[Paraview] Trouble with "information_only" GUI property in paraview filter

[Alex Rattner]

Hi all,

I was eventually able to work out this display issue. The show command  
has to be set as a separate hint in the source proxy, like so:

<IntVectorProperty
    name="NumberOfFeatures"
    label="Num Features"
    command="GetNumFeatures"
    number_of_elements="1"
    default_values="0"
    information_only="1">
<Documentation>
       Number of features in the field.
</Documentation>
</IntVectorProperty>

<Hints>
<Property name="NumberOfFeatures" show="1"/>
</Hints>

I hope this saves someone else the trouble. Thanks again Yumin for 
pointing me in the right direction.

-Alex

On 06/08/2012 03:35 PM, Alex Rattner wrote:
> Hi Yumin,
>
> Thank you for the suggestion. I debugged into pqNamedWidgets, and 
> found that my property was being excluded from the propertiesToShow 
> list, even with the show="1" setting. When I manually switched it in 
> the debugger, the property showed up and worked correctly.
>
> The issue seems to go a step deeper. The pqNamedWidgets::createWidgets 
> function calls pqNamedWidgets::processHints. Now process hints scans 
> through the list of hints in the following loop.
>
>   for (unsigned int i = 0; i < numHints; i++)
>     {
>     vtkPVXMLElement *element = hints->GetNestedElement(i);
>     if (QString("Property") == element->GetName())
>       {
>       QString propertyName = element->GetAttribute("name");
>       int showProperty;
>       if (element->GetScalarAttribute("show", &showProperty))
>         {
>         if (showProperty)
>           {
>           propertiesToShow.push_back(propertyName);
>           }
>         else
>           {
>           propertiesToHide.push_back(propertyName);
>           }
>         }
>       }
>     }
>
> First it checks if the hint is named "Property" (with the attribute 
> "show"), but this one is actually named "ShowInMenu". So it seems that 
> the hints data structure is not being set up correctly.
>
> Do you happen to have any other thoughts of ways to get this property 
> to display?
>
> Thanks again,
> Alex
>
>
> On 06/08/2012 02:28 PM, Yumin Yuan wrote:
>> Hi Alex,
>>
>> If you can debug into pqNamedWidgets::createWidgets(), and see where
>> and why this property is being skipped, it will help to narrow down
>> the problem, especially around this piece of logic (starting with line
>> 892).
>>
>>
>>      // skip information properties
>>      if((!propertiesToShow.contains(propertyName)&&  informationOnly) ||
>>          SMProperty->GetIsInternal())
>>        {
>>        continue;
>>        }
>>
>>      vtkPVXMLElement *hints = SMProperty->GetHints();
>>
>>      // skip non-summary properties if summaryOnly is true
>>      if(summaryOnly&&  (!hints ||
>> hints->FindNestedElementByName("ShowInSummaryPanel") == 0))
>>        {
>>        continue;
>>        }
>>
>>
>> HTH,
>> Yumin
>>
>> On Fri, Jun 8, 2012 at 3:57 PM, Alex 
>> Rattner<Alex.Rattner at gatech.edu>  wrote:
>>> Hi Yumin,
>>>
>>> Thank you for the response. I tried this and still no luck, the 
>>> property
>>> still won't appear. For reference, my new xml was
>>>
>>> <IntVectorProperty
>>>    name="NumberOfFeatures"
>>>    label="Num Features"
>>>
>>>    command="GetNumFeatures"
>>>    number_of_elements="1"
>>>    default_values="0"
>>>    information_only="1"
>>>    show="1">
>>>
>>> <Documentation>
>>>       Number of features in the field.
>>> </Documentation>
>>> </IntVectorProperty>
>>>
>>> I'm pretty sure that the property is actually being made and called, 
>>> because
>>> I debugged paraview and found that the GetNumFeatures method was being
>>> called. It just seems that the property isn't being displayed. Could 
>>> this
>>> really be a bug in paraview?
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Alex
>>>
>>>
>>> On 06/08/2012 01:22 PM, Yumin Yuan wrote:
>>>> Hi Alex,
>>>>
>>>> You can add the following to your xml to see if it helps.
>>>>
>>>> show="1"
>>>>
>>>> If this property does show up after adding that, it should be
>>>> displayed as disabled since it is read-only. If it does not help, this
>>>> could be a bug.
>>>>
>>>> Yumin
>>>>
>>>> On Fri, Jun 8, 2012 at 2:40 PM, Alex Rattner<Alex.Rattner at gatech.edu>
>>>>   wrote:
>>>>> Hello,
>>>>>
>>>>> I have been developing a feature tracking filter plug-in for 
>>>>> paraview for
>>>>> a
>>>>> couple weeks. I am currently trying to improve the plug-in GUI, 
>>>>> but ran
>>>>> into
>>>>> an issue.
>>>>>
>>>>> I want the plug-in to return some basic information to the user in 
>>>>> the
>>>>> GUI,
>>>>> so I added a property to the server xml file like:
>>>>>
>>>>> <IntVectorProperty
>>>>>    name="NumberOfFeatures"
>>>>>    label="Number Of Features"
>>>>>    command="GetNumFeatures"
>>>>>    number_of_elements="1"
>>>>>    default_values="0"
>>>>>    information_only="1">
>>>>> <Documentation>
>>>>>       Number of features in the field.
>>>>> </Documentation>
>>>>> </IntVectorProperty>
>>>>>
>>>>> with corresponding code in the class definition:
>>>>> vtkGetMacro(NumFeatures, int);
>>>>>
>>>>> However, the property does not appear on the plug-in gui. Similar 
>>>>> "input"
>>>>> GUI properties work fine,  but I've been messing around for a couple
>>>>> hours
>>>>> and I cannot get this "output" GUI property to appear. Is this 
>>>>> specific
>>>>> to
>>>>> the "filters" ProxyGroup - because I have found other plug-ins 
>>>>> that use
>>>>> essentially the same xml code to output information? Do you have any
>>>>> suggestions on how to make such output properties display and work?
>>>>>
>>>>> Thanks,
>>>>> Alex
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