Copy & Paste Activity Directives

[ivydeliz]

Feature #1544

I removed the keyboard shortcuts for Copy & Paste because I tried a few times, there were still open question and we didn't like the options, I'll try on a separate branch off of this one to see if i can make it work.

[AaronPlave]

Looking great, so nice to be able to copy paste! Left a bunch of comments but nothing huge.

[dandelany]

@ivydeliz gave a walkthrough this morning and it's looking good! A few issues/changes we discussed (some of these are duplicates of comments above):

• bug with offsets when you paste two directives where one is anchored to the other - the offset time changes for the anchored directive, but it should remain the same offset, just anchored to the new directive
• bug with keyboard shortcuts - the listener runs for all copy/paste keyboard actions even when not intended. Ideally should be possible to Ctrl+C most text on the page and Ctrl+V into any input box without triggering directive copy/paste
• We decided to change the paste text in the menu when you right click on the timeline from "Paste at Time" to "Paste Directive at Time" when a single directive is copied, or eg. "Paste 5 Directives at Time" when multiple are copied

We also had a question about how to handle the case where some of the pasted activities fall outside of the plan bounds entirely. We currently allow this to happen - which is probably correct - but would be good to get input from @mattdailis or @Mythicaeda . We also noted a UI inconsistency - it seems that activity directives which fall before the plan bounds are shown with a "outside plan bounds" icon/warning in the directives table, but directives which are after the plan bounds don't show this - not clear if this is intentional or something we should fix in a follow-up

[Mythicaeda]

We also noted a UI inconsistency - it seems that activity directives which fall before the plan bounds are shown with a "outside plan bounds" icon/warning in the directives table, but directives which are after the plan bounds don't show this - not clear if this is intentional or something we should fix in a follow-up

I can shed some light on this, @dandelany. This inconsistency is because while we know for a fact whether or not an activity falls before the plan start time, we may not know if an activity falls after the plan end time due to anchors.

Quick Case breakdown:

1. Activity A's start time is one hour after the plan's end time.
2. Activity A's start time is one hour before the plan's end time. Activity B is anchored to start as soon as Activity A finishes. Activity A may run either two minutes or two hours.

In Case 1, we know statically that Activity A is outside the plan bounds. In Case 2, we don't know until the user simulates if Activity B will be within the plan bounds. We felt it would be more confusing (and possibly misleading) to the user to mark Case 1 and not Case 2 than it would be to not mark either case.

Changing this would require a DB change, as that's what runs the validation logic for activity start times.

[Mythicaeda]

We also had a question about how to handle the case where some of the pasted activities fall outside of the plan bounds entirely. We currently allow this to happen - which is probably correct

My take is:

• when copying an anchor chain, copy-paste should not change anchor relationships -- if the user copied an anchor chain and an activity that is not the root lands outside the plan bounds, we should let the user handle that
• when you copy an activity that is anchored to something and paste it such that it is no longer anchored, then it's start offset should be at minimum plan-start and at maximum plan end (I'm assuming that if you're hovering over a time in the timeline that it's start offset is set to that time)
  • I think this logic still makes sense if it's also applied to activities that weren't anchored to anything when you copied them, but am willing to hear @mattdailis's thoughts if he disagrees

I feel the strongest about the first bullet.

[ivydeliz]

I removed the keyboard shortcuts for Copy & Paste because I tried a few times, there were still open question and we didn't like the options, I'll try on a separate branch off of this one to see if i can make it work.

[AaronPlave]

One small comment but otherwise LGTM!