Flow and block programming UI

[thorwhalen]

Important links

Awesome node base UIs

Simple prelim plan

Make a (meshed) DAG with a fixed set of prepared function nodes/blocks

Able to export a DAG into a parsable form (e.g. json

Able to import a DAG from a previously exported format

Enable node annotation

Free form (Schema-free) nested mapping

This ability will allow us to do many other things, and may need something we'll need to do at some point anyway.
All we need for this is a separate (SoC) nested mapping editor.

Schema nested mapping

Enhance the nested mapping editor with validation and constraint capabilities (to be able to do the following.

Then, use this capability to make it easy for the user to create nodes of a given type.
First targets are meshed's fundamental objects:

• FuncNode: fields (all str unless otherwise specified): name, label (defaults to name), bind (str-str mapping), out
• var node (which is just an IDed node).

Able to use friendlier domain-specific formats (e.g. graphviz, mermaid...)

Note: Will have to enhance these with extra info that is missing in these formats (for example, using comments within a mini-language we'll invent)

Enable smooth two-way communication

The pinnacle of this would be such "online code editors" or "in-browser code playgrounds" as mermaid (or for web dev, JSfiddle, CodePen, etc.).
This is because sometimes it makes sense to do things directly in the view, and sometimes in a simple domain specific language.

Running the graph, seeing effects on the view itself

Features

For now, we'll constrain ourselves to only function and variable (value) nodes, but should keep in mind that we might extend this to incorporate a wider range of types.

• Connect nodes/blocks
  • One kind of nodes
  • Several pre-made nodes
• Annotate nodes (with a nested mapping).
  • Function node: name, label (defaults to name), bind (str-str mapping), out (str)
  • Value node: name
• Create and save blocks (for future use).
  • Tag blocks (to be able to enable non-hierarchical categorization and search)

Note: We should be able to add a callback for every action taken on visual object, so we can enable these actions to trigger events such as:

• Validation, such as:
  • Is your connection valid? (e.g. Do we allow func_node to func_node connections, or only through var_nodes, and if so do we allow more than one func_node to feed to
  • Are your IDs identical?
  • Can those two blocks be connected?

To be continued...