[Kst] [Bug 91692] New: new tool: compare with file...

[Nicolas Brisset]

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http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=91692        
           Summary: new tool: compare with file...
           Product: kst
           Version: unspecified
          Platform: unspecified
        OS/Version: Solaris
            Status: UNCONFIRMED
          Severity: wishlist
          Priority: NOR
         Component: general
        AssignedTo: kst kde org
        ReportedBy: nicolas.brisset eurocopter com


Version:           1.0.0_devel (using KDE 3.3.0, compiled sources)
Compiler:          gcc version 3.3.2
OS:                SunOS (sun4u) release 5.8

In the new "Tools" category, yet another one...
Imagine you have created a number of curves, plots, etc, to investigate experiment A, invoking the datawizard many times.
Now, you would like to see whether what you observe also happened in experiment B and compare both. If you change the data file A->B, you get a new window but experiment A is gone and the comparison becomes difficult. You can open a second kst window and switch between windows, but that's not so convenient either.

Now, imagine you can invoke a "Tools->Compare with file..." wizard, that does the following:
1) it prompts you for the name of file A among the list of loaded files and allows you to select file B with a standard file selector
2) when you hit "Next", it looks for all vectors from file A currently in memory, and looks for the same vectors in file B. It then shows a list of vectors found, possibly with sample numbers (and checkboxes if you want to disable some)
3) hit "Next" to load the vectors, and it shows a list of curves using them (optionally with checkboxes if you don't want them all)
4) hit "Finish": it will create curves from the new file and add them automatically to the plots where they belong.

Nice, isn't it ? If it's too complicated, a stripped down version could be as simple as a dialog implementing only step 1 and trying its best to create all curves from vectors read in the new file. That would actually probably be enough and a good start, as more subtle changes can always be done with the datawizard.
By the way, such a tool would probably also obsolete the need to be able to work with more than one file in the datawizard as I expressed long ago :-)