Calculated reference strip on flow fragment preview?

[ei8htbit]

Is it possible to script with query language to auto populate the reference strip at the top level of a flow fragment in it's preview form?

Essentially at the root of my project I have a simplified flow splash screen with a few large top level flow fragments to organize my project (Game State, Story, Notes, etc.) one of these fragments I use as a container for all my quests so I can quickly jump to them visually. I just pull the pane splitter all the way down to cover the description box so it is full of the reference strip icons only as one large horizontal fragment so I can quickly click into major quest sequences from my top level work space.

Currently I am adding the reference to these quests manually into the reference strip, my question, is there a way to automate this process for the top level preview of a fragment similar to how calculated reference strips inside the properties of a fragment use query language script to automatically populate themselves? For instance, I would have it so that every new quest template fragment I create gets automatically referenced in the preview strip of my top level Quest Viewer flow fragment.

Not a huge deal for me to manually add references to the previews, I just find the calculated strips so handy in properties, I wondered if that could be implemented at the top level preview in any way.

[[Articy] Nico Probst]

Hi ei8htbit,

first of all, thanks for the suggestion.

A workaround for your problem, would be to create a template for your "container nodes" that has a calculated reference strip, which could query the informations you need and populate the reference strip automatically. Now obviously this wouldn't be shown in the flow, only in the property sheet. One way to make that work is with another pane or another window and using our syncronized panes feature. That way you always have a property sheet visible and you just have to select the node, see its template in the property sheet and can select the quest from there. I hope that was clear enough

But we are already thinking about expanding our reference strips, but in a slightly different way than the one you proposed. You can show the template on a node, via a checkbox in the toolbar called "Show template information", which will then show you the template of the node and its fields, instead of the description box. Unfortunately this doesn't work for reference strips and reference slots in the template.
One of our (many) future improvements is to allow to actually show these in there, yet better to show the whole template in a compressed but complete form. So you don't have to use the pane, but instead see the calculated reference strip directly on the flow, does that sound like a helpful feature to your problem?

Another more hacky workaround would be to use our API to fill the reference strip via a small custom application, which could query the nodes and fill the parent nodes reference strip automatically. But this of course would require access to the API.

All in all, i add your suggestion to our feature requests!

Best regards

Nico

[ei8htbit]

Thanks for such a quick reply, I think it is great to have such access to the developers on this forum in such an open and direct way.

You gave me many options to solve my question, so thank you for making that effort. Actually it helped me realize that my suggestion is a very niche scenario that perhaps is not a really efficient idea after all (especially when most people would probably just do a query search for quest templates in the navigator window to get a nice clear full list rather than just a limited number of viewable icons in a fragment preview) I guess that goes to show how flexible and inventive you can be with the articy interface, many options to get to where you want to go.

I use a two monitor setup so I think i will dedicate one monitor to viewing detailed properties while the other serves as my main workspace and flow view as you suggested. Best of both worlds.

The potential future upgrades you mentioned sound really good, I look forward to more great ideas and features from you and your team in the future. Keep up the good work on articy