openHAB 3.3 Milestone discussion

This milestone includes 2 PRs (labels and sorting) that will hopefully help to get cleaner/more meaningful secondary model tab pages (Equipment and Properties) almost out of the box in main web UI, while not compromising the readability of the main Location sub-pages. This will probably require rework of a few item labels and setting some widget order metadata by the administrator.

One deals with the labelling within model tab pages, which is improved by displaying the path inside the model leading to an item to provide context, either in the dividers of Equipment (Equipment pages), or in the subtitles of Properties pages items (rather than the non used friendly item’s name). This allow defining label of item only providing information in the context of its parent in model (location/equipment) and not duplicating model inside the label: i.e: not having to use ‘John’s Room Bedside Lamp Color Temp’ label but only ‘Color Temp’ on the Point Item label, within a ‘Bedside Lamp’ Equipment inside ‘John’s Room’ Location. Another PR might come to have the same kind of labelling improvement for vertical groups groups outside of model pages.

The second improves sorting, so that the resulting items are placed in consistent places among all model tab pages (sorting uses both Item's widgetOrder metadata but also the position inside the model and the widgetOrder on this Item parent model groups - Equipment/Location). When sorting several items within the same location/equipment in model, widgetOrder or the alphabetical order is used as before. But in a non-same-location context (Equipment or Properties pages), in case of ambiguity, the widgetOrder of the parent Location/Equipment is used in order to sort lines in consistent a repeatable fashion among all pages. Therefore, if you define widgetOrder at the Point level (within an Equipment) to display Point of greater importance first, but always choosing the same value for equivalent items (for example for lamps 0 for ON/OFF, 1, For Dimming, 2 for Color. or for thermostat 0 for set point, 1 for actual temp, 2 for heating/cooling mode…), at the Equipment level to choose frequently used equipments before others, then at each location level (house, floor…) to choose Locations of importance before others, you should have something that makes sense in the Equipment and Properties pages (all similar-function items sorted in consistent location order).

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