Pipeline Browser Requirements

Mouse (pointer) interactions

• Left button
  • Double click 'opens' or 'closes' an item (toggling between the two states). The effects of 'open' and 'close' depend upon the item.
  • File dialogue-like selection. Anything on the pipeline browser should be selectable by click or click-drag, modified by Shift or Ctrl keys, per typical file browser selections.
  • Cut, Copy, Paste support
    • Internal - can copy or 'instance' arbitrary groups of items. For example, pasting a subgraph onto a node would paste that subgraph onto the node as a direct connection. Pasting two separate subgraphs onto a node (at the same time) would paste two new subgraphs onto the node.
    • External
      • Paste from another running version of ParaQ should behave the same as Internal Paste above.
      • Other 'objects' that could be copied? It may make sense to support things like dragging an exodus (or other file type) from a file browser. See 'Drag and Drop Support' item.
• Right Button
• RMB click on a single element of the hierarchy should bring up a context menu with the following items (appropriately enabled, depending upon the current state):

   Note: an 'x' next to an item means that it is a 'checkbox' menu item.
 
 x On            (check item)
   Display Type ------>Outline
   -------------       Surface
   Cut                 Wireframe
   Copy                Points
   Paste
   -------------

Drag and Drop

• Dropping a file (from a file browser) should open an appropriate reader for that filetype as a root node in the current hierarchy.

Musings

• Support is currently designed for a single hierarchy. Would we ever support mutliple hierarchies? Example: Save a snapshot in time, and be able to look back at that hierarchy (perhaps without displaying it in a render window) to cut/copy/paste from it. Also, would it be helpful to be able to open a state file, and copy/paste items from that file into the current application, without having to connect/display the 'source' hierarchy. This came up at Dreamworks a lot - artists wanted a way of opening a scene file without having it 'connect' to its sources, so they could make a quick change to a graph before re-submitting it to a render queue. In other words, they wanted a quick way to change something they knew was wrong (or, would take a long time to render, so they would have to wait for the results). Adding this capability at the end was a pain - but designing this sort of 'disconnected editing' from the start would be nice. It essentially amounts to supporting a 'really nice editor for the xml files that define our state'. Just a thought.