[Kst] Datasources & metadata

Brisset, Nicolas Nicolas.Brisset at eurocopter.com
Wed Aug 23 15:13:41 CEST 2006


I have added support for metadata in a very simple internal datasource
to better understand how it works, and the status is the following:
1) I think it would be nice and fairly easy to consider each non-data
line in the header of ASCII files as metadata, as well as global
attributes in CDF and maybe the equivalent in netCDF since it surely
exists (I have to look at the docs though). I know it's not high on
George's TODO list, but he has prepared the support required to make it
easy to add and I believe it is a very important feature. So, I may come
around to preparing a patch for that if there is interest. 
2) the metadata I generate is visible from the vectors' RMB in the data
manager, as "advertised". However, if I generate a [Filename] string and
use it in a label like "Data coming from [Filename]" the label shows
"Data coming from ", whereas from a previous message on this list I
thought this would work (e.g. show "Data coming from myfile.dat")
3) it is still unclear to me what happens/should happen if I work with
two ASCII files which both generate [Line1] strings for instance. I
obviously can't access both with the same name. Currently, they seem to
live in separate workspaces and there are no collisions since access
happens from a vector, which is linked with a datafile (and can access
only its "own" metadata. If we export the metadata in the global
variables as required for point 2) above, then there should be a unique
name generation algorithm somewhere (like for other objects). 
4) related questions are: how can we change a metadata's name, visualize
its origin, and ensure it is updated along with all the labels that use
it when a file is reloaded with different data in it

I'd be interested to know whether there are chances to have this in
1.3.0 ?

Nicolas


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