QGIS » QGIS Application

The Atlas tool has greatly enhanced the print composer functionality of QGIS. Using it has brought to mind a feature that would be very useful if it could be implemented: dynamic composer legends.

With dynamic composer legends, mapped layers that have no features in the composer canvas would not appear in the legend, whereas items visible would appear in the legend. This would be useful for applications where multiple maps are generated for a mapped area, but not all data layers show up in each map composer, whether mapped manually or generated with the Atlas tool.

The value of these dynamic legends is having maps that don't include symbology in the map legend for layers that are not present in the map. This is confusing for those using the map, and it necessitates producing maps manually that you would like to be able to generate with the Atlas tool if you want to generate legends that represent actual data on each map.