[OpenLayers-Users] Layer.clone()

[Matt Williamson]

Hello list,

Questions about Layer.clone(): Is it supposed to work? I'm having  
major problems with it. My use-case is, I have a set of pre-defined  
layers in an included .js file, but I want users to be able to add  
multiple maps to a page, two or more of which may use the same layer.  
So, I'm trying to Layer.clone() a copy of each layer each time it gets  
put into a map. Couple of problems I've encountered so far:

1. It looks like the clone method is supposed to take either a null  
argument (which will return a clone of "this" layer), or a layer to  
clone. But, for example, if I call wmslayer.clone(), I get back an  
object with class = "OpenLayers.Layer", rather than  
"OpenLayers.Layer.WMS". This doesn't seem correct.

2. If I do something like this: wmslayerA = wmslayer.clone(wmslayer);  
wmslayerB = wmslayer.clone(wmslayer); then wmslayerA and wmslayerB  
have the same id...this doesn't seem right, and it seems to confuse  
the layer switchers for the two different maps...or something else is  
confusing them, because they're definitely confused.

3. The clone method is overridden in OpenLayers.Layer.Image , and it  
behaves differently--specifically, for a WMS layer  
wmslayer.clone(wmslayer) seems to work better, but for an Image layer  
imagelayer.clone() seems to work better...but it still doesn't work  
right.

Shouldn't somelayer.clone() always be the same as  
somelayer.clone(somelayer)? or am I misunderstanding something?  Is  
this supposed to work? Is it deprecated, or is there a better way to  
do it?

Example of some of the above problems (especially #2) can be seen  
here: http://s89238293.onlinehome.us/w/index.php?title=Two_Maps . The  
site is using OpenLayers 2.6.

Thanks!

-Matt W.