[vtkusers] About MouseEvents.py example

[David Gobbi]

On Thu, Jun 16, 2016 at 9:08 AM, Elvis Stansvik <
elvis.stansvik at orexplore.com> wrote:

> 2016-06-16 16:08 GMT+02:00 Elvis Stansvik <elvis.stansvik at orexplore.com>:
>
>> 2016-06-16 15:52 GMT+02:00 Elvis Stansvik <elvis.stansvik at orexplore.com>:
>>
>>> The MouseEvents.py example [1] currently does:
>>>
>>> class MyInteractorStyle(vtk.vtkInteractorStyleTrackballCamera):
>>>
>>>     def __init__(self,parent=None):
>>>
>>> self.AddObserver("MiddleButtonPressEvent",self.middleButtonPressEvent)
>>>
>>> self.AddObserver("MiddleButtonReleaseEvent",self.middleButtonReleaseEvent)
>>>
>>>     def middleButtonPressEvent(self,obj,event):
>>>         print("Middle Button pressed")
>>>         self.OnMiddleButtonDown()
>>>         return
>>>
>>>     def middleButtonReleaseEvent(self,obj,event):
>>>         print("Middle Button released")
>>>         self.OnMiddleButtonUp()
>>>         return
>>>
>>> But I don't understand the reason for calling e.g.
>>> self.OnMiddleButtonDown() ? Since this is not an override of a virtual
>>> function (which is not possible in Python), but simply adding another
>>> observer, I don't think it is needed? (..and I would think it would mean
>>> OnMiddleButtonDown is called twice, right?).
>>>
>>
>> Sorry, I realize I wasn't really clear here: What I mean is that, if the
>> interactor style above is used, the behavior of
>> vtkInteractorStyleTrackballCamera (the base class) will still be there,
>> even if the call to self.OnMiddleButtonDown() is removed, since the base
>> class will observe the interactor. That's why I don't understand the need
>> for the self.OnMiddleButtonDown() call in the example.
>>
>> This ties in to my other question (another mail), since what I want to do
>> is to actually override the behavior of the base interactor style (similar
>> to how you can in C++, but I need to find some other mechanism to do so,
>> overriding of virtual functions won't work from Python).
>>
>
> Sorry, I confused myself with all my mails, it actually was in the
> original mail in this thread I brought up this question.
>
> Perhaps I should tell a little more about my goal. I'm building an
> application with VTK, and in some cases I expect that I want to make use of
> VTKs interactor + interactor style machinery, and leverage the built-in
> interactor styles (such as vtkInteractorStyleTrackballCamera), but at the
> same time I might want to override behavior, and also be able to decide
> whether I want to override a particular event or not at runtime, when
> handling the event. I also suspect that I might want to modify the event
> information before passing it on.
>
> E.g. in C++ I would just override the virtual method, and in my override
> I'd be able decide whether I want to do something special or call the base
> class implementation.
>
> It seem there's no easy way of doing the equivalent in Python? At least I
> haven't found any. I've found some mentions in the vtkCommand docs about
> being able to stop propagation of an event to observers with lower
> priority. But I haven't found any exampels of this in Python, and it also
> seems that the docs in vtkCommand about callData are not applicable to
> Python? And also, with that solution, I'd have to install observers
> directly on the interactor, like the interactor style does, in order to end
> up in the same event propagation chain so to speak.
>
> I'd love to hear how others have solved the problem of custom interaction
> behavior in Python, while still being able to leverage (parts of) the
> functionality provided by the built-in interactor styles.
>

In C++, a callback can return "true" to stop event propagation:

  // Description:
  // This method invokes an event and return whether the event was
  // aborted or not. If the event was aborted, the return value is 1,
  // otherwise it is 0.
  int InvokeEvent(unsigned long event, void *callData);
  int InvokeEvent(unsigned long event);

When this feature was added for C++, it wasn't added to
vtkPythonCommand.cxx (an oversight), so vtkPythonCommand.cxx would have to
be modified to add this behavior for Python.

Regarding calldata, see the following merge request (now merged):
https://gitlab.kitware.com/vtk/vtk/merge_requests/1543/commits
If Hasting happens to be reading this, please note that commit messages
should be a wee bit more descriptive...

I can't say much about the rest.  The interactors aren't my favorite part
of VTK.

 - David
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