[Clam-devel] Request for votes: Thinking on 'Connect to' feature

[David García Garzón]

This days i've been using the annotator for connecting massive networks. 
Definitely, the cut and paste feature is great for that (and it will be even 
more usefull when the positions patch is applied).

But, the feature i feel hard to use is the new connect-to context menu. We are 
substituting a hard-to-aim connecting interface with a hard-to-control 3 
levels contextual menu. Most processing have just a single connectable port 
so the last level is not that usefull but nagging.

Several alternatives to connection come to my mind:

A) Having 'Processing.port' pairs in the Connect-to submenu instead of two 
levels of selection. This could be very populated but is faster to use.

B) A mid way 'Connect to' submenu that just contains processings. If the 
processing just has one compatible port it just connects it. If it has more 
than one port, a selection dialog appears to select the ports. Multiple 
selection could be available, which might be also convenient.

C) A 'drag wire to processing' feature. Dragging a wire onto a processing it 
would work as selecting such a processing in the previous option.

D) A 'Connect to...' context menu option, that opens a selection dialog with 
all the compatible Procesing.Port options. Multiple selection also useful 
here. The benefits of this one is that it is very easy to connect one port to 
a lot of ports in different processings.

They all are easy to implement as most of the code is already there on the 
current connect-to menu implementation. If Natanael is busy with other tasks 
i could implement one or two of them.

Any strong feeling in favor of any of them? I specially like C and D.


-- 
David García Garzón
(Work) dgarcia at iua dot upf anotherdot es
http://www.iua.upf.edu/~dgarcia
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