[QGIS-trac] [Quantum GIS] #3706: improve loading of qml to load source layer

[Quantum GIS]

#3706: improve loading of qml to load source layer
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   Reporter:  dncpax                            |              Owner:  nobody       
       Type:  enhancement                       |             Status:  new          
   Priority:  major: does not work as expected  |          Milestone:  Version 1.7.0
  Component:  Map Legend                        |            Version:               
   Keywords:                                    |   Platform_version:               
   Platform:  Debian                            |           Must_fix:  No           
Status_info:  0                                 |  
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 This is an improvement to allow QGIS to load pre-symbolized layers, in one
 step, data source and symbology. This is different (better) from what is
 available today: load layer, apply .qml, or load layer with .qml with the
 same name in a particular folder.

 This would ideally work with 2 new options in the layer context menu, like
 "save styled layer" and "load styled layer", that would save and load a
 layer as is in the project.



 Advantages to the present capability:


 i) we can have a single data source with several .qml allowing multiple
 representations of the same data, prepared and made available to users in
 an organization by a GIS team[[BR]]

 ii) user don't need to know about data structure, this is in fact
 abstracted. Users work with "themed data", like population by county, or
 income by county, regardless if the data comes from a shapefile or
 PostGIS[[BR]]

 iii) this will allow a GIS dept. in an organization to prepare a shared
 folder with a set of layers that the users can load, in fact creating a
 standard for their GIS, regarding the data used, and the symbology
 applied.[[BR]]


 This is common practice in other GIS software, like ArcGIS (.lyr files)
 and AutoCAD Map (don't know the file extension).



 As it stands now, using QGIS a user has to i) know which data to load; ii)
 know which attribute holds the needed data; iii) know how to symbolize the
 layer. And the reusability of this work is very limited (to a project?).



 The ability to automatically apply a .qml that has the same name as the
 the data source has several limitations: i)it works based on a a single PC
 configuration, depending on the user; ii) it is limited to 1 .qml per data
 source; iii) it is difficult to scale to several users in a managed
 context.


 Duarte

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Ticket URL: <http://trac.osgeo.org/qgis/ticket/3706>
Quantum GIS <http://qgis.org>
Quantum GIS is an Open Source GIS viewer/editor supporting OGR, PostGIS, and GRASS formats