At present none of the options on the Plot Layout page of the data wizard are remembered. Does it make sense to selectively remember some, while not remembering others? This would be confusing to people I think. We should either remember all of the settings on a given page, or none.

On Wednesday 18 January 2006 14:51, Andrew Walker wrote:
> ------- At present none of the options on the Plot Layout page of the data
> wizard are remembered. Does it make sense to selectively remember some,
> while not remembering others? This would be confusing to people I think. We
> should either remember all of the settings on a given page, or none.


  We remember a couple of things actually, but we have requests to disable 
that because it's causing problems for some users.

Given that the preference seems to be to move in the opposite direction to what this bug report is proposing shouldn't it be withdrawn?

On Thursday 19 January 2006 13:29, Andrew Walker wrote:
> ------- Given that the preference seems to be to move in the opposite
> direction to what this bug report is proposing shouldn't it be withdrawn?


   Let's see what needs to be done for the other situation first.  I should 
know in 2 weeks.

I believe usability needs live testing. It's not only a matter of principles like homogeneity and general guidelines (even though those are very important as well), but most importantly of workflow and user-centric considerations.
Please don't withdraw this bug too quickly, because in some of our use cases here (e.g. one data file with a few thousand variables, where we don't know at first which variables to look at), we invoke the data wizard a great number of times and improvements such as those requested here DO make a difference. 

To illustrate this request more precisely, just imagine you have already loaded 100 different vars. If you need to add one you currently have to click the "use existing" field for the X var (X very often being time, which does not need to be duplicated), then you must scroll through the dropdown list, which is sorted in a different order than the list on the left (neither alphabetically, nor according to position in the file), find your X var, click it and only then can you proceed to the relevant action: selecting the Y variable. This can and should really be improved.
I'd suggest a pragmatic approach: we try to build a list of options to remember and agree on it before implementing this feature. I'm pretty confident that we can find the right subset, and I'm sure users won't complain if they don't need to click time and again on the same options. They might not even notice that kst remembers only some of their settings until they need to do something very different from their usual workflow.

I would suggest that if we are going to remember some settings that we remember all settings. The first page of the data wizard could then have a Reset button which would return all the settings to their default values.

Should be fixed for 1.2.1 release

Created attachment 15140 [details]
Proposed patch

Remember the settings that make sense to remember

I haven't read the patch, but I think this should be held back a while until bug #120330 is closed, as the UI and hence available settings could be impacted.

SVN commit 519273 by arwalker:

BUG:120331 Remember more settings. This can be modified as necessary for later UI changes.

 M  +2 -0      datawizard.ui  
 M  +105 -0    datawizard.ui.h  


--- trunk/extragear/graphics/kst/src/libkstapp/datawizard.ui #519272:519273
@@ -1369,6 +1369,8 @@
     <function returnType="bool">xVectorOk()</function>
     <function returnType="bool">yVectorsOk()</function>
     <function>showPage( QWidget * page )</function>
+    <function>loadSettings()</function>
+    <function>saveSettings()</function>
 </functions>
 <pixmapinproject/>
 <layoutdefaults spacing="6" margin="11"/>
--- trunk/extragear/graphics/kst/src/libkstapp/datawizard.ui.h #519272:519273
@@ -53,6 +53,8 @@
     _xVectorExisting->setEnabled(false);
     _xVectorExisting->_newVector->hide();
     _xVectorExisting->_editVector->hide();
+    
+    loadSettings();
 }
 
 
@@ -484,6 +486,8 @@
     int ptype = 0;
     int prg = 0;
   
+    saveSettings();
+    
     KstDataSourcePtr ds = *KST::dataSourceList.findReusableFileName(_file);
     if (!ds) {
 	ds = KstDataSource::loadSource(_file);
@@ -1028,4 +1032,105 @@
     sourceChanged(_url->url());
 }
 
+void DataWizard::saveSettings()
+{
+  KConfig cfg("kstrc", false, false);
+
+  cfg.setGroup("DataWizard");
+
+  cfg.writeEntry("PlotXY", _radioButtonPlotData->isChecked());
+  cfg.writeEntry("PlotPS", _radioButtonPlotPSD->isChecked());
+  cfg.writeEntry("PlotBoth", _radioButtonPlotDataPSD->isChecked());
+  
+  cfg.writeEntry("XCreate", _xAxisCreateFromField->isChecked());
+  cfg.writeEntry("XFieldCreate", _xVector->currentText());
+  cfg.writeEntry("XExists", _xAxisUseExisting->isChecked());
+  cfg.writeEntry("XFieldExists", _xVectorExisting->selectedVector());
+  
+  cfg.writeEntry("Lines", _drawLines->isChecked());
+  cfg.writeEntry("Points", _drawPoints->isChecked());
+  cfg.writeEntry("Both", _drawBoth->isChecked());
+  
+  cfg.writeEntry("LogX", _psdLogX->isChecked());
+  cfg.writeEntry("LogY", _psdLogY->isChecked());
+  cfg.writeEntry("XAxisLabel", _xAxisLabels->isChecked());
+  cfg.writeEntry("YAxisLabel", _yAxisLabels->isChecked());
+  cfg.writeEntry("TitleLabel", _plotTitles->isChecked());
+  
+  cfg.writeEntry("LegendsOn", _legendsOn->isChecked());
+  cfg.writeEntry("LegendsOff", _legendsOff->isChecked());
+  cfg.writeEntry("LegendsAuto", _legendsAuto->isChecked());
+  
+  cfg.writeEntry("OnePlot", _onePlot->isChecked());
+  cfg.writeEntry("MultiplePlots", _multiplePlots->isChecked());
+  cfg.writeEntry("CycleThrough", _cycleThrough->isChecked());
+  cfg.writeEntry("CycleExisting", _cycleExisting->isChecked());
+  cfg.writeEntry("PlotNumber", _plotNumber->value());
+}
+
+
+void DataWizard::loadSettings()
+{
+  KConfig cfg("kstrc");
+  QListBoxItem* pItem;
+  QString str;
+  
+  cfg.setGroup("DataWizard");
+    
+  if (cfg.readBoolEntry("PlotXY", true)) {
+    _radioButtonPlotData->setChecked(true);
+  } else if (cfg.readBoolEntry("PlotPS", true)) {
+    _radioButtonPlotPSD->setChecked(true);
+  } else {
+    _radioButtonPlotDataPSD->setChecked(true);
+  }
+  
+  if (cfg.readBoolEntry("XCreate", true) || _xVectorExisting->_vector->count() == 0) {
+    _xAxisCreateFromField->setChecked(true);
+    str = cfg.readEntry("XFieldCreate", "");
+    if (_xVector->listBox()) {
+      pItem = _xVector->listBox()->findItem(str, Qt::ExactMatch);
+      if (pItem) {
+        _xVector->listBox()->setSelected(pItem, true);
+      }
+    }
+  } else {
+    _xAxisUseExisting->setChecked(true);
+    str = cfg.readEntry("XFieldExists", "");
+    if (_xVectorExisting->_vector->listBox()) {
+      if (_xVectorExisting->_vector->listBox()->findItem(str, Qt::ExactMatch)) {
+        _xVectorExisting->setSelection(str);
+      }
+    }
+  }
+  
+  if (cfg.readBoolEntry("Lines", true)) {
+    _drawLines->setChecked(true);
+  } else if (cfg.readBoolEntry("Points", true)) {
+    _drawPoints->setChecked(true);
+  } else {
+    _drawBoth->setChecked(true);
+  }
+  
+  _psdLogX->setChecked( cfg.readBoolEntry("LogX", false));
+  _psdLogY->setChecked( cfg.readBoolEntry("LogY", false));
+  _xAxisLabels->setChecked( cfg.readBoolEntry("XAxisLabel", true));
+  _yAxisLabels->setChecked( cfg.readBoolEntry("YAxisLabel", true));
+  _plotTitles->setChecked( cfg.readBoolEntry("TitleLabel", true));
+  
+  if (cfg.readBoolEntry("LegendsAuto", true)) {
+    _legendsAuto->setChecked(true);
+  } else if(cfg.readBoolEntry("LegendsOn", true)) {
+    _legendsOn->setChecked(true);
+  } else {
+    _legendsOff->setChecked(true);
+  }
+
+  _onePlot->setChecked(cfg.readBoolEntry("OnePlot", true));
+  _multiplePlots->setChecked(cfg.readBoolEntry("MultiplePlots", false));
+  _cycleThrough->setChecked(cfg.readBoolEntry("CycleThrough", false));
+  _cycleExisting->setChecked(cfg.readBoolEntry("CycleExisting", false));
+  _plotNumber->setValue(cfg.readNumEntry("PlotNumber", 2));
+}
+
 // vim: ts=8 sw=4 noet