Thanks, Marco, for the comments.
> Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2009 17:44:46 +0100
> From: Marco Roos <[email protected]>
> Please find more of my comments and questions while using Taverna 2 below:
> T2 usage notes - part II
> I would like to be able to use the delete key of my keyboard for a
> selected item in a workflow.
There is a general issue for allowing keyboard shortcuts for
operations. I think delete would just be a special case for this.
> Is it possible to put the edit options for a workflow input or
> output in the contextual view?
Good question :-) We are putting the configure possibility in the menu
for services in the workflow, as well as it being in the contextual
view. I will look at what would happen if the various edit operations
on objects were considered as a configuration.
> Could you display the list depth in the contextual views? Even
> if I can't change them, the list depth is important information for
> subsequent activities such as nested workflows (what depth should the
> input be?) or my own java beanshells (what should be the depth of the
> input port?).
Stian and I did discuss annotating the diagram with the list depths on
the links, and also showing where this would cause the Taverna engine
to do iteration e.g. a list of depth 2 into a service expecting a list
of depth 1.
I'm not sure how much can be done short term, but I'll add it to the
list (no pun intended) of things to be shown in a more uniform
contextual view.
> In the results perspective windows refresh seems to not work all the
> times when I click on a result (i.e. I keep seeing the result of a
> previous selection in a list of results (NB I have been experiencing
> such problems in general with Java applications on my laptop in the
> past, so this might be a problem outside of T2).
I haven't experienced this. If any other users have seen this happen,
then please let me know.
> I need to be able to see the workflow inputs in the results perspective.
I agree. In 2.1 we will have intermediate inputs available (again),
so you should be able to indirectly get at the inputs to the
workflow. I will have a look at how easy it would be to put the
overall workflow inputs somewhere obvious and explicit.
> Is it still necessary to have the input of a processor connected
> before the output can be connected to something, as it was in T1?
Not as far as I know. I didn't even know it was true in T1 :-) I'll
check tomorrow.
> Would it be possible to show the inputs/outputs when moving over a
> processor, such to make it easier to connect processors interactively?
Paul (Fisher) has suggested similar ideas. I think he wants the ports
to be shown when you hover on the service - similar to a temporary
"show ports".
> In general, in-place 'move over' information (and actions) could
> be a useful addition.
Paul agrees :-) I don't know how easy it would be to implement.
> Would it be possible to give warnings when connecting ports of
> unequal list depth?
It would certainly be possible. It could become annoying though and
also it could confuse users who are (unknowingly) using Taverna's
implicit iteration. It would probably need a "don't show me this
warning again" option.
> The 'trick' to import a workflow (e.g. with beanshells) to the
> activities palette was very convenient in T1. How do I add my own
> beanshells to the activities?
I'll check.
> Could it be made possible to drag and drop workflows and
> actitivities to the workbench?
Yes, if the bindings for the drops can be decided. Just from that
question, I would need to ask if the workflow is being added as a
reusable service, or should be loaded for editing, or should it be
immediately run.
I think it is a very good idea. Howeverm we would need to list the
possibilities, or at a minimum, have sockets into which the
appropriate drop handlers could be added.
> When I have an error in my beanshell, it seems the error message in
> the workbench is truncated with respect to the console; can it be made
> so I see the full text in the workbench? (I do like the tree view of the
> stack trace.)
I'll check.
> Could it be visually indicated that a processor, e.g. a beanshell,
> went wrong in addition to the error message on its output?
Yes! This is on the list of things for 2.1. It should turn red. You
should also have an indication for outputs that are lists, that there
is a error within the list.
[snip]
> In one case I have a nested workflow that has as input a list of
> items and as output a list for each of these items, except that in some
> cases an item is skipped and fewer lists are returned. E.g. it can start
> with three items as input while the output is two lists. When I add a
> beanshell that does output= list.size(), it gives three results of which
> one is 0. Is that as expected?
Are you sure you are not returning an empty list?
> If this is the case, would it not be more insightful to make
> these empty lists visible in the output in some way? To avoid confusion?
> Or maybe a little warning that empty lists were found, but omitted?
I think it's a bug in the treemodel. I ran several test cases and it
only shows in some (although consistent) cases. I've put it down to
be fixed.
> Are imported (new) actitivities stored for next time I use Taverna?
> If not, could this be made an option?
There is a Jira issue for that. I don't think it will make it into
2.1 though.
> Is it correct that I can't delete services once they have been added
> to the actitivies?
Yes :-( In 2.1 you will be able to.
> Can I clone or copy selected beanshells in a workflow?
Not currently. It is a problem that is not restricted to beanshells.
It applies to R scripts, and also to configured services e.g. a
BioMart call, or even just a WSDL with special list handling.
> At some point I received an SVG error upon starting a workflow:
> SVG Error: <unknown> The attribut "fill" represents an invalid
> CSS value ("#66cd00").
[snip]
I'll ask David to look at this.
Thanks again for the very useful comments,
> Marco Roos
Alan
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