[Qgis-developer] Memory Layers - some proposals

[Martin Dobias]

Hi Nyall

On Thu, Sep 25, 2014 at 3:31 AM, Nyall Dawson <nyall.dawson at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> The recent discussion around memory layers in another thread has started me
> thinking about the best way to expose them more readily to users.
>
> As such, I've opened a pull request which ports Borys Jurgiel's "New Memory
> Layer" plugin to core (PR #1591). Hopefully this can be merged for 2.6. It's
> more or less a direct port - I've left it without the ability to specify
> fields at creation time as I believe that field creation would indicate that
> we are encouraging users to store real data in these layers, which is
> something we should avoid.

Cool - from time to time it is handy to make a memory layer for some
temporary data and having to use a plugin / python console for the
creation is suboptimal...

> What I'm thinking though is that we should rename "memory layers" within the
> UI. The name suggests that they are remembered, and conveys more of a
> permanent feel.
>
> I think that for 2.6 we could rename them to "temporary scratch layers", and
> then for >2.6 (after we port the memory layer saving plugin/decide on a
> suitable format for saving them) drop the " temporary" part of this name. So
> they'll be just "scratch layers".

I like the name "scratch layer" - and I wouldn't mind having it from
2.6 even without the "temporary" part although there is no saving for
it. (Saving is still a bit controversial for me as we would
inadvertently create another vector file format - unless we would ask
user to save the layer data into one of OGR supported formats or
spatialite DB.)

Cheers
Martin