Re: [Plastic-devs] highlightObject event ?

[John T. <jon...@gm...>]

Hi Pierre & Mark,
Great idea - we do need to be able to do this. 
I wonder if this is a special case of a more general problem - being 
able to highlight multiple selections.  We could instead extend 
showObjects to have an (optional) parameter giving some measure of 
"priority".  In the case of Topcat the highest (and default) priority 
causes it to generate a new subset, while the next level causes it 
merely to highlight the points.  Topcat and Aladin send the former when 
a selection is made, and the latter on a mouseover (presumably).  In the 
case of VisIVO, the different "priorities" could be used for different 
colours in the selection - allowing clustering applications to use 
VisIVO to show the different clusters.

Whether this works or not depends on whether selection and highlighting 
are completely different things, or different degrees of the same action. 
Although Topcat distinguishes between the two activities (by generating 
a subset), other tools such as xmdv do not (at present).  We also need 
to decide how tightly we define the meaning of a message...at the moment 
we've left it up to application writers to decide how to interpret 
messages in a way meaningful to them.  Thus Topcat creates a new subset 
on receipt of showObjects, while xmdv interprets the same message as 
meaning "highlight points".

John




Pierre Fernique wrote:
>
>
> Dear Plastic developers,
>
> The Plastic mechanism is typically interresting for cross object 
> selections. Presently, there is only one message about that 
> (showObjects) generally implemented by the selection of the 
> corresponding objects in the applications.
>
> I would really appreciate, and I suppose that I will be not alone, if 
> we can introduce the following distinction : showObjects and 
> HighlightObject.
>
> It could seem a subtle difference, but in practice this difference is 
> evident.
>
> Presently, when I select some objects in Aladin, the corresponding 
> records appear in the TOPcat table.
> But it will be great just by moving the mouse on this list (TOPcat 
> side) or on objects (Aladin side) the current line/object will be 
> highlighted. Without this highlight function, I can modify the 
> selection and keep an unique object, but in practice it is not 
> flexible at all as you lost your first selection. My example concerns 
> Aladin and TOPcat, but it will be exactly the same need for VisIVO or 
> other tools.
>
> Comments ?
>
> Regards,
> Pierre Fernique
>
>
>
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