Feedback on 0.7

[okiley]

Hello. I've been keeping a list of ideas / bugs going as I've been working with Gephi. Apologies for the length!


Ideas / Feature Requests

- Edge selection + deletion not implemented (working on it I gather?).

- Editing the edge table directly through the data table, as a means of re-assigning connections.

- Ability to hold a hot-key and use the scroll-wheel to adjust the size of the selection brush radius.

- Would be nice to have a "color swatch palette" somewhere you could save colors to so you can consistently re-apply colors.

- Ability to control-click (or shift-click) to directly select multiple nodes.

- Add an eye dropper for picking colors directly from other nodes

- You can select a node / edge in the data table to highlight it in the graph. How about the other way, selecting a node in the graph and seeing that select in the data table.

- A lasso type selection box would be really helpful, more so than the rectangle, which get's really annoying to try and position correctly.

- Add recognition of "WEIGHT" attribute for EDGES in .gdf files, so that higher weighted edges factor into calculations properly.

- Ability to edit attributes of multiple selected nodes or edges.

For example, if I select 5 nodes and hit the edit button, I'd like to be able to see the EDIT box with the attributes. Any attributes that were common (or the same) to all the selected nodes would show up in the edit box, with * appearing in boxes where attributes didn't match. If I edited any of the attributes (even non-matching ones), those attributes would get applied to all the selected nodes.

This feature would GREATLY expand the ability to usefully manipulate data, beyond just visualizing it. For example, you can use partitions + queries to select specific groups of nodes or data, and quickly re-assign properties. Coupled with adding the ability to re-assign edge sources/targets, it could also let you to re-connect, remove, change, or add connections between multiple-selected nodes.


Changes

- I don't like how the Painter applies a color incrementally as you hold the mouse button down. I think it would be much simpler and faster to just hit the button once and have the current color applied immediately.

- The tool bar could use some better separation of elements. I'd put the direct select + rectangle select (and a lasso select if implemented ) together. Then the DRAG, SIZER, EDIT, PAINTER, BRISH tools together. And then the remainder together.


Bugs / Glitches

- When partitioning data, contracted nodes can't be filtered or selected. If you "expand" the partitioned node, you can run queries and have it affect the nodes correctly. Similarly, if you have data partitioned, and then try to "rank" the data based on numerical attributes, those numerical attributes aren't migrated into the partitioned nodes, so are ignored by the rank function. The solution to all of this might be to check all the attribute fields contained inside a partitioned node, and any attributes that are the same for all contained nodes get applied to the partitioned nodes info/attributes. Numeric data could be totaled or "averaged" depending on what you wanted to achieve and added to the respective attribute for the partitioned node.

- Saved queries aren't saved when closing + re-opening the program. Queries should be saved into the Gephi Project file correct?

- The selection box (rectangle selection) is temperamental and doesn't maintain selection. First, you can click-RELEASE drag and the box starts to draw and then disappears. I'm assuming it's supposed to be a click-HOLD-drag all the time?

- Once you've selected nodes with the rectangle selection, the re-size + re-color tools can be used, but not the move tool.

- When drawing new edges, the new edges don't assume the default edge color used in all other edges. Likewise, turning on "edge color from source node" doesn't apply to newly drawn edges.


EDIT: In the PREVIEW menu, edges from partionioned nodes don't display

[mbastian]

Thanks okiley, that is a very great feedback!!! Lots of inspiring ideas as well I filled them in our Ideas list. Feel free to edit the wiki as well.

Note that edge deletion is part of the Data Laboratory project, for GSoC this summer.

Add recognition of "WEIGHT" attribute for EDGES in .gdf files, so that higher weighted edges factor into calculations properly.

That should be the case. A bug?

Saved queries aren't saved when closing + re-opening the program. Queries should be saved into the Gephi Project file correct?

Yes that should work and be saved in project file. I'll check it and file a bug if necessary.

When partitioning data, contracted nodes can't be filtered or selected. If you...

Yes I need to fix the partition module it has several issues

The selection box (rectangle selection) is temperamental and doesn't maintain selection. First, you can click-RELEASE drag and the box starts to draw and then disappears. I'm assuming it's supposed to be a click-HOLD-drag all the time?

The mechanism has to be revised. The issue is that tools can either use selection or not, so tools are asked if the need selection. If not, selection is disabled. But it's not fully working in the current version.

In the PREVIEW menu, edges from partionioned nodes don't display

Yes that will be fixed in a future release. Actually edges between clusters are a bit different and called meta-edges. That's why they don't naturally appears in the data laboratory or preview.

Thanks again!