Create dynamic property validators

[Russell Taylor]

At present, the NormaliseToMonitor algorithm requires that you enter the spectrum number relating to the monitor you wish to use. It would be much nicer, particularly when using MantidPlot, to give the name of the monitor instead. But this isn't known until the input workspace has been set, so we would need to find a way in which the setting of the input workspace fired an event that the monitor property could catch and update itself.

[Nick Draper]

Batch move uncompleted tickes to next iteration

[Janik Zikovsky]

Hello all,

I have a suggestion concerning the algorithm's auto-generated GUIs: it would be nice to implement a few extra methods (on either Algorithm or IPropertyManager) so as to support more sophisticated auto-generated GUIs. It would be used to:

• Hide or disable a property based on the current setting on another property. For example:
  • Show some properties only when a checkbox is checked (or unchecked)
  • Show some properties only when another property's value is/ is NOT the default.
• Group some properties together, so that they are rendered inside a QGroupBox with a name.
• If an algorithm has 2+ ways to specify a single value (e.g. LoadCalFile has 3 ways to choose an instrument) it might show each option as a radio button and only allow one to be filled at a time.

I would probably want the methods to be relatively simple, e.g.:

alg->setPropertyEnabledWhen("ThisPropertyName", "BoolPropertyName", IS_CHECKED); alg->setPropertyVisibleWhen("ThisPropertyName", "IntPropertyName", IS_NOT_DEFAULT_VALUE); alg->addPropertyToGroup("ThisPropertyName", "Name of My group"); alg->makeGroupRadioButtons("Name of My group");

I wouldn't want the system to grow into a full-fledged GUI writing toolkit so I think these 3 situations would handle most of the GUI improvements most algorithms would need to greatly increase usability. Not having to make as many custom widgets will make it much easier to maintain these algorithms. Anything more complicated would still need a custom GUI.

Comments?

Sincerely,

Janik Zikovsky

[Janik Zikovsky]

In [14231]:

Refs #262: Created a more generic CompositeValidator and renamed the old CompositeValidator to CompositeWorkspaceValidator. Added some methods to IValidator for future enabled/visible choice.

[Janik Zikovsky]

In [14238]:

Refs #262: added a validator that disables a property based on another property's value.

[Janik Zikovsky]

In [14239]:

Refs #262: Validator to make a property not visible

[Janik Zikovsky]

In [14253]:

Refs #262: Moved the new validators to a separate class that better reflects what they do. New method on algorithms setPropertySettings() to give an IPropertySettings to a given property. This allows you to make properties be hidden/disabled based on other properties.

[Janik Zikovsky]

In [14254]:

Refs #262: Forgot 2 files

[Janik Zikovsky]

In [14261]:

Refs #262: Make properties top-justified if some are hidden.

[Janik Zikovsky]

In [14264]:

Refs #262: Show groups in the auto-generated GUI.

[Janik Zikovsky]

In [14266]:

Refs #262: Groups of properties are set in separate boxes.

[Janik Zikovsky]

In [14268]:

Refs #262: Used the new grouping and dynamic guis in a couple of algorithms

[Janik Zikovsky]

In [14302]:

Refs #262: Fix custom Load dialog crash.

[Janik Zikovsky]

Problem: Validator seems to only fail the FIRST bad property upon start-up and when clicking Run.

Also: Look for bad scrollbar choice when the algo has hidden entries.

Also: space out the title of a group more for windows

[Janik Zikovsky]

In [14366]:

Refs #262: Algo gui try to fix scrollbars.

[Janik Zikovsky]

In [14388]:

Refs #262: Don't resize window

[Janik Zikovsky]

In [14391]:

Refs #262: Fix scrollbar on mac

[Janik Zikovsky]

In [14392]:

Fixes #262: Compiler was too clever for my own good. Validators now show up correctly if more than one property is failing.

[Martyn Gigg]

Confirmed functionality that is currently used in LoadMD and BinToMDHistoWorkspace. Controls seem to be enabled/disabled correctly depending on other values.

I'm not sure this actually addresses the original ticket issue though so I've created another, #3763.

[Stuart Campbell]

This ticket has been transferred to github issue ​1110