[Bf-python] Contrib Addon Review: io_mesh_xyz

[Clemens Barth]

Thanks for your review, Campbell.

Just to inform you all: There are already a couple of colleagues,
who use this I/O in research.

    1. They use Blender for modeling their
    atomic structures in the 3D scene, which is then saved as an xyz
    file. The latter is used as an input for calculations.

    2. Blender is certainly used for creating exciting, high-quality
    artwork,
    and some of them are going to be publish soon!

For instance, may be you have seen our recent cover
picture (http://clemens-barth.root-1.de/News/AdvMater_Suzuki.jpeg).
Very recently we published an other article and used Blender again
(http://ej.iop.org/images/1367-2630/14/10/103037/Full/nj441116f5_online.jpg).

*Note:* Since the xyz addon still needs to be downloaded from my own server
I have automatically the statistics: The addon is downloaded 2 to 3 
times a day!

Blender is absolutely fantastic and beats everything that is doing something
similar in 3D. We urgently need to include this XYZ IO into trunc because
the installation is then much easier! However, we have to take care about
certain simplifications that should be included into the IO and that 
have to be convenient
for, in particular, researchers (experimentalists, theorists, physics, 
chemistry,
biology, etc.).


> Being import/exporter this addon can be included in blender just to
> support the format, but it does some things differently to most other
> IO scripts.
Well, this is exactly the story we once had with the PDB I/O, you 
remember last year? :-)
The panel is very useful for changing some prefs of loaded atom 
structures. If we
remove them, we loose easy functionality!

>
> Enabling the addon, adds a panel in the toolbar, under the "Operator" panel.
> Addons currenly don't have a good place to store preferences,
To my opinion, this should be changed in future: Finding a better place 
for panels. But so far,
things also work quite well ... it is a minor problem.
>   but
> think this isnt a good way to work around it.
Well, all my colleagues and me really need this panel daily! We beg you:
don't remove the panel. :-)
>
> This panel has settings for loading frames, I think these should be in
> the importer panel.
You mean into this file dialog? Oh, no ... the reason is the following: When
a structure is loaded, only the first frame is visible. Sometimes, xyz 
files may
contain more than >1000 frames, which you sometimes don't want to see.
So, this is why there is a 'skip frames' option. Furthermore, there is 
the option to
put other frames in between two frames to smoothen the movements 
(frame/key).
After having chosen the 2 prefs values, you load the frames, which may 
take some
time.

Finding out the best parameters is just done by try/error in the scene 
(playing around):
you try out one set of parameters and if this is not good, you delete 
the keys, change the
parameters and restart. This is quite convenient and easy to do.


> So I'd rather have this panel removed, settings moved into import or export.
> any settings that you may want to re-use can be stored as operator presets.
As last year, we have to negotiate ... . :-) BUT: I agree to remove 
these two
buttons that are for the rendering of the scene.
>
>
> This script needs a code-review too, some of the things it does are a
> bit unconventional for blender/python scripts.
Yeah, it probably is. :-) But, as I said, it is somewhat designed for us
researchers to modify the loaded structure in an easy way.


Okay, I have seen your comments to the code
(http://codereview.appspot.com/6815052/diff/1/io_mesh_xyz/__init__.py#newcode98). 

But before I start, I would like to hear your all opinions ...

Cheers,

Belndphys.


>

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