Phil's DMI Task Outline / September 2013 / RiverWare 6.4

Status:
  9-6-2013 (c): Phil's draft; Notes from meeting with David. To be reviewed.
  9-9-2013: minor edits.
  9-13-2013: Open question: DMI Year Mapping Group: Maybe change "Year in Database" to "Data Year"?
  9-13-2013: Development completed. Ready for review ... see icon notes.
  9-19-2013: revised error detection and reporting.

Summary. See discussion below.

  Dialog Done Description Ref
1 (general) 9-9 Rename "Map Group" to "Year Mapping Group".
... and [Year Mapping Group dialog]: Relabel "Real Year" column to "Year in Database".		 ref
2 (general) 9-11 New icon (maybe "[M]" or "[Y]") for Year Mapping Groups. icons
3 (general) Indications to distinguish Groups: (a) All Inputs, (b) All Outputs, (c) Both Inputs and Outputs, or empty. Probably as distinct new icons. See screenshots and full available icon list.
4 Year Mapping Group 9-9 Year Mapping Group needs overall user comment. (Not just individual DMI elements). Done: see screenshot. ref
5 Year Mapping Group 9-12 Replace inline Real Year column spinners with line editors having "<Enter Year>" placeholder text. (So, initially undefined year).
6 Year Mapping Group 9-13 Support tabular copy and paste. (NOTE: This will involve recoding the list as a table, to support full-column and cell-range selections). See [1] [2]
7 DMI Selector 9-11 Add DMI icons to list items. See screenshots: selector dialog, info dialog. ref
8 DMI Manager 9-11 Separate DMI icon column, to support sorting. ref
9 DMI Manager 9-11 "Edit DMI" (show dialog) operations on DMI child items: context menu and double-click.
 
  

(1) Rename "Map Group" to "Year Mapping Group".

Also proposed was "Date Mapping Group". Since this will likely be used specifically for mapping different hydrologies, it's likely that this won't be (or won't soon need to be) generalized for other time-period mappings. We could generalize this if and when we need to. (Also a "[D]" icon -- see next item -- would be unfortunate, in this context of DMI groups).

ALSO: the "Real Year" column should be labeled: "Year in Database".

(2) New "[Y]" icon for Year Mapping Groups.

There are currently three main DMI object icons: [I][O] and [G]. We will want to have a new [Y] icon for Year Mapping Groups. Note: we could also consider [M] ... I'll provide that as an option as well.

(15x15) DmiIcons/inputObj.png
(15x15) DmiIcons/outputObj.png
(15x15) DmiIcons/group.png

(3) Indications to distinguish Groups: (a) All Inputs, (b) All Outputs, (c) Both Inputs and Outputs

Apart from the new "[Y]" icon in the prior item, we need a way of distinguishing DMI Groups by their inclusion of Input and Output DMIs. A good way to do this would be to "split" the current [G] icon into three distinct variations for Groups:

  1. Containing only Input DMIs
  2. Containing only Output DMIs
  3. Containing a mix of Input and Output DMIs (or being empty).

This could be done perhaps possibly with a small, colored "i" or "o" subscript within the icon.

QUESTION: Can we formally impose a restriction that Year Mapping Groups contain ONLY Input DMIs (their intended use). This will eliminate the rationale for providing also three variations of the "[Y]" icon.

  

(4) Year Mapping Group Dialog ... Needs overall user comment.

The Year Mapping Group Dialog (currently the only DMI Group having a dialog) needs to support a user-entered comment panel. Of course that comment needs to persist with the DMI Group -- in the RiverWare model file, and in the DMI Group serialization in general.

(5) Year Mapping Group Dialog ... Replace inline Real Year column spinners with line editors having "<Enter Year>" placeholder text.

Year Mapping Groups should no longer have initially defined "Year in Database" (formerly "Real Year" as depicted in the reference image) values. Instead, all "Year in Database" values will be undefined, and will be displayed with "<Enter Year>" placeholder text -- in a QLineEdit (inline editor) rather than an integer spinner.

QUESTION: Should the "OK" button be disabled if any year items have undefined "Year in Database" values?

(6) Year Mapping Group Dialog ... Support tabular Copy and Paste.

It should be possible to copy and paste "Year in Database" numbers (and other data in the Year Mapping Group Dialog's table) from and to an external spreadsheet application (e.g. MS Excel). (The "Run Year" column is read-only).

NOTE: To support this, the single-level QTreeWidget (tree) will need to be recoded as a QTableWidget (table). Editing navigation should be natural (e.g. hitting the "Enter" key should move to the cell below).

  

(7) DMI Selector ... Add DMI icons to list items.

The DMI Selector dialog ... shown, for example, when adding a DMI to a DMI Group ... should show DMI icons with each DMI object (e.g. Group) item in the list.

  

(8) DMI Manager ... Separate DMI icon column, to support sorting.

The DMI's treeview doesn't currently support sorting by DMI object type because the type icons are in the same column as the DMI object name. These should be in distinct columns so that sorting by either attribute (type or name) is supported.

This has implications for the appearance of the tree, and the text used in the column header. We'll see what this looks like.

(9) DMI Manager ... "Edit DMI" (show dialog) operations on DMI items under a DMI Group item: context menu and double-click.

The DMI Manager dialog doesn't currently support convenient functions for showing an Input DMI's or Output DMI's dialog from the corresponding list item UNDER A DMI GROUP ... either by double clicking or as a context menu. It should.The context menu item should be presented as an "Edit" operation, with the pencil/paper icon, as are for top-level Input and Output DMI items in the tree.

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