SMTK 23.01 Release Notes

See also SMTK 22.11 Release Notes for previous changes.

SMTK Platform and Software Process Changes

CMake string encoding

The way SMTK encodes the contents of files into its libraries has changed in several regards.

Newly deprecated functions

The CMake functions in CMake/EncodeStringFunctions.cmake (used by smtk_encode_file()) have been replaced by a C++ executable utilities/encode/smtk_encode_file.cxx to allow processing of large files efficiently. These functions are now deprecated.

If you use the functions in CMake/EncodeStringFunctions.cmake, be aware that these are deprecated and will be removed in a future version. If you have small files and wish to use C++11 literals, be aware that you can no longer use the generated headers with a C or C++ compiler unless it supports C++11 raw string literals.

Refactored function

The smtk_encode_file() CMake macro now calls a C++ binary of the same name (whose source is located in utilities/encode/). The new utility can generate files containing

• a python block quote (as before);

• a C++11 raw string literal (rather than the previous, escaped C98 string constant); or

• a C++11 function that returns a std::string (all new).

The latter change (C++11 function output) was made to accommodate encoding files larger than 64kiB on windows, which prohibits arbitrary-length literals. The CMake implementation of string splitting was rejected for performance reasons (CMake would deplete its heap space trying to process files more than a few megabytes).

The new macro and executable also introduce a change in behavior; previously, if you invoked smtk_encode_file("foo/bar.xml" …) inside the subdirectory baz/xyzzy of your project’s source, the generated file would be at baz/xyzzy/bar_xml.h. Now the path to the generated file will be baz/xyzzy/foo/bar_xml.h. This pattern is used by SMTK for operations and icons; if your external library provides these, you will need to adjust your include directives.

Removal of previously deprecated functions

Finally, the deprecated CMake functions smtk_operation_xml and smtk_pyoperation_xml from CMake/SMTKOperationXML.cmake have been removed.

SMTK Common Changes

More path helper functions

The smtk::common::Paths class now provides two additional helper functions:

• areEquivalent() to test whether two paths resolve to the same location on the filesystem; and

• canonical() to return the absolute, canonical (free of symbolic links, ., and ..) version of a path on the filesystem.

SMTK General Resource Related Changes

SMTK Attribute Resource Changes

SMTK Graph Resource Changes

SMTK I/O Changes

Added the ability to “Export” ItemBlocks in Attribute Template Files

Previously ItemBlocks were file-scope only. This change extends ItemBlocks so that an ItemBlock defined in one file can be consumed by another file that includes it. To maintain backward compatibility, an ItemBlock that is to be exported must include the Export XML attribute and be set to true. In order to better organize ItemBlocks, SMTK now supports the concept of Namespaces.

Note Namespaces are only used w/r ItemBlocks and can not be nested. To indicate an ItemBlock is defined with an specific Namespace NS, you will need to use the Namespace XML attribute. As a shortcut, if all of the ItemBlocks in a file are to belong to the same Namespace, you can specify the Namespace XML attribute at the ItemBlocks level as well. If no Namespace is specified, SMTK assumes the ItemBlock belongs to the global Namespace represented by “”.

SMTK Operation Changes

SMTK Markup Resource Changes

Markup resource ontology support

A new smtk::markup::ontology::Source class supports registration of ontologies; plugins can invoke its static registerOntology() method and pass in a simple object that provides ontology metadata. This is done rather than providing operations which create nodes for all the identifiers in the ontology since some ontologies can be quite large (Uberon is a 90+ MiB OWL file as of 2022-12-01) and frequently only a few identifiers from the ontology will be used by any particular resource.

The smtk::markup::TagIndividual operation has significant new functionality for editing tags, including querying any registered ontology object for identifiers by name and creating instances of them. The operation can now both add and remove ontology identifiers.

Finally, there is now a Qt item-widget – smtk::extension::qtOntologyItem used by the the updated TagIndividual operation to provide identifier completion and description information. If your application has a single ontology registered, the TagIndividual operation will automatically autocomplete with identifiers from this ontology. Otherwise you will need to subclass the operation to specify the name of the ontology to use for auto-completion.

Resource read bugs

The smtk::resource::json::jsonResource method had a bug where a resource’s location would be assigned its previous location on the filesystem (i.e., where it was written to rather than where it was read from). This behavior has been changed so that the location is only assigned when the resource’s pre-existing location is an empty string.

Read operations are expected to set the resource’s location to match the filename provided to them. The smtk::markup::Read operation in particular has been fixed to do this so that relative paths to geometric data are now resolved properly.

Finding markup components by name

Finding components in a markup resource by name is now supported.

This also implicitly supports searches by both type and name since the output container type is templated and objects will be cast to the container’s value-type before insertion.

Currently, output containers must hold raw pointers to nodes rather than weak or shared pointers to nodes. This may change in future versions.

SMTK ParaView Related Changes

ParaView Pipeline Sources

Previously, a ParaView pipeline source would be created any time a resource was added to the resource manager owned by SMTK’s ParaView integration. This has been changed so ParaView pipelines are only created when the resource provides a VTK renderable geometry cache (i.e., when resource->geometry(smtk::extension::vtk::geometry::Backend()) returns non-null).

This change was made to support workflows where many non-geometric resources are loaded and the overhead of having ParaView attempt to render them becomes significant.

ParaView plugins reorganized

SMTK’s ParaView plugins have been reorganized into + a subset (core) which, while they may register new UI elements,

do not introduce persistent user interface elements (panels, menus, toolbars) to ParaView’s default interface.

• a subset (gui) which do register new user interface elements that appear in ParaView-based applications by default.

This also involves splitting the auto-start class into two classes, one for each set of plugins.

Going forward, if you add a plugin (or new functionality to an existing plugin) please ensure you choose the correct target.

SMTK Python Related Changes

SMTK 3D Widget Changes

SMTK UI Related Changes

Tab order in extensible group items

Extensible group items are displayed in a Qt table widget instance with one row for each subgroup. Previously, the table widget would not respond to tab key input (typically used for navigating between cells). This has been corrected for most mainstream cases: double items, integer items, string items, and reference items (dropdown box format). Tab-ordering also works with the discrete and expression versions of value items.

There are some cases that have not yet been implemented. The overall tab order might not be consistently preserved between the table widget and other items before and after it in the attribute editor. For optional items, the checkbox is not reliably included in the tab order. The tab behavior is also not defined for discrete items that include conditional children.

Improvements for operation views

Sometimes custom items need access to the operation view which created them. This was not possible with smtk::extension::qtOperationView because internally it created a smtk::extension::qtInstancedView which owned the item. So, we add the operation view to the instanced-view’s configuration-information type-container and add a method so items can fetch the configuration-information type-container from their parent view.

The new smtk::extension::qtOntologyItem is an example of a qtItem intended specifically for operation views that needs to reset its state when its operation completes (and it needs to own the lock on the operation parameters in order to do this so it does not change the operation’s configuration while the operation running).

The operation view now provides a disableApplyAfterRun property which custom item views may set to indicate that re-running an operation with identical parameters is valid (or, in the case of qtOntologyItem, indicates the item cannot know when users have altered parameters due to deficiencies in Qt).

Removal of Deprecated Code

All code that was deprecated before prior to SMTK 22.11 has been removed.

Important Bug Fixes

Fixing qtGroupItem::updateItemData Method

Method was not properly setting the Contents Frame visibility properly. This has now been corrected.

Fixes for ReferenceItem widgets

Neither smtk::extension::qtReferenceItem nor smtk::extension::qtReferenceTree properly called their owning-view’s valueChanged() method when modified. Now they do. If you had to work around this issue before, be aware that you may have to undo those workarounds to avoid double-signaling.

Sort newly-created phrases

The default PhraseModel implementation of handleCreated() did not sort phrases to be inserted. This has been corrected, but if your subphrase generator does not expect phrases to be sorted by object-type and then title, this change will introduce improper behavior and you will need to subclass this method to respond appropriately.