[Pipet Devel] Thoughts on Network/Composite Inputs and Outputs

[J.W. Bizzaro]

Brad Chapman wrote:
> 
> >  I think what we can do is place a "P" in
> > the dot, indicating that communication is from/to Parent.  In
> > addition, the dot can turn green when its mapped counterpart on
> > the parent is also green.
> 
> Sounds good!

I'm thinking now about a small black dot inside of the green dot, which can be
interpreted as a line coming up out of the main dot and into the parent.

>                   void showConnection(in Locus inLocus, in Connector inConnector,
>                                                    in Locus outLocus, in Connector outConnector);
> 
> (there is an equivalent "hideConnection"). I guess for this case what
> we should do is just pass a single Locus and Connector to "be
> connected" (and pass the other set as NULL). Since I can't really
> think of another case where this will happen, the UI can interpret
> this as being due to a "Parent" connector being mapped. Sound okay?

Yeah, we can give that a try.

> > Shouldn't links have names by default?  And then the user can change
> > it if they want.
> 
> Okay, but I'm not sure what the "default" name should be so that I'll
> be easily recognizable. What I've been doing internally is munging
> together the "name" of the locus inside of a composite (ie. Constant3)
> with the name of the link (so ending up with something like
> Constant3--VALUE as the name in the parent). But this "Constant3" info
> isn't available to the user in the ui (all they see is constant) so I
> don't think this name'll be very meaningful. How do you want to handle
> the default?

Well, Piper should know what /type/ of information each connector relays, or
what the connection represents, so how about the default name simply being the
connector type?

Jeff
-- 
J.W. Bizzaro                                           jeff at bioinformatics.org
Director, Bioinformatics.org: The Open Lab     http://bioinformatics.org/~jeff
"Let the machine do the dirty work." -- Kernighan and Ritchie
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