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?
Isn't this an artifact (a view or byproduct) of the analysis and not actually a dataset itself?
Do you want a static version or, if possible, easier access to a pre-configured interactive visualization?
Would a saved visualization (of the type you find under 'Visualizations->Saved Visualizations' menu) work in a png or pdf's place?

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.

Re: generating a visualization from a workflow:

Would a saved visualization work here as well?

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.

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.

On Tue, Mar 10, 2015 at 7:46 AM, Peter Cock <p.j.a.cock@googlemail.com> wrote:

On Tue, Mar 10, 2015 at 11:24 AM, Peter Cock <p.j.a.cock@googlemail.com> wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> I'm hoping to construct a workflow which produces a simple tally table
> (using the "Count1" tool, "Count occurrences of each record", which is
> still shipped with the Galaxy core) and then draws this as a Pie Chart.
>
> 1. Using "Count1", generate tally table (a simple two column tabular file,
> counts and labels as c1 and c2) in the history.
>
> 2. Click on the tally table in the history to expand the green box
>
> 3. Click on the "Visualize" icon, pick "Charts", click on "Pie Chart"
>
> 4. Click "Draw" or the "Configuration" tab.
>
> 5. Change donut ratio to zero, show legend to true, and show labels
> output to true.
>
> 6. Click "Draw" or the "Add Data" tab.
>
> 7. Under "Select Columns", "Labels", pick c2
>
> 8. Under "Select Columns", "Values", keep default c1
>
> 9. Click "Draw"
>
> 10. Admire interactive Pie Chart
>
> 11. Click "Screenshot", offered PNG / SVG / PDF but these are
> only direct downloads (well, PDF is more complicated).
>
> Question: How can I "save" a static snapshot of the Pie Chart as a
> new history item (other than downloading it locally and then uploading
> it)?
>
> Question: If so, can I then turn this history into a workflow which
> would recreate the pie chart?
>
> As a work around I could write a traditional Galaxy tool which takes
> as input data files(s) and pre-sets the columns and visualisation
> settings, and produces static image(s) as output (e.g. PDF and PNG).
>
> Peter

I should add that I've tried this on both the latest Galaxy from GitHub
running locally as my development server, and with the current stable
release at http://usegalaxy.org

Also the "Screenshot" button has a camera icon (makes sense). I'd
like a "Save" button (using the disk icon) as well or instead. Meanwhile
the "Draw" button (used in steps 4, 6, 9) has a disk icon which seems
somewhat confusing to me (it doesn't save - it takes you to another
interactive page within Galaxy).

Peter
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