[Qgis-developer] Quick switch symbology styles

[Larry Shaffer]

Often when defining whole layer styles, I find one rule set of units and
dimensions (usually in mm) works well for general work on a screen and
output via server, but high quality, denser output to print requires a
different set, relative to expected output scale (where I often use map
units). This is an example of needing to quickly switch layer styles,
possibly across a whole project.

How about a means to quickly switch between stored, named styles for a
layer?

There could be named style store and load gui functions in the layer
properties dialog. Loading/Saving a .qml file, for example, could offer to
add a named style to the layer, prompting for a name. Load and/or Store
once, then quickly switch between those saved named styles in future use of
the project. A 'Stored Styles' submenu of the contextual menu for a
selected layer in the legend could offer a quick switch between stored
named styles.

On a project level, there could be a submenu of uniquely used named styles,
across the project's layers, to switch between. Then a looping function
could switch all layers with a linked stored style of the chosen name in
one operation, for example to 'Print' or 'OSM'. (Sure would beat
import/exporting for many layers.)

I see with the QgsMapLayer saveNamedStyle() and loadNamedStyle() already do
the saving/loading bit, via a URI to the user's personal qgis.db or a .qml
file. Storing of the named layer styles and their URIs could be in the
project file. Named styles could be multi-linked at the layer level and
stored at the project level, making them available to all layers of similar
kind.

Is this just crazy talk? Or something that has already been discussed?

Regards,

Larry Shaffer
Dakota Cartography
Black Hills, South Dakota
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/qgis-developer/attachments/20120405/cb7098bb/attachment.html