Synchronized layers button

[nikosavola]

Similar to "Synchronized views" but for layer visibility.

[klayoutmatthias]

Hi @nikosavola,

thanks for your efforts to improve KLayout.

Personally, synchronized layers are the most hated feature of Virtuoso for me. In KLayout I use tabs in much different ways, like for different technologies or layouts from different dataprep spaces or in overlays. Synchronized layers do not really make sense for me.

Maybe it does for others, but I assume in certain contexts only and I wish such a feature would be discussed before there is any implementation. I have a very opinion of how such a feature has to be implemented and the patch is too intrusive on the wrong levels to my taste. My first proposal would be to synchronize based on technology objects. Technology objects could keep a layer properties map and all that is needed is a dynamic and bidirectional update path from technology to view and back. In that scheme, all layouts sharing one technology are synchronized, not views. That should solve some logic issues and streamline the architecture in a much less intrusive way. But I have not thought deeply about such a feature yet.

I also feel there are some synergies with other requests like visibility groups. Currently those are emulated by tabs. From that perspective an entirely different feature such as a technology-global visibility state+presets could be useful and solve multiple problems at once.

Regarding undo, maybe it is time to drop layer visibility from the undo stack or give it a separate one. The integration of layer visibility in undo is more annoying that useful for me.

But that's all a topic for a feature discussion, not a PR review.

Matthias

[nikosavola]

Understood, thanks. Taking this to a feature discussion instead: #2479 covers the view-level approach from this PR, the technology-based scheme you outline, and the visibility-group and undo topics. Closing the PR meanwhile; happy to reimplement on top of whatever comes out of the discussion.