Add plotter 2D for arbitrary message types and fields #20
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hi! thank you so much for the contribution, and thank you for your patience until i finally review this.
I looked at the diff to the original JSK implementation, that looks good.
I like the ability to access numeric fields of any topic, but i don't want to merge that as is for the following reason: The "easy" use case of selecting a F32 topic in the "create visualization" dialog ("Add" button) does not create a working display, and selecting a F32 topic from the "Topic" drop down does not work (it does not show any topics).
The first issue is due to required "topic field" and "topic message type" properties which are empty by default (which is never a valid state), the second is related, but may just be a missing filter for F32 message type in the RosTopicProperty (i'm not very familiar, and it doesnt seem to have any docs?)
If those issues are harder to work around than i think (maybe due to ros/rviz expecting a fixed message type) i would prefer just sticking with F32 message for now, trading some flexibility for user experience.
I think the average rviz UX is already rather bad and can't really afford even the smallest papercuts...
Last, please add a brief sentence to the docs about the capability/necessity to select a message field and specifying the topic type.
-Jonas
| /** @brief Convenience typedef so subclasses don't have to change their implementation compared to | ||
| * templated topic display. */ | ||
| typedef RosBabelFishTopicDisplay RTDClass; |
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i dont understand this, it seems unused?
| #include <rviz_common/properties/float_property.hpp> | ||
| #include <rviz_common/properties/int_property.hpp> | ||
| #include <rviz_common/properties/string_property.hpp> | ||
| #include <rviz_common/properties/ros_topic_property.hpp> |
Good catches, yeah, I did not have the "easy" use case in mind and rather replaced it with the more generic use case of allowing to plot any numeric field in an arbitrarily typed msg. Also I did not really care about the rviz2 UX experience, since as you said, it is already broken in many ways... If I just set the defaults to the "easy" use case (so Float32 msg type and data as field) and try to discover dynamically such typed topics for showing them in the dropdown list, would you think this is sufficient? Only the dynamic discovery is probably a bit harder to work around. |
yes, very much so, that would be perfect! |
Ported the jsk plotter 2D.
I've enhanced it with ros_babel_fish to subscribe to any message type and extract any field which is implicitly convertable to double.