Remove Special Data Regions

Proposal: Remove special data regions

The data_root_region inherits the field list from the root_region; this special support will become the norm with the change to a Single Field List shared between multiple regions.

The data_root_region also inherits the element list from the root_region which it searches for elements in embedded fields; this special behaviour can be replaced by passing the embedding region into the import routine (which is a workaround, not necessarily a complete solution to all embedding issues!).

The change is dependent on having Selection In Regions (regions tracking selection of their own objects, e.g. nodes, elements), not just the current pair of one node selection and one data selection. This includes making the node viewer and interactive node tool work with the multiple selections.

This change removes needless duplicate command options and user-interface elements with no loss of functionality: user is better off with N node namespaces versus the previous two. Removing the data region will clean up code including awkward synchronisation of data_root_region with root_region.

Q. What happens when reading in exdata files?

Change so it always creates nodes under a region named data. If there are clashes with an existing data region or the user needs access to the groups (and Merge Regions And Scenes is not complete), expect user to read file with gfx read nodes which we will give an extra option to read groups as true regions and/or rename groups and/or split into separate files.

Update: Following the new pattern from Merge Regions And Scenes, the default region created to hold data nodes will now be called "default/data".

Q. What happens to other data-specific commands?

Option to create graphical data_points will be removed from Graphical element editor (use node_points instead), but may keep data_points command running with a warning.

Q. How do we support data selection?

Remove existing data selection object. Handled by unified Selection in Regions.

Q. What do we do with the data viewer?

Remove it since functionality will be provided by the node viewer once we have Selection in Regions.

Q. What do we do with the data interactive tool in the graphics window

Remove it; functionality handled by node tool.

Feedback

Please add any feedback here

Shane says Yippee!

This is off topic but prompted by the last question, in that I don't see why we don't have a single selection tool that selects all our objects, it could have filters which would replace the buttons we currently have but you could have them all selected and so select nodes and elements at the same time.

Richard: Oooh yes... unified selection is definitely on the cards once data regions are removed.