Thanks Chris, Richard and Paulo for sharing your views.
I note that in 3.40.5, choosing 'Duplicate layer' does cause a pop-up
notice to say:
Layer duplication complete: Note that it's using the same data source.
Although this does disappear after ~5 seconds.
I tried 'copy layer' and was baffled for a moment, then I realised there
was a 'paste layer' option which I had to do (before anything visible
happened. Yes, the layer definition was copied to the clipboard when I
clicked copy).
Both Duplicate layer and Copy-Paste layer work on multiple layers at
once, and groups as well.
Interestingly keyboard shortcut Ctrl-C Ctrl-V doesn't copy and paste as
you might expect.
Ctrl-C does nothing as far as I can tell. Ctrl-V gives me this message:
Layer not editable: The current layer is not editable. Choose 'Start
editing' in the digitizing toolbar.
So I think it would make sense to remove the 'Copy Layer' / 'Paste
Layer' options.
Thanks!
Nick.
On 04/06/2025 20:01, chris hermansen via QGIS-Developer wrote:
Richard and list,
On Wed, Jun 4, 2025, 08:00 Richard Duivenvoorde via QGIS-Developer
<qgis-developer@lists.osgeo.org> wrote:
Hi People,
A user had an issue in which she 'copied' a layer, edited it and
then found out she edited the original data...
My response was: yes (join the club ;-)) it is called 'duplicate',
but it only duplicates the layer, NOT the data.
Then she responded: but I did not use 'duplicate', I used 'copy
layer' ...
Then I found out they indeed both exist in the context menu, and
actually do the same thing... ???
(tested with a gpkg and a shapefile)
So my questions:
- should there be 2 context menu items for the same thing (the
always tricky 'duplicate' which (in my view) counter-intuitive
does not duplicate data)
- should these 2 functions not behave different?
Regards,
Richard Duivenvoorde
(Without a working QGIS for now as I await the latest release for
Ubuntu 25.04, so I cannot confirm my comments below with testing...)
It's my recollection that I too have fallen for the same false
solution to my problem.
I think my current approach is to "save as..." and have the saved copy
show up as a new layer; is that what most people do when they want to
creat a copy of a layer for editing?
From that perspective, why not just get rid of both the "duplicate"
and "copy" layers since (if I am not wrong) one can equally just open
the same data set as a new layer?
It doesn't seem that we benefit much by those and apparently some of
us have found them distracting...
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