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Re: Dragging nodes of a formatting graph
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 92 10:23:38 PST
From: Brian Anderson <bha@atc.boeing.com>
...
| somewhat different. Mine uses format-graph-from-root, which you
| didn't want.
Even when you redraw things at specific coordinates (as a result of
the user having moved stuff around)?
No, in my version (unlike Bill's, I think), I maintain the
parent-child realtionships, which are changed when nodes are moved to
different parents, but then format-graph from root is used to redraw
the whole tree.
...
| position, allowing the user to drag it in the window.
Animation would be cool.
...
I hope that I have stated my requirements correctly. I think that you
understand but from some of the responses on the mail-list, I'm not
sure that everyone does. Let me try again just to make sure:
1. I want to perform an initial layout of a graph.
I would guess that format-graph-from-root would be a likely
candidate for doing this.
2. Once I have the layout, I want the user to be able to reposition
graph nodes. The idea would be a drag and drop with animation
technique. Of course, arcs would be repositioned also.
1. As with what I described, you CAN use FORMAT-GRAPH to begin with, and
you can implement a drag routine such that nodes can be dragged to a
different parent. In redrawing using F-G-F-R, new arcs would of
course be drawn between new parent-child relationships. I DON'T know,
however, how to use updating-output to do this. I've been working on
it and still can't get that to work.
3. Now that I have a user modified layout, I want to gather the
coordinates of the nodes and arcs. Maybe this should be done in
some unitless and/or normalized coordinate system?
2. When the nodes are drawn, a) save the output record produced by a
CLIM:PRESENT call, or produce an output record explicitly using
with-new-output-record or some similar function; b) you can convert
the coordinates of the output record to the coordinate-system of the
window using CONVERT-FROM-DESCENDANT-TO-ANCESTOR-COORDINATES; c) you
could save these output records either in the node structures
themselves or in a separate data structure.
4. Next, I want to "checkpoint" the current state of the layout in
some external representation. This would involve gathering the
set of nodes, their coordinates and the application object that
these nodes represent and the set of arcs that comprise the
graph and writing some sexp to a file.
You've already got the nodes, I just talked about how to acquire and
save the coordinates, and I'm assuming the arcs are part of the nodes'
structures.
5. Finally, I want to reinstantiate the graph from the external
representation. This involves recreating the application
objects and drawing the graph at the coordinates specified
(rather than automagically doing the layout). Now, a user
should be able to further modify the layout and repeat steps 3-5.
The questions are:
1. Is format-graph-from-root the best starting point for the
initial layout of the graph?
Probably, at least to avoid having to do your own graph space-layout
routine, except that as I mentioned, I can't get UPDATING-OUTPUT to work.
2. How do I drag and drop nodes, have them redrawn and their
respective arcs redrawn? This is what Bill's and your code
does(?).
You can use CLIM:TRACKING-POINTER or CLIM:DRAGGING-OUTPUT, either one.
I use something like the following:
(let ((rec (with-new-output-record (win) (draw node win startx starty)))
(old-win win)
(old-x startx)
(old-y starty)
(new-rec)
(target)
)
(clim:tracking-pointer
(win :multiple-window nil)
;;; null the target because we've moved off, and redraw
(:pointer-motion (window x y)
(setq target nil)
;;; if it's moved enough to matter...
(when (or (not (eql old-win window))
(> (abs (- x old-x)) 5)
(< (abs (- y old-y)) 5))
;;; draw the new picture
(setq new-rec (clim:with-new-output-record (window)
(draw node window x y)))
;;; erase the old one
(when rec
(clim:erase-output-record rec old-win))
(setq rec new-rec)
(setq old-win window old-x x old-y y)
))
If you don't want to do so much of this yourself you should use
CLIM:DRAGGING-OUTPUT.
3. How do I gather coordinates? How should they be "normalized."
Paragraph 2 above. I don't know how you want them normalized, so I
can't really answer that. Using CONVERT- will give you coordinates
with respect to the window origin if you use the window top-level
output record (CLIM:OUTPUT-RECORDING-STREAM-OUTPUT-RECORD WINDOW)) as
the second argument.
4. What do I use to redraw the graph from a specification of node
and arc coordinates? Can I get formatting-graph-from-root to
redraw from a specific set of coordinates rather than computing
the "best" coordinates for me as is its typical behavior?
I don't believe F-G-F-R can be used to do this. However, it shouldn't
be difficult to write a drawing routine if you know where the nodes
belong. The hard part is figuring out where to put them.
5. I presume that I can grab the application object behind the
scenes of each node in the graph. I just haven't looked into
this but I presume its straight forward.
The object can be gotten from the presentation with
CLIM:PRESENTATION-OBJECT.
6. I eventually need to deal with directed cyclic graphs.
Then you can't use F-G-F-R and you may have to write your own routine.
7. Should I wait for CLIM 2.0. I am on the queue to get 2.0beta
from Franz "real soon now." Would 2.0's
formatting-graph-from-roots be better?
I don't know. Bill? Scott?
Brian H. Anderson
Boeing Commercial Airplane
(206) 234-0881
bha@gumby.boeing.com
Jeffrey
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