Re: [galaxy-dev] Saving a Galaxy visualization (e.g. PNG or PDF) into the history / workflow
On Fri, Mar 13, 2015 at 3:31 PM, Carl Eberhard <carlfeberhard(a)gmail.com> wrote:
In short:
>
> Question: How can I "save" a static snapshot...?
You can't yet.
> Question: If so, can I then ...recreate the pie chart?
No, not yet.
Overall, these are features that we definitely want and we are working
towards them. Questions remain for me, if I understand your original
questions, about these two features.
Re: saving a visualization to a history:
What is the final use of the 'hardcopy' (png or pdf) of the visualization?
In other words, is it for: publication or exposition, summary/overview info,
a jumping off point for exploring the data, or something else?
In general I'm picturing the figure as one of several outputs from
a workflow - which could be intended as figures in a PDF paper.
In this specific example, the pie chart is essentially a visual summary
of a (crude) assembly contamination assessment.
I would be happy with a read-only static Pie Chart (as an easy to
download PNG/PDF).
If it remained an interactive image (from which I can still download
a PNG/PDF snapshot as now) that would be even more powerful,
but would not be a self-contained Galaxy dataset anymore.
Isn't this an artifact (a view or byproduct) of the analysis and
not
actually a dataset itself?
I think from the way you are using the terms, I am thinking of a
saved visualisation as a Galaxy dataset in its own right.
Do you want a static version or, if possible, easier access to a
pre-configured interactive visualization?
A static image is fine. A pre-configured interactive visualization
would be good too - either as long it is an integral part of the
history/workflow, and would be shared along with it.
Would a saved visualization (of the type you find under
'Visualizations->Saved Visualizations' menu) work in a png
or pdf's place?
Possibly - how currently can the user save a visualization?
In any event, I think more flexible conversion of visualizations to
hardcopies is doable with some added backend technology like
ImageMagick to render SVG to PNG, etc. If also wrapped in a
tool, this would let us add these to the history.
That sounds good.
Re: generating a visualization from a workflow:
Would a saved visualization work here as well?
Yes, for me at least.
I think the main problem here is translation of what may be a more
complex
visualization UI (to control the configuration) to something that can be
more simply rendered in a workflow page (as tool configurations are now). At
least some of the configuration could be handled this way, at any rate -
things like Chart's chart type, and data columns, etc.
That's what I was hoping.
There are ways to pass visualization configurations directly over the
url,
so this may be easier than I think too.
These are good ideas. Thanks, Peter.
No problem - I'm glad to know the team are already working
towards this kind of functionality, even if we're not there yet.
Regards,
Peter