[rkward-devel] Request for feedback on plot history

[Thomas Friedrichsmeier]

Hi,

great work, overall! This is pretty sophisticated stuff, and that also means 
there's a lot of details to think about and test. I'm not sure I've seen 
everything, but I don't want to let you wait much longer. So here are the 
notes I have taken so far in no particular order.

I'll post again, if / when I find more.

--

Warning message:
In push.pop.and.record(which.pop = 1, deviceId = deviceId, this.plot.is.new = 
TRUE) :
  Max length reached, popping out the first plot.

Suggest to remove this one. After the limit is reached, you will see it for 
every single plot, which is probably more annoying than helpful.

In contrast, the "larger than size limit" warning should only be triggered 
once in a while, so I think it is good to keep it.

--

Is it really a good idea to synchronize the plot windows that show the same 
history position? I.e. if two separate windows each show the first plot in 
history, and that is removed, should the other window really switch to the 
next plot, too? Or should that now be considered a "fresh" plot?

I could see the merit in both, but the current behavior was somewhat 
surprising to me at first.

--

Should dev.set() always set newPlotExists for the respective device to true? 
In case additions are made to that plot? E.g. produce a plot, add it to 
history, then add a grid to that plot, then use previous / next actions -> 
grid is gone.

--

Extracting the title / axis labels: Cool stuff! I no longer thought this was 
possible at all. However, currently, the code bails out in case the title has 
been re-set using title(). In this case there is more than one .Primitive 
("title") in the recorded plot.

Probably makes more sense to add this info in a drop-down list of plots in the 
history (your point c). For the plot that is currently shown, info on titles, 
etc. is not really interesting. It is interesting for browsing the plots which 
are *not* currently visible, however. I can try to add something, but I'm not 
sure how soon.

Of course for lattice plots, the story may be different, as more info is 
potentially available. But then - personally - I think it would probably be a 
good idea to trim that down to some very basic information, too, which is 
probably titles and axis labels, again?

Either way, we can leave this as is for the current release.

--

Toolbar is crowded. I'd suggest to remove first/last plot, remove plot, clear 
history, and info buttons from the toolbar by default.

-- 

Could you check the code for parts which are no longer needed and remove 
those? .verify.history.limits() appears to be one unused function.


Regards
Thomas
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