Technical attributes: what to do with them?

[paulgirard]

We separate data attributes from technical attributes as the former are user land where the former are the data used to create the viz.

Technical attributes are :

• node id
• node label
• node size
• node position
• node color
• edge id
• edge label
• edge weight
• edge color

Positions are very specific I will exclude those in my text below

in appearance

The appearance and layout panels are the tool to modify the technical attributes.

In the ideal Gephi Lite usecase there are not data in the technical attributes that are generated from a data attribute.
In reality it's often the case that a graph embed important data directly in the technical attributes.
It's actually the case of the famous "Les Miserables.gexf".

In such situation Gephi Lite can't be used properly, unless we copy the technical attributes into a data attributes using a custom metric. Doable but very hacky.

To sum up the issue:

• open Les Miserables.gexf
• open the appearance panel on edge tab
• the size parameter can only be set to "original value" weight as is or "constant" size
• we can't use a different scale or transform method to tune the size based on the edge weight (which is in that case the number of interactions , I think)
• we can create a custom metric to create a nb_interaction attributes which only do return attributes.weight (actually that does not work see edge custom script does not pass technical attributes to the method #136

in node/edge edition

We list all attributes including the technical one. Some are editable (label) some are not (color, size).
And we can't distinguish which one is what in UI.

A example of the confusion: I created many nodes filling the label attributes.
Then I wanted to use an other attributes as label.
I couldn't say if this action would overwrite the label I wrote or not.

What should we do?

The solution to this is not clear to me but here are some food for thoughts:

• exposing the 'original [weight|size|color]' in appearance and filter as attributes but that is very messy (confusion with the original state option unless we replace this by a 'as is' option applicable to any attribute)
• add the original data attribute in the graph model (folded by default) as read only
• add in graph model a button to propose the user to copy one technical attribute in one data attribute
• when importing a graph with only technical attribute but no data attribute automatically create data attribute out of technical one (probably too magical too me and depends on decisions regarding appearance)
• clarify and systematize technical data attribute UX in edition modal:
  - [ ] show current technical attribute in an explicit and specific place
  - [ ] show original data attribute in an explicit and specific place (could be folded by default)
  - [ ] Forbid edition on technical attributes including label