This is a collection of thoughts on AIDA Styles and on their use in the new plotter.
Style Store
This is an object that can save and retrieve styles from a store (xml file on disk, database table). The basic xml style definition is the AIDA one. Next to the style itself we also identified the need to define #Style Rules that should also be saved/retrieved to/from the store:
<styleStore>
<styles>
<style>
.......
</style>
</styles>
<rules>
<rule>
.......
</rule>
</rules>
</styleStore>
Multiple stores might be loaded at once: System Store, Personal Store, Group Store, Experiment Store. Their information is grouped and managed by a #Style Registry
Style Rules
It should be possible to define rules on how to attach a style to a particular plot object. It should be possible to apply rules to:
- object type: hep.aida.IHistogram1D, org.myproject.MyData1D
- object path: with path expressions like "MC/**"
- plot order: a specific order position, 0, 7 or a cyclical recurrence (3) -> every third plot
- action: like printing (plots for printing might require less details)
- category: "experiment=GLAST, quality=preliminary"
Style Registry
A style registry combines the styles and rules from different style stores and provides the right set of style (with the appropriate order) for a given plot object.
Style Order
We have to define the order in which the styles are applied to an object.
Style Editor
GUI front end for viewing and editing individual styles or combinations of styles.
We already have a first version of the style editor. We need to add the possibility to view the information contained in a style registry, i.e. the chain of styles contributing to a given object and the set of rules that have contributed to it.
Comments to AIDA Styles
- does isVisible() belong to IBaseStyle?
- can we plot an object by passing only an IDataStyle (rather than an IPlotterStyle)?