[Kst] branches/work/kst/portto4/kst/src

[Nicolas Brisset]

Hi,

sorry, but these days I have very little time. I manage to send a couple of mails, but I haven't come around to adding the offset and time index options I meant to, even though it should be easy...
Anyway, see my comments below to Peter's last changes and your (Barth) comments.
To sum up because it may be somewhat entangled below:
- if the X axis contains C time, set interpretation to C time, that can't hurt and otherwise many users will be confused (C time is not intuitive)
- for the display format add something to the page where we select the X axis. Minimal version: a checkbox to automatically set the display format, complete version: the controls we currently have in the X-Axis dialog

We probably need to experiment a bit, it's not always easy to discuss theoretically...

Nicolas

----- Mail original -----
> De: "Barth Netterfield" <netterfield at astro.utoronto.ca>
> À: "kst" <kst at kde.org>
> Envoyé: Mercredi 21 Novembre 2012 20:27:04
> Objet: Re: [Kst] branches/work/kst/portto4/kst/src
> 
> 
> I'm not sure about this.
I like it, though your comments are justified. But not having to set the X-Axis options manually is *great*.
We must find a way to keep it, at least the interpretation as C time when the X vector gets created as C time!
 
> There are now two ways that the axis display format is decided:
> i) through the plot dialog - where the format can be set as the
> default "[x] Save as Default" in the plot dialog.
> ii) by using the datasource input format.
Hum, you're right that this is somewhat clumsy.
To me it would be pretty clear that explicit (visible) settings in the datawizard will override defaults.
Hence my proposal: add in the wizard page below the combos where you select the X axis a checkbox "Automatically set display format", which would be enabled when a time vector has been set, and checked by default. It would set the display format as formatted string, using the format given in the config (as now). Otherwise we use the dialog's defaults.
Another option would be to add the "display as" combo + format lineedit, prefilled as currently and a checkbox "Use X!Axis default format" that would disable the previous.
Whatever we do here, the checked state should be remembered as most other checkboxes in the wizard.
 
> I think:
> - it would be better if the plot dialog default format were used in
> the data wizard and not the datasource input format.
The point is, many users will probably never change the values in the plot dialog. Whereas if one vector is indicated as being time and loaded as C time, we can be pretty sure that the user will want the X axis to be interpreted as C time!
As mentioned above, turning on interpretation of C time when the X vector contains C time sounds like a must if we want to avoid complaints from users that their time values look so strange! We can discuss about the display format to use.

> - datasources should return isTime() rather than timeFormatString()
> to let the datawizard know that it is a time axis, so it can use the
> dialog defaults values. The datawizard then only needs to
> plot->xAxis()->setAxisInterpret(true); if ds->isTime(). Then the
> existing default system already in place will do its work.
OK, the details are not clear to me here. 
How does the axis know how to interpret and how to display if we use only isTime()? isTime true means "interpret as C time"? How about the display format?
If we have a way to know that the user set a default display option explicitly, we could use it. If it's never been set, use the format of the datasource. What do you think?
 
> To make the dialog system easier to work with/discover, I could
> create a plot defaults dialog to set them all.
I'm not sure. What do you have in mind there? Removing the "Save as default" box in all dialogs and putting them in a central place? How about the theme menu/dialog?
Or have I completely missed the point?
I think I like the current checkbox, an extra dialog just to set defaults sounds less appealing.