ParaView
Proxy Hints And Annotations

This page documents Proxy Hints, which are XML tags accepted under Hints for a Proxy element in the Server-Manager configuration XMLs.

WarnOnRepresentationChange

Warn the user on changing to a specific representation type.

For the motivation behind this hint, see BUG #15117. This is used to indicate to the pqDisplayRepresentationWidget that the user must be prompted with a *'Are you sure?'* if they manually switch to this representation from the UI.

<RepresentationProxy ...>
  ...
  <Hints>
    <WarnOnRepresentationChange value="Volume" />
  </Hints>
</RepresentationProxy>

ReaderFactory

Mark a proxy as reader proxy so that it's used to open files from the File | Open dialog.

This hint is used to mark a proxy as a reader. It provides the ParaView applicaiton with information about extensions supported by this reader. extensions attribute to list the supported extensions e.g. "foo foo.bar" for files named as somename.foo or somename.foo.bar. filename_patterns attribute is used to list the filename patterns to match. The format is similar to what one would use for ls or dir using wildcards e.g. spcth* to match spcta, spctb etc.

<SourceProxy ...>
  ...
  <Hints>
    <ReaderFactory extensions="[space separated extensions w/o leading '.']"
        filename_patterns="[space separated filename patters (using wildcards)]"
        file_description="[user-friendly description]" />
  </Hints>
</SourceProxy>

View

Specify the default view to use for showing the output produced by a source/filter.

This hint is used to indicate the name of the view to use by default for showing the output of this source/filter on first Apply. To sepecify the view type for a specific output port, you can use the optional attribute port.

<SourceProxy ...>
  ...
  <Hints>
    <View type="XYChartView" />
  </Hints>
</SourceProxy>

Plotable

Mark output data as plotable in 2D chart views.

Chart views in ParaView e.g. Bar Chart View, Line Chart View, support plotting data of any type. However, since such plots don't use distributed rendering techniques, to avoid accidentally plotting large datasets, the plots by default can only show sources/filters that produce vtkTable as the output. If a source/filter doesn't produce a vtkTable, but produces data that should indeed be plotted by such views, one can use this hint.

<SourceProxy ...>
  <Hints>
    <Plotable />
  </Hints>
</SourceProxy>

RepresentationType

Specify the representation type to use by default when showing the output from a source/filter in a particular view.

This hint is used to indicate the default representation type in any/all views. The view attribute is optional. When not specified it matches all views. Likewise, port attribute is optional. When not specified it matches all output ports. The hints are processed in order. Hence when specifying multiple Representation elements, start with most restrictive to least restrictive.

Note, this hint doesn't control which representaton proxy gets created, but the default value for the "Representation" property on the representation proxy set using vtkSMRepresentationProxy::SetRepresentationType().

<SourceProxy ...>
  ...
  <Hints>
    <RepresentationType view="ComparativeRenderView" type="Surface" port="1"/>
    <RepresentationType view="RenderView" type="Wireframe" />
  </Hints>
</SourceProxy>

Representation

Specify the representation proxy to create to show the output from a source/filter in a particular view.

This hint is used to indicate the representation proxy to create to show the output from a source/filter in a paritcular view, rather than letting the view determine which representation proxy to create. This is rare. The more common use-case of picking the default representation type is satisfied by RepresentationType XML hint documented above.

The required view attribute specifies the view to which the hint applies and should be set to the XML proxy name of the view. The required type attribute specifies the XML proxy name for representation to create. The optional port attribute can be used to limit the hint to specific output port.

<SourceProxy ...>
  ...
  <Hints>
    <Representation view="RenderView" type="TextSourceRepresentation" />
  </Hints>
</SourceProxy>

ShowProxyDocumentationInPanel

Show an annotation label in the auto-generated panel generated using pqProxyWidget.

This hint is used to indicate that the documentation for the proxy should be shown in special label at the top of the panel generated for the proxy. This is useful to show information to the user directly on the panel.

The ShowProxyDocumentationInPanel take one optional attribute type. The possible values are:

  1. description: (default) to use vtkSMDocumentation::GetDescription(),
  2. short_help: to use vtkSMDocumentation::GetShortHelp(), and
  3. long_help: to use vtkSMDocumentation::GetLongHelp().

    <SourceProxy ...> <Documentation> Some text that will be shown in the label. </Documentation> ... <Hints> <ShowProxyDocumentationInPanel type="description"> </Hints> </SourceProxy>

ReloadFiles

Indicate the property on a reader to use to refresh (or reload) the reader to make it re-read the data files.

This hint can be used for readers that support "smart refresh" to re-read files when they are changed. Otherwise, ParaView will use the default mechanism which simply recreated the reader thus forgoing any previous data cached by the reader. The attribute property indicates the name of the property on the reader proxy to invoke to make the reader refresh.

<SourceProxy>
...
  <Hints>
    <ReloadFiles property="Refresh" />
  </Hints>
</SourceProxy>

View Annotations

Views support the following annotations:

  1. ParaView::DetachedFromLayout: If set to "True", this annotation will prevent the layout from grabbing the view, enabling custom application developers to assign or position the view themselves. Use pqObjectBuilder::createView(viewType, server, true) to create a new view with this annotation added.