Layout Configuration and Application Engine discussion

[spacetelescope]

Layout Configuration and Application Engine discussion

[eteq]

Summary of a discussion @astrofrog @brechmos @nmearl and I had out-of-band:

• There will be a base application (perhaps this is the ApplicationEngine?) that contains 1) a menu bar (which is mainly for "desktop mode" but would appear using buttons/etc in browser mode) 2) a tool bar 3) a side bar 4) a content area for viewers
• A specific application uses this plus a configuration object to actually lay out the UI
• The optional items (1-3) are to be specified in the configuration object such that if they are off, they never get created at all in the UI (as opposed to created and hidden).
• The glapp will have all of these (except maybe the menu bar?) on, with the content area empty to replicating the qtglue-like interface.
• Other apps might have some of them off - e.g., minimal_cubeviz would start with all the optional items off, but a 3d viewer and 1d viewer in the content pane (and a method for loading cubes), and desktop_cubeviz would have the menu bar turned on with a file-open that triggers cube loading.
• Configuration object items can be either text, which means "use the glue registries for this", or live python objects, which means "stick that in the UI". E.g., a configuration file might specify to use the standard glapp toolbar, but with a button appended on the end with its callback already defined in that python instance.

This information should go in the docs before we close this issue, but it's probably better to wait until we've built a test app in this frame work since things always change once there's an implementation...

One non-urgent question that comes up from the above plan: should the content area be flexible enough that things other than viewers can be put there?

cc @astrofrog @brechmos @nmearl for feedback/ 👍's

[eteq]

I encountered this while look at something else but I think this was done in #40 and subsequent work