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openscd / open-scd

A substation configuration description editor for projects using SCL IEC 61850-6 Edition 2 or greater
https://openscd.github.io
Apache License 2.0
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Show description in the Subscription Editor #578

Closed danyill closed 2 years ago

danyill commented 2 years ago

Where we use an object which has a description field, which many things do in SCL, should we have a consistent way to show this?

I notice this in the Subscription editor, many things can be named a little similar and the description field may be the only easy "internal" to the SCL file to know the purpose of the fields if the name has been abbreviated or is similar to another one.

I'm thinking perhaps I should have added something for this to #568 as well.

Perhaps it's not required, the name should be sufficient?

It would be good to have a consistent approach. At the moment, we don't do it elsewhere (e.g. the Substation Editor) although we do use a hyphen to show e.g. the IED description in the IED editor

JakobVogelsang commented 2 years ago

Is this still an issue for you @danyill ?

danyill commented 2 years ago

I had a wee look at Part 6.

"A description part is used as (a hierarchical part of) an operator- or user-related object identification. An object within a hierarchy has an attribute desc, which contains its textual description part within the hierarchy. Textual identifications are for example used in operator interfaces and operator manuals."

And also: "NOTE The desc SCL attribute is used at engineering time, and identifies a (functional) object at its hierarchy level to a human being. The IEC 61850 d DATA attribute is used for describing data, and could also be read online. The contents of desc attributes could be used to generate a project specific (SCD) d text from a template (ICD) d text. This is however not standardized.".

So in general the description attribute is a way to convey some human understandable information in addition to the XML semantics. In an engineering tool I think this might be a key way to convey meaning, communicate in-house naming and understanding of what functions or purpose different elements have.

But anyways, we now have an edit button which allows a user to inspect SampledValueControl (for instance), so I think this is adequate. Otherwise potentially long descriptions could clutter the UI.