DCM notes for 2025-02-24

[glopesdev]

Features

• Rewrite editor navigation model #1870

Issues

• Idempotent workflow operations stored in the command history #2150
• Extensions cproj is being formated by the editor and stripped of NL #2055
• Consider saving workflow when program starts #2077
• Saving a group as a workflow doesn't work if the parent workflow hasn't been saved #2035
• Disabled dangling branches lead to runtime differences in subscription behavior #2007
• Ungrouping a nested workflow with a shared externalized property results in corrupted undo stack #2151

[banchan86]

Notes from DCM:

Features

• Rewrite editor navigation model #1870
  • Update:
    • A lot of progress has been made on the editor navigation model. Scaling, cross-platform and .NET 8 compatibility has been tested and seems to be working so a new preview release should be ready soon.
  • New features:
    • Open in new tab and open in new window which was previously only available in the explorer panel has been expanded for tabs and nodes.
    • Editor layout is now saved in .editor file.
    • Visualizer .layout file has been simplified (further discussed in Move layout files to workflow settings folder #1956 and Save only active visualizer dialog settings #2144).
    • New keyboard shortcut Ctrl +T will open a new tab for the node group if its selected or the top level workflow if nothing is selected.
  • Outstanding issues:
    • Changes in node names need to be propagated to new tab/window.
    • Open in new tab and open in new window for multi-selection needs to be added to the context menu.
  • Discussion:
    • Given the new layout file structure, we discussed when to save these files now that they can be saved/updated independently.
      • The .editor layout file should be saved/updated for instance at least when the editor is closed, irrespective of whether the user saves the workflow, as that is consistent with how it is done in other editor applications.
        • It should handle errors arising from a mismatch between the editor state and workflow content (more notes on how to address this written in the linked issue).
        • Other possibilities - saving the cache whenever something is changed.
      • The visualizer .layout file should also probably be saved independently of the workflow.
  • Other things to note:
    • Existing bugs in the latest stable version of Bonsai that have to do with mismatched/misconfigured layout files should be tested again in the new preview as they might no longer exist/be applicable given the rewrite.

Issues

• Allow embedding UI startup logic in the workflow #2137
  • We discussed the motivation behind having an operator instead of just a node property in the context menu, which opens up a slippery slope of trying to accommodate all the potential visualizer settings.
  • Another promising approach would be to externalize visualizers Composing a graph which completes and resubscribes with a graph which does not  #2075 (not sure if these are the notes that was being referred to), which might be a better way of mapping/scaling multiple visualizers.
• Node name rendering does not support full unicode range of characters #1012
  • needs to be investigated further, has to do with custom font rendering.