[QGIS-Developer] Concerns re UX of new "duplicate features" actions in 2.99

[Nyall Dawson]

On 15 February 2018 at 03:16, David Signer <david at opengis.ch> wrote:
> Dear all
>
> I agree (and I guess everyone else does), that it's not okay that this
> feature is enabled when the layers are not in editable mode. I already
> started to fix that, but because of time I had to decide to finish it next
> week.
>
> Anyway, there is still the question, where it should appear. IMHO it should
> be everywhere, where you can add and delete features. If it's a MapTool it
> could be there as well, I think. I'll have to think about that.

Thanks for your flexibility here!

What's the chance of getting this resolved before 3.0 final? If we
can't, can we please ifdef this out for 3.0 release and defer to 3.2?

Nyall


>
> Thanks for your inputs
> Dave
>
> 14 February 2018 15:24 Denis Rouzaud <denis.rouzaud at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> Le mar. 13 févr. 2018 à 23:34, Nyall Dawson <nyall.dawson at gmail.com> a écrit
> :
>>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> Just wanted to raise discussion about a concern I have with the new
>> "duplicate feature" / "duplicate feature and redigitize" actions which
>> have been added for 3.0.
>>
>> While I like the functionality, I believe we should re-think the UX of
>> how it is exposed in the QGIS interface.
>>
>> Currently, it's implemented as a "feature action", so appears in
>> numerous places throughout the QGIS UI, including:
>> - the actions drop down submenu on the toolbar
>> - within the right click menu for the "identify tool"
>> - under the "actions" heading in the identify results dock for a feature
>> - in a menu bar at the top of the form shown after adding a new feature
>> - as an entry within the right click menu in the attribute table
>>
>> So my initial concern is that exposing it in all these places is
>> overkill and far too prominent for this operation. But my deeper
>> concern is that these actions skip the edit buffer and directly alter
>> layers in place, even when those layers are not made editable
>> (https://issues.qgis.org/issues/17852). So now we've got a menu item
>> exposed in all these places which causes permanent changes to a layer,
>> including in places which are not associated with editing at all (e.g.
>> the identify tool right click menu).
>>
>> I'm also unsure what the actions would do in some contexts - e.g. if I
>> create a new feature and then select "duplicate feature" in the popup
>> form *before* this feature has even be finalized, what does it mean?
>>
>> I'd very much like to see this re-thought before our final release,
>> and exposed in a more standard way via the advanced digitizing
>> toolbar.
>
>
> I think it make some sense to design this as a map tool (if possible).
> We don't have a simplify action, it's a map tool.
>
> It could still be possible to add a custom action which will use the API to
> duplicate the feature (if one really wants this feature as an action in the
> form or attribute table or identify menu).
>
> Enhancing the action API to define action on editable layers only sounds
> like a good addition too, but I think is not sufficient here (taking the
> simplify map tool as example).
>
> My 2 cts.
> <>
>
>
>
> ---------------------
>
> David Signer
>
> Programmer OPENGIS.CH
>
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>
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>
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