Merge pull request #587 from nyalldawson/new_functions

New functions
sip does not like CORE_EXPORT and Q_OBJECT
Improve WMS server performance
Small performance improvement in gdal provider
[Fix #7798] (I)LIKE operator escapes regexp characters before computing regexp
[attrtable] Update title when filter column query changes
[Fix #7784] Browser keeps crashing when navigating the tree
[Fix #7698] Attributetable crashes on close when valuemap is used
Use QgsMessageBar instead of QMessageBox
Disable also plugins in user specified directories when running with --noplugins option
Emit finshed signal, when the vector layer cache has been initialized.
sip also doesn't like public (followup 0ec5dc4 and fa0a9b7)
Change -> to &rarr; in function help
Add blend mode option for features, allows blending to be used between features in a layer
[feature] Layer transparency for vectors (fix #7692)
[feature] blend modes for composer map grids (fix #7777)
[feature] Add font color control for grid annotations (fix #7789)
Tests for grid blending, grid color labels, vector feature blending and vector layer transparency
Add python bindings and tests for grid blending, grid annotation font color, vector feature blending and vector layer transparency
GUI (Vector layer properties) QSplitter for fields properties tab