DeviceDataWriter `Path` property grid editor does not allow for folder selection

[banchan86]

Motivation

The Path property for DeviceDataWriter has an editor associated with it that opens up the Windows file explorer dialog for file selection instead of folder selection.

Proposed Solution

In reflex-generator/interface/Device.tt the editor uses SaveFileNameEditor. The right editor seems to be FolderNameEditor. This seems to be an easy fix which I will raise a PR for. I am not sure if there is other stuff that needs to be changed though.

Workaround

Typing the folder name directly in the property grid works

[glopesdev]

@banchan86 Actually on a second review I believe this was deliberate. The .harp extension is supposed to represent a storage "unit" much like a file, even though currently it is stored as a folder.

The only potentially confusing issue is that if a folder with the same name already exists, the dialog will not give the usual warning "file already exists", but will instead select and enter that folder.

This confusion cannot unfortunately be entirely eliminated even if we do switch to FolderNameEditor, since the exact same behavior is kept. Even more confusing, the FolderNameEditor will only "select" a folder if you either type explicitly a name, or if you enter an existing folder and click "Select Folder" without typing anything. The folder selection dialog is really meant to select existing folders and cannot be clearly used to create a new folder simply by typing its name.

Maybe there is some way to configure the folder dialog to improve the current behavior, but as it stands I still prefer the behavior of SaveFileNameEditor even though the path really represents a folder.

[banchan86]

Ahhh I see your point about the .harp container unit.

I am wondering if there is a way to make the SaveFilenameEditor more intuitive if we pass a default filename .harp or device.harp or Hobgoblin.harp for the device specific operators and if we clarify the editor description for those nodes ("The relative or absolute path of the directory in which to save the .harp message data"). As it stands, people won't discover the .harp extension (they could simply save the folder as data as I did) and might be confused by the SaveFilenameEditor.