[Qgis-user] Themes, visibility, layout, report, atlas and Layer ID vs Layer name

[Jésahel Benoist]

Hello all,

QGIS is now my favorite everyday tool. Anyway, there's something that is a
real pain in the ass, the choice to use layer ID instead of layer name in
layouts/reports/atlas/themes.

First, let me explain that I have a lot of layers so I'm using groups, I
import/export needed groups with layers definition files and I'm often
using the name to track the versions between projects.

At this stage, one bad thing is that deleting a layer and reloading is
changing its ID and so... All layouts/reports/atlas need to be corrected.
So I'm not deleting anymore groups/layers but instead have more dedicated
projects, and I have created some scripts and plugins to alter existing
layers, and loads/saves styles in DB. Fine but not easy for everybody and
needs to correct more projects when needed.

Today I discovered that themes are also based on layers ID... But there
isn't any way to load/save themes configuration. How to know what was the
theme configuration before a change ? Only by peeking around in the project
file or some python. But even with a save/load feature, when a modification
occurs, all projects need to be corrected.

Well, as you can see, for some years that I've been working with QGIS,
its use of the layer ID instead of layer name is clearly the most annoying
thing in this great software. I think that is also a reason for some
features not to be created.

I imagine that this is low level and needs a lot of modifications so I'm
not asking for a change now. But could a discussion about this be initiated
?

Best regards to all,

Jésahel
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