Hello Martin ---- Martin Desruisseaux wrote ----
> The approach taken so far was to > insert the specialized widgets directly in the tree. It was nice to > experiment, but we can now see the resulting heterogeneity (variations > in the fields layout) in the "value" column. Are you pointing out to the non uniform widths of various spinners and combo boxes? These can be fixed by setting their maximum width to max value so they'll fill the entire width of the column. > Another complication is > that we do not have a lot of room for putting labels telling to users > what the fields mean. Actually we do. I have put labels in the latest update. We can have as much vertical space as we want. Earlier I was just using prompt text but now we have both. > My original idea was to create simplified views completely separated > from the tree table, as proposed in my email one month ago [1]. That > email contained a link to a screenshot of a competing software > (Geonetwork) for inspiration. I proposed a few fields we could select > for starting with something simpler. Some elements of the summary form > would regroup many tree nodes (for example showing all > AxisDimensionProperties in a table). If we implement such forms, some > specialized widgets developed for the tree table could move to that > form. I realize that designing a "metadata summary" form requires some > familiarity with the semantic of ISO 19115 metadata, but we would be > glad to help if we can have a prototype or a drawing somewhere. I'm not fully clear about what constitutes a simplified view. My view was that a simplified view will group together certain nodes that are related like min max, bounds, date and date type etc and show hide empty nodes and certain user specified nodes. But I thought the hierarchy had to be maintained because it has useful information, as certain fields like Identifier and citation appear at many different places, so I stuck to tree view. You have to understand that I'm not knowledgeable in metadata and I don't know what fields occur more frequently and/or are more important so I can't decide what to include or exclude or how to rearrange. I can't even come up with a mock diagram because in the different metadata files that I have used there is a large amount of variation in what fields are present or absent so I can't deduce patterns. So we need to be very specific and clear on this one. According to the the sample image that you sent me I have come up with a similar summary view in tree table view instead using operations like removing unwanted subtree, flattening subtrees and rearranging nodes at https://github.com/SiddheshRane/sis-client/blob/master/screenshots/Summary.png This view was generated by user interface elements like shift+up/down for rearranging nodes, and right clicking to flatten subtree or remove nodes from the view. Do you want the simplified view to show only titles, names, descriptions, keywords, strings? Like You said Citation could be hidden but show only it's children, what other components are less important. > The other widgets (the map pane, the extent pane, the list of CRS) are > interesting starts, but some changes are needed (e.g. there is no linear > relationship between a latitude slider and a Mercator projection - maybe > you wanted to use a Plate-Carré projection?) Oh I didn't know about the linear relationship. I will switch to Plate-Carré projection image. > and we may not have the > time to connect those widgets to actual actions (e.g. open a CRS editor > when a CRS is selected). This can be done in a similar way to the how metadata is opened from file pane. Can you tell me the requirements of the CRS editor, like how do you wish to interact with it and what are the operations you need to perform. Whether you only need to edit certain values, or add new components like axes, parameters or change the types entirely like switching from geodeticCRS to projectedCRS. I need your requirements clearly, even if certain questions might sound senseless, because I'm not an expert at these. > Should we focus on the metadata form only? If you can give me a detailed scenario of how you'll use the functionality you are expecting in terms of user interface components then I can judge how much work it will require. But I think that the tree table view can fit our needs with the preferences functionality offering not only summaries but different views.
