search

visit-dav / visit

VisIt - Visualization and Data Analysis for Mesh-based Scientific Data
https://visit.llnl.gov
BSD 3-Clause "New" or "Revised" License
435 stars 114 forks source link

Should read options be available near sources or re-open button #19891

Open markcmiller86 opened 1 week ago

markcmiller86 commented 1 week ago

I am wondering if we're really using the read options in the way they are intended. I think the need to switch back and forth between the cases is what is puzzling me a bit.

In order for read options to have any effect, a database must be opened (or reopened). I can kinda sorta achieve the "switching" behavior you describe on a single database if I do the following steps...

  1. Select MOAB plugin in Open file as type pulldown of File open window.
  2. Press Set default file open options button bringing up Default file open options for MOAB reader window.
  3. Select various options and hit the ok button.
  4. Open a MOAB file and draw a mesh plot.
  5. Repeat steps 2 and 3 except selecting different options and then hit the Reopen button. That has the effect of quickly switching the currently plotted mesh plot to match whatever the most recently set MOAB options are.

One observation just in the above use case is that it is not as easy as it could be to just adjust options and re-open. Thats because when the options window is open, VisIt cannot take input gestures from anything else. One must hit the ok button there, closing the options window, before the rest of the GUI is again active. So, to switch things quickly, it involves a cycle of hit Select default open options (bringing up the options window), adjust options, hit ok (closing the options window), hit re-open. If the options could remain open throughout this cycle, that would be easier.

Next, if I am going to engage in this process with more than a single database, it gets a tad trickier because only the last options setting are remembered. So, if you want to change the Active source during a switch cycle, you won't be presented with the options used the last time that source was opened. You will see the options used the last time the options were set for any sources. But, if we make it somehow remember options used for each source, I am not sure how much this improves the process of switching.

Originally posted by @markcmiller86 in https://github.com/visit-dav/visit/issues/18899#issuecomment-2401072634

markcmiller86 commented 1 week ago

In theory, read options can wind up effecting what is read. So, they are really part of the source. Changing read options associated with an open source should have the effect of a re-open, shouldn't they? Shouldn't it be easy to have an existing source and adjust its read options and see the effect of those adjustments? It is currently not easy. See #18899.