☂️ Project Clarity

[paullewis]

We're now at the point where we have various ways to create boards and sub-boards, and the Visual Editor could do with a little streamlining now we're happier with what the features are.

Visual Editor

Board Management

• Allow users to drag and drop boards #3951
• Improve board selection (sub boards, mods-as-sub boards, other boards)
• Add drag behaviors to workspace overview

UI & Navigation

• Add overflow menu to side nav headers
• Tidy up board representations in Workspace Overview
• Recall which kits are expanded / collapsed
• Move export to Activity header area
• Reduce vertical space taken up by Activity
• Confirm command palettes are functioning correctly
• Allow users to set their own board colors
• Allow users to set their own board icons

Bugs

• [Visual Editor] Autosaves are cancelled too readily #3823
• [Visual Editor] Changes to subgraph structures aren't reflected in ports #3822
• [Visual Editor] Copy & Paste of boards with subgraphs is broken #3820
• [Visual Editor] Handle autofocus a little more cleanly #3818
• The board information panel shows options irrelevant for sub boards
• Can't copy board outputs #3969

Breadboard

• Add API for auto-wrapping a module as an imperative board #3843
• Encode the graph/subGraph info into TGO.

Done

• Add control over when to animate
• [Visual Editor] Deleting a subgraph isn't reflected in the hierarchical view #3835
• [Visual Editor] Dragging of multiple boards doesn't work #3821
• Support subgraph visual controls #3941
• No smooth animations #3905
• Board Preview is missing from module editor #3928
• Can't drag a new node into a subgraph #3934
• Bring back the "back" button for run node info #3930
• Reorder the side navigation
• Improve color coding of boards
• Differentiate between code boards (runnables) & code
• First tab's graph doesn't show immediately #3899
• Improve selection handling #3888
• Graph is drawn upside-down on trunk #3898
• When dragging new edges, they don't show up until in place #3911
• Move all board related items into the overflow menu
• Default-on the components listing
• When in module view, show "Capabilities" side panel to allow easy adding of capabilities.
• When duplicating/adding a visual board we should pick some good x & y positions
• The filter doesn't account for modules, only sub boards
• Deleting the active module doesn't switch the view to something else
• Clicking anywhere on a tab should change to it
• Snapping to components is off for main board
• Unify events for navigating either to modules or subgraphs
• Show workspace selection state
• Create an "add new" view which supports creating declarative, imperative, and remote boards
• Indicate to the user that there is a workspace (rather than a board)
• Deleting sub boards & modules doesn't update the main nav
• Retain board expand/collapse state
• Update 'Zoom to fit' to accommodate all visible graphs
• Add show/hide toggle for hierarchy view
• Create "duplicate board" functionality
• Give modules titles
• Allow users to toggle between a unified view of all declarative boards and a per-board view
• Allow click to navigate between all boards
• Include the side menu across all views
• Bring components into the side menu

No longer needed

• Allow people to switch off the "track to object" feature (and decide what to do with it for board runs)

[dglazkov]

I've been playing with the new stuff and it's freakishly good. Here is the laundry list of buggy things I've noticed:

• when editing modules, switching to another tab sometimes deletes my latest work. I couldn't quite track down whether it happens because the snapshot machinery misbehaves or something else, but the end result is that when I go back to the code tab, it sometimes reverts to a state of before when I left it.
• not saving modules with errors, combined with tab switching, is usually 😢. If I just wanted to copy some code from another tab, when I return back, it's reverted to previous save. I wonder if the solution here is some temporary buffer where we store transient edit states for modules?
• I've gotten a GL context crashed a couple of times, but not enough to get a screenshot. The end result is that the editor stops rendering and I have to refresh.
• When autosave is turned off, it still says "Saved"

These all seem mostly unrelated to the actual multi-graph edits, so that's amazing, right?! It all just works!

[paullewis]

Okay, so 1. and 2. from that list are a case of refining the module editing side of things. I feel like there's something here for the graph editing, too, as we all too readily cancel saves there if the user interacts. I'm not sure what the exact approach is here, as you say it may be a case of having an in-memory version of things that we check first when switching tabs... but I'll have a ponder today.

In terms of 3. I have a hunch (no more than that) that I've not been strict enough with clearing out Pixi entities, which has resulted in ever-growing GPU memory usage for textures. As such I've landed a change which tries to make that more concrete, instructing a full purge of a scene graph when a board is removed (tab change etc). Let's see if that helps.

And for 4. that was a missing case in the switch - fixed.