User:Jmandel/WRF-Fire VisTrails wishlist

Jan's wishlist

1. up-to-date "How to visualize WRF-Fire output in VisTrails" at openwfm.org, working and clear enough for a clueless impatient prospective user
2. a command line utility to reduce the wrfout files by leaving only the variables needed (a simple python script would do; I did not try to set up the server yet.)
3. up to date .vt and package files and the above utility available in a publicly accessible git repository, also downoladable as a tarball or separately
4. in vistrails, input the directories by navigating to them in the usual fashion as all other mac programs, but leave the option to type/cut/paste if possible
5. a box with an error message should pop up if something is wrong with the path or the files
6. the vistrails window should remain responsive during the conversion, show a progress bar and a cancel button, not just freeze up
7. a box with an error message should pop up if something goes wrong with the conversion
8. there should be some sort of altert (a dialog box in front?) when the conversion is done. I need to do other things while it is working and the vistrails window gets buried somewhere
9. the "Fire demo visualization" should already know where the vtk files are, not ask again (or it should prefill the choice with the known location)
10. make it simple to recover or backtrack when something goes wrong, including wrong user input. Make every step guaranteed re-runnable. I had to start from the scratch (exist vistrails, start again...) every single time when I messed up, which was quite often.
11. Why all those boxes? A scientist probably does not care about the details, certainly not the first time. Just show the user one big button, the user will push the button, navigate to the directory with the wrfout files, watch the progress bar for a while, and then watch the movie. Or at most two buttons (convert, visualize), and make it clear in some dialog box or in the howto how to save and visualize the next time without converting again.
12. There should be online help, or a help button to start the preview of the pdf of the manual. The pdf should be installed in the VisTrails application directory, where VisTrails.app is.
13. it needs to be clear how to start a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet should pop up and not hide under the vistrails window.
14. the axes in the visualization should be labeled and the current time displayed in every frame, please.
15. The control buttons on the bottom should give some feedback when pressed. The movie reacts slowly (or not at all at times), so it is not clear what is happening
16. The user interface is a bit raw and doing strange things at times. The look and feel should be the same as other native Mac applications. Probably VisTrails is not using the right Mac library for the GUI?
17. The GUI should be really simplified to get the user hooked the first time: simple useful things should be done in a simple way, without studying anything. Then, if someone wants to get deeper, they can do that later.
18. The Howto should say how to save the movie as a file.
19. I'd like to display the heat flux instead of/in addition to the area burned (I think that's what vistrails displays now). Please see the attached pictures. (This is from a new feature, ignition points moving along lines over time.) Vistrails has some artefacts but I know do not have the current version of the files. Will retest after I get it.
20. It would be good to have some usual options, best from drop-down menus, such as: selection of variables, colors, transparency, start/stop time, play in a loop or not, add legends, labels, colorbars, etc.
21. I could not find controls for rewind/advance and start/stop capture to a movie file.
22. I can see the ultimate goal may include the server in a kiosk mode, with the user just pushing buttons and choosing from menus, with all the details of the internal working and anything the user could mess up hidden and disabled?
23. What is animation delay, please?
24. I would be nice if the controls are not be visible in captured images/movies.

Jan's difficulties

1. the only howto I found was How_to_run_the_Supercomputing_2009_WRF-Fire/Vistrails_demo
2. In the absence of an up to date howto I was not sure which package files to use. I have left whatever was in my vistrails installation from the last time.
3. I was not sure which .vt file to use because the howto is out of date. I have tried vt_files/fireDemoSC2009.new.vt from ssh://math.ucdenver.edu/home/grads/jbeezley/wrf_vistrails.git, which gave me the error "Pipeline cannot be instantiated: Missing package: edu.cudenver.jbeezley.namelist".
4. So I used VisTrails/scDemo2009/fireDemoSC2009running.vt file dated 2/26/10 which I had from some earlier attempt.
5. during the conversion, vistrails seemed to disable other windows or steal focus from them (Chrome, in particular, where I am writing this)
6. After the conversion, the vtk were nowhere to be found (I did not create the directory, but Vistrains did not complain and just went ahead with the conversion?)
7. it was not clear what exactly it means "View the spread sheet to interact with the visualization" in the howto. I forgot since the last time. There is no button labeled "spreadsheet". The manual says something about main menu or spreadsheet toolbar but I did not see any such things in the vistrails window either. I was afraid to try and

push random buttons for fear I would get to some state I could not recover from, and I would have to start all over again (another hour or so). Eventually, I accidentally found the spreadsheet hiding under the vistrails window.

Jon's ideas

Jon had in mind a couple of ideas that could help with usability and development.

Configuration parameters

Trying to customize a simulation by setting defaults for input ports is awkward and becomes almost impossible to manage when there is a large number of options in a workflow. I'm wondering if it would be possible to make some sort of a default configuration dialog that would pop up when running a workflow. Something like a standard configuration widget that contains all unconnected input ports that you can see and modify in one place.

Even better would be something like a module that you can place in the workflow with one output port. When you connect the output port to an input with a basic class (float/int/file/bool, etc.) that input is added to the configuration dialog with an appropriate gui element (for files, a string input with a button for opening a file dialog, etc.). Maybe multiple configuration boxes in the workflow could create individual tabs in the dialog.

Subworkflows

The problem with the workflow containing too many boxes is it becomes overcomplicated both to understand what it is really doing and to find what it is you are looking for. I'm aware that there is support for grouping of boxes and subworkflows; however, the problem with this approach is that all of the input/output ports get combined into a single box and (as far as I can tell) there is no way to figure out what each port does. Perhaps a way to annotate ports would help.