[kepler-dev] [Bug 4869] changes made to workflows during dialogs before committing

[bugzilla-daemon at ecoinformatics.org]

http://bugzilla.ecoinformatics.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4869

--- Comment #7 from Christopher Brooks <cxh at eecs.berkeley.edu> 2010-03-11 11:39:49 PST ---
> This happens when you just run Vergil:
> -drag a StringConst actor to the stage
> -edit the actor params
> -type some value for it
> -hit "Help"
> -close help window
> oops, no more edit dialog and my change is remembered (the value i typed in is
> now the value even though I never hit commit).

> Ptolemy folks want to chime in on whether this is a bug or a feature? I think
> the Edit dialog should remain after I close the Help dialog so that I can
> always choose to cancel my actor parameter changes.

I checked Ptolemy II 6.0 and the above behavior occurs.
I checked a Web Start version of Ptolemy II 2.0 and the behavior below occurs:
> -Remove..shows a screen...then Ok/Cancel will leave the actor with changes

So, I'm fairly certain this is design feature, not a new bug.  The code
in EditParameters _handleClosing() dates from 2000.

The issue is that Edit Parameters is a modal dialog.  If the user moves away
from the window by clicking a button that brings up another window, what should 
happen?
Currently, we commit the change, which seems wrong.

An alternative is to close the window, losing the change and bring up 
the new dialog.  That seems wrong as well, since we are losing data.

A better alternative would be to somehow make the dialog non-modal, bring
up the new modal dialog, what for the new modal dialog to close and then
make the first dialog be modal again.  Good luck getting that one right.
I for one, do not want to see a change like go out in Kepler-2.0.  The
odds of getting it right are vanishingly small.

An even better alternative is to get rid of modal dialogs :-)

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