You asked for it....
Three scenarios...
1. Mind Mapping tool similar to http://freemind.sourceforge.net
<http://freemind.sourceforge.net/> - MEDIUM priority.
I think Roassal would provide a lot of advantages to such an application
- and in return be a great reference case for testing interactions - and
great possibilities of running Smalltalk scripts against the graph - and
draw new users unwittingly to learn Smalltalk.
2. Project Management Tool similar to Microsoft Project - LOW priority.
The two main players in the project management space are Primevera and
Microsoft Project. Most of the features of these are overkill for most
small projects and actually never used by users. Many people use VERY
basic features of Microsoft Project to just manually build nice looking
dependency graphs. This part Roassal could do very well. Over time
other contributors with more project management domain knowledge might
build in more sophisticated features. A Smalltalk backed project
management scripting tool would be really great. And again, new users
drawn just to the application may be unwittingly introduced to Smalltalk
(and of course, once introduced are hooked for life).
3. Electrical Software Development Platform - CRITICAL priority
Of course, my own project to complete my masters within the next couple
of months!! This is implementing a model browser for the IEC 61970
Common Information Model. I showed this to Alex a while ago and am just
now getting back to the point I was at before switching from Mondrian to
Roassal. While this has taken a while I am very happy with the
additional control I have with Roassal (and a lot of this time has been
too many demands by my day job). Perhaps a rough early release is not
too far away.
And four features...
(some of these may just be not knowing how to apply existing features) ...
4. Static layouts saved to file - CRITICAL priority.
I need to be able to arrange the elements in a Roassal graph, then save
that to disk and later load this up in another image. I suspect that
doing this using Fuel would be very cool.
5. Static Magritte-Roassal links - CRITICAL priority.
Currently in my use of the Magritte-Roassal combination, if in Magritte
I select an element and then drag elements to arrange then in the
"downstream" Roassal graph, when I select another Magritte item, my
arrangement is lost as the layout is reapplied to the whole graph. What
I would like is for Roassal to highlight the item selected in Magritte
without reapplying layout to the graph. A layout would only be applied
to a graph when manually applied - much like the
ROMondrianExample>>chooseLayout.
6. Swapping between static layouts - HIGH priority
As well, for a single model I need be able to have several views in one
window pane, where in one I put nodes into one arrangement, change to
another view where I put nodes into another arrangement and flip back
and forth between the two arrangements.
7. Constrain elements so they can't overlap - MEDIUM priority.
Currently nodes are initially laid out so that they don't overlap,
however there is no constraint on them from being moved so that they
later overlap. It would be good if elements could be constrained from
so that they could not overlap. Similar to how moving a child element
past the border of the parent dynamically resizes the parent, trying to
move a first element over the top of a second element would either: (a.)
push the second element in the direction the first element it is being
dragged; or (b.) the first element would get stuck at the edge of the
second element. In both cases, the subsequent behavior could be: (c.)
the first and second elements continue to interact in the same
regardless of how far the mouse moves; or (d.) once the mouse has moved
past the bounds of the second element, the first and second element swap
positions.
8 Interactively creating graphs - MEDIUM priority
Creating a graph by adding elements from within the Roassal graph and
adding edges by dragging links between two elements.
Just before I started switching my application from Mondrian to Roassal,
I added this functionality to Mondrian and soon I need to re-implement
this in Roassal. Having done it once in Mondrian I reckon I've a good
chance of doing the same for Roassal, where as I can't do (4.) & (5.)
myself.
hope this helps,
cheers -ben
Alexandre Bergel wrote:
This is not that we do not have ideas :-)
Our todo list includes:
- book chapter on Roassal
- exporters (e.g., HTML, SVG, JavaScript)
- semantic zooming
- way to compose shapes
- scalability
We obtained this list from our personal needs and the need of the Moose and VW
communities.
Vanessa is working on a proposal for ESUG to help us on the development of Roassal. We are therefore surveying the Pharo community in case of there is a wished feature that we did not see or did not put high on our todolist.
We are currently maintaining Roassal (i.e., fixing bugs) and pursuing our innovation effort (i.e., implementing cool ideas). The ESUG support will help us increase our productivity.
And yes, we would love to see someone use Roassal to visualize genome, DNA and
other biological data. We are ready to provide a strong support.
Cheers,
Alexandre
On Sep 25, 2012, at 12:33 PM, Hernán Morales Durand <hernan.mora...@gmail.com>
wrote:
I don't know your project scope, but these pointers may help you to grab some
features to implement:
http://www.tm4.org/mev/features
Also take a look into the Circular Genome Viewer:
http://wishart.biology.ualberta.ca/cgview/gallery.html
specially the browsable maps
http://wishart.biology.ualberta.ca/BacMap/cgview_linked_maps/NC_003198/index.html
check out the Expand+ and Rotate+ operations
Other very nice engine is Circos
http://circos.ca/
which contains plots that has been published in Science, Nature and PLOS.
Cheers,
Hernán
On 25/09/2012 11:48, Vanessa Peña Araya wrote:
Hello!
As you probably know, Roassal was presented at ESUG. We received a lot
of positive feedback from you and also a lot of request for features.
Thank you very much!
We want to start working on this, but also prioritize what seems to be
more urgent.
For this, we would like to survey the community about
1 - what are the features you would like to see in Roassal. Please,
provide a list of features requests and tell us about their priority
2 - scenarios where you would like to use Roassal.
Thank you very much,
Vanessa.
