has been typeset with reStructuredText. It is available as reST source code via github and online as HTML and PDF via http://www.qgis.org/en/docs/. Translated versions of this document can be downloaded in several formats via the documentation area of the QGIS project as well. For more information about contributing to this document and about translating it, please visit http://qgis.org/en/site/getinvolved/index.html.

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QGIS User Guide, Release 2.18