SMTK 22.05 Release Notes

See also SMTK 22.04 Release Notes for previous changes.

SMTK Resource Changes

New methods on smtk::resource::Resource

You can now ask a resource for raw pointers to components via the components() and the (templated) componentsAs<X>() methods. Use these methods only when

1. you have a read or write lock on the resource (i.e., you are inside an operation) so that no other thread can remove the component; and

2. you are sure that the component will not be removed from the resource for the duration of your use of the pointer (in the case where a write lock is held and components may be removed).

Note for developers

If you subclass smtk::resource::Resource, you should consider overriding the components() method to provide an efficient implementation as it can improve performance as the number of components grows large. You may also wish to consider changing any subclasses of smtk::resource::Component to refer back to their parent resource using a smtk::common::WeakReferenceWrapper and providing a method to fetch the raw pointer to the parent resource from the weak-reference-wrapper’s cache. This will improve performance when many components must be asked for their parent resource as the overhead of locking a weak pointer and copying a shared pointer can be significant. However, note that any method returning a raw pointer will not be thread-safe. This method is intended solely for cases where a read- or write-lock is held on the resource and the algorithm can guarantee a shared pointer is held elsewhere for the duration.

If you maintain an operation that needs to be performant with large numbers of components, consider using these methods to avoid the overhead of shared-pointer construction.

SMTK Attribute Resource Changes

Allowing Designers to Set the Default Name Separator for Attribute Resources

Added an API to set, get and reset the Default Name Separator used by the Attribute Resource when creating unique names for a new Attribute. Also added support in Version 5 XML Attribute Files as well as in JSON representations to save and retrieve the separator.

New C++ API Changes for smtk::attribute::Resource

/**\brief Get the separator used for new Attributes whose names are not unique
 */
const std::string &defaultNameSeparator();
/**\brief Reset the separator used for new Attributes whose names are not unique to to the default which is '-'.
 */
void resetDefaultNameSeparator();
/**\brief Set the separator used for new Attributes whose names are not unique
 */
bool setDefaultNameSeparator(const std::string& separator);

XML Formatting Additions

This example sets the Name Separator to ::

<SMTK_AttributeResource Version=”5” ID=”504c3ea1-0aa4-459f-8267-2ba973d786ad” NameSeparator=”::”> </SMTK_AttributeResource>

Attribute itemPath Method

Added “smtk::attribute::Attribute::itemPath” method that will return the full path string to the “item” parameter within the attribute. The default separator is “/” and can be changed as needed.

SMTK View Changes

Descriptive Phrase Model Change in Subphrase Generation

Previously, subphrases generation was done on demand as a performance optimization. Unfortunately, this made certain potential functionality such as ternary visibility difficult to implement at best. By forcing the Phrase Model to build all that it can in terms of its subphrases, it will now be possible to calculate and maintain a ternary visibility state.

SMTK QT Changes

Saving Collapsible Group View Box State

The View now stores its open/close state within its configuration so when it is rebuilt it knows if it should be open or closed.

Designers can also use this to set the initial state of the Group View.

The XML Attribute that controls this is called Open and is set to true or false.

Qt subsystem: badge click actions

Previously, the smtk::extension::qtDescriptivePhraseDelegate generated badge clicks inside its editorEvent() method. However, that method is not provided with access to the view in which the click occurred and thus could not access the view’s QSelectionModel. Now, each widget that uses the descriptive-phrase delegate (smtk::extension::qtResourceBrowser, smtk::extension::qtReferenceItem, smtk::extension::qtReferenceTree) installs an event filter on its view’s viewport-widget and passes mouse clicks to qtDescriptivePhraseDelegate::processBadgeClick().

User-facing changes

Users will now see that:

• clicks on badges in the widgets above will not change the Qt selection as they did previously,

• clicking on the badge of a selected item in the widgets above will act upon all the selected items, and

• clicking on the badge of an unselected item in the widgets above will only act on that item.

This behavior should be significantly more intuitive than before.

Developer notes

If you use qtDescriptivePhraseDelegate in any of your own classes, you cannot rely on it to handle badge clicks itself; instead you must install an event filter on your view-widget’s viewport (not the view widget itself) and pass mouse clicks to the delegate along with the view widget.

Added onDefinitionChange Signal to qtAttributeView

Added a signal called “onDefinitionChange” that will emitted when the user selects a definition from the definition combo box. Classes that inherit qtAttributeView can connect to this signal in order control the widget’s behavior based on the type of definition the user has selected.

qtGroupItem’s Modified Children

When the user modifies an item that is a child of a group item from the gui, the full path to that item is included in the result of the resulting Signal operation that will be run by the view.

qtInputsItem children displayed on right

The children of a discrete qtInputsItem widget are now displayed to the right of the combobox, rather than underneath the combobox. This change was made to decrease wasted space in the Attribute Panel, but also to remove the primary example case of a Qt-related bug that could squish the child input widgets when the parent was extensible.

Developer changes

This makes the Attribute Panel wider than it was before when a qtInputsItem with children is present (but also shorter). Although this isn’t deemed to be a problem, it’s something to be aware of.

User-facing changes

When a discrete value combobox had children, they used to display beneath the combobox. With this change, the children will now display to the right of the combobox. See here for more details.

SMTK ParaView Extensions Changes

Reorganization of extensions/paraview/appcomponents

To benefit client apps of smtk, the sources and resources in extensions/paraview/appcomponents/plugin-core have all been moved to the appcomponents directory and into the smtkPQComponentsExt library, so they are accessible outside smtk. The plugin has been split into three, with plugin-core retaining the auto-start and behaviors, and plugin-gui containing all the toolbars, and panels, and plugin-readers containing the importers and readers.

SMTK VTK Related Changes

Dataset information operation for VTK backend

There is a new operation (smtk::geometry::DataSetInfoInspector) that computes, for each associated component, the number of points and cells (of each type) present in the VTK-renderable geometry.

This operation has a custom view that automatically updates a table showing the counts as soon as the associations change.

VTK resource multi-block source changes

If an smtk::geometry::Geometry provider adds the name of a component to a cache entry (by setting the vtkCompositeDataSet::NAME() key the cache entry’s vtkInformation object), the vtkSMTKResourceMultiBlockSource filter will copy the information key to its output.

If you are an end user of a ParaView-based application, then the information panel may now display more helpful information in its block-inspector tree.

If you maintain your own geometry cache for a custom resource type and wish users to see the name in ParaView’s (and/or ModelBuilder’s) information panel, then you should update your geometry object to set the name.

SMTK Graph Session Changes

Breaking changes to graph-resource arcs

The way SMTK represents arcs has changed. This is a breaking change to accommodate new functionality: the ability to provide or request indexing of both the “forward” arc direction (from, to) and the “reverse” arc direction (to, from).

Previously, the ArcMap class held arcs in a TypeMap (a map of maps from arc type-name to UUID to arc API object). Now the ArcMap is a TypeContainer (a simple map from arc typeid hash code to arc API object).

The arc classes have also changed. If you previously did not inherit any of SMTK’s arc classes, you will need to adapt your own arc classes to expose new methods. See the graph-session documentation for the new method(s) you must provide. If you previously inherited Arc, Arcs, or OrderedArcs in your resource, these classes are removed. Instead, if you do not provide implementations of methods for accessing and manipulating arcs, the implementation will provide them for you by applying the ExplicitArcs template to your traits class.

For more details, see the updated documentation for the graph subsystem.

Python Related Changes

Python bindings for smtk.common

Now smtk.common.Managers has python bindings. Without this class being wrapped, it was impossible to call smtk.resource.Manager.read and smtk.resource.Manager.write since these methods now require a Managers instance.

Plugin Changes

Make QT_NO_KEYWORDS optional for external plugins

External plugins can add the option ALLOW_QT_KEYWORDS to their use of smtk_add_plugin to skip the enforcement of QT_NO_KEYWORDS for the plugin. For example:

smtk_add_plugin(

smtkAEVASessionPlugin ALLOW_QT_KEYWORDS PARAVIEW_PLUGIN_ARGS VERSION “1.0” …)

General Build Changes

Support for old hash namespace conventions dropped

SMTK now requires compilers to support specializations of hash inside the std namespace. Previously, SMTK accepted specializations in non-standard locations such as the global namespace, in the std::tr1 namespace, and others.

Developer notes

If your repository uses any of the following macros, use the replacements as described:

• SMTK_HASH_NS should be replaced with std

• SMTK_HASH_NS_BEGIN should be replaced with namespace std {

• SMTK_HASH_NS_END should be replaced with }

• Any code enabled by SMTK_HASH_SPECIALIZATION should be unconditionally enabled and any code disabled by this macro should be removed.