RFE : Windows 10, Draw windows too narrow vertically and impossible to enlarge. And how to select certain objects by their name to hide or show them?

[Gilletarom]

Hello Jon,

It's been a long time since I reported anything to you about the DRAW plugin.
What I have to indicate concerns the main window of the plugin.

• On the one hand, it is impossible to enlarge it downwards. This is quite embarrassing.
• On the other hand, when you have a very large number of boundaries which are used for the WeatherRouting plugin, the manipulation of these boundaries is very difficult.
  For example, in the screenshot below, you see the window with a few boundaries, when in reality there are more than 250. These boundaries are used with the WR plugin, so that weather-routes do not enter. They are named by group according to the geographical area concerned.

I would like to be able to easily select all those which have a name starting with the same letters to move them from the visible state to the invisible stage, or the opposite with a button dedicated to this.

Would it be possible for you to bring this flexibility to the manipulation of objects, boundaries or others, when there are very many of them?

Thanks in advance.
Gilletarom.

[Gilletarom]

Really, as said in the first comment, there is more than 250 boundary ! Very not usable to select one or more boundary !

[jongough]

Have you tried clicking on the 'Nom du chemin' column header? This should sort the list by the names, a second click will reverse the sort.

[jongough]

At the moment I am working on getting OD dialogs compatible with the latest OCPN. There are a few underlaying changes needed to OD. When I get this working I can look at adding a button to make the selected items visible/invisible.

[jongough]

There is now a beta version of OD, 1.8.41.0, as well as an alpha version of same that should be installable. This version includes the ability to resize the dialog box by dragging the frame and the list boxes have scrollbars if needed. Can you please give this a go and see if it helps with your problem.

[Gilletarom]

Hello JON,

Windows 10 /
Well done, the installation of the beta version of 1.18.41.0 was done correctly.
I was able to zoom the window down and to the left. And the elevator works properly.
So, this first part of my request is satisfied.

Thank you.

[Gilletarom]

Jon,
This concerns the WeatherRouting plugin.
Currently, WR considers active and inactive boundaries the same. WR prevents weather-route from crossing them.
I'm going to ask Dave to differentiate the role of active boundaries from those that are not active. More precisely :

• If a boundary is visible, WR must prevent road weather from entering it.
• If a boudary is invisible, WR will have to let weather roads pass through.
  Will he do it? I don't know.

To understand my idea:
I chose to manually build boundaries around all areas with less than 4 meters of water. But on the coasts of my region, the water height varies with the tide. At certain times, I can pass through these areas. If I could hide the boundaries surrounding these areas and if WR was able to no longer take these boundaries into account, I would be able to obtain weather routes adapted to the tides.

This explains to you why, in OD, I need to choose, easily, to hide or not, certain boundaries even if in periods of very low tides, the water level is less than 4 meters. (4 meters is my choice, others besides me could choose another minimum water level.)

Another idea would be to differentiate the boundaries based on the color of the line surrounding them. This would make it possible to have a criterion on visibility and a criterion on depth very locally. But if Dave could implement visibility/invisibility, that would be good.

[jongough]

The ODAPI already has BoundaryState as one of the variables that are set or looked for. So WR should be able to ask/search for boundaries in a particular state, Active/Inactive/Any, which seems to be what you are looking for. There is no API to change the settings of a boundary, that has to be done via the GUI and dialog boxes.

[Gilletarom]

Jon,

I have several things that come to mind.

• On the one hand, I have a doubt: When I hide one or more boundaries, with the "View" button located at the top of the left column, does this result in inactive boundaries?

• On the other hand, if I look at the main window of OD, which displays all the objects and in particular, as in my case, only boundaries, there is a button to the right of the window which allows you to inactivate a boundary , and only one. If I select several boundaries, this button can only inactivate the first selected boundary. So, it seems to me that we need a second button capable of inactivating (or reactivating) all the selected boundarie

[jongough]

The view button controls of they are shown or not. The activate/deactivate does not affect visibility, but changes the 'state' of the objects. There is a new version of OD, 1.8.43.0, in both alpha and beta, which allows single and multiselect of paths and the activate/deactivate of the selected group. The first boundary selected determines whether the button says activate or deactivate. If it is the wrong way, just click the button again.

Is this closer to what you wanted?

[Gilletarom]

Hello Jon,

As always, you are fast and efficient. Well done.

If I understand correctly how it works, modify it:

• An object written in bold is "activated",
• An object that is not written is disabled.
• If you select a single object, it changes from "activated" to "deactivated" or vice versa.
• If you select several activated objects, the button displays "Deactivate" and if you click on it, the selected objects are all deactivated.
• • If you select several disabled objects, the button displays "Activate" and if you click on it, the selected objects are all activated.
    This works well.

BUT :

• If you select activated and deactivated objects simultaneously, everything depends on the first object selected. If it is "enabled" the button displays "Disable", but if it is "disabled" then the button displays "Enable". It is not certain that the action proposed by the button is the one that the user wishes to perform. This risks creating errors in relation to what the user wants to do.

An idea :
Replace the caption “Activate” with the caption “Selection: Activate” and similarly replace the caption “Deactivate” with “Selection: Deactivate”.

And what's more, I observed a small BUG:

• If we increase the size of the window vertically, and deactivate or activate one or more objects, then the window shrinks vertically. This must be prevented.

Gilletarom.

[Gilletarom]

Hello Jon,

I also note that in version 1.8.43.0, the "view" button does not work.

[jongough]

I am not sure what you mean by the "view" button. There is a "Center View" which centers the object selected in the center of the screen and zooms to it. There is also a "Properties" button which shows the properties of the object. Both of these only work with a single item selected. If multiple items are selected then neither button is available.

There is now a version 1.8.44.0 which includes keeping the size of the dialog when you click the Activate/Deactivate button. However, if you close and reopen the dialog, or switch to another tab in the dialog the size is reset to the original size. i.e. the change to the size is temporary.

The button label does what it says. The first object selected sets the state of the button. If the inverse is required then the button needs to be hit again. The button only becomes available if one or more objects are selected in the list, so it should be obvious what is going to happen. Adding more text to the button would change its size and, I don't think, improve usability.