openHAB 4.0 wishlist

[Lolodomo]

@mstormi

You can keep using sitemaps, but don’t expect any new features there.

Any contribution regarding sitemaps are still acceptable, even if priority is more on MainUI.
I even do not reject the idea to contribute myself to BasicUI.
I also try to maintain BasicUI when i have the skills to do it.

[Lolodomo]

@lsiepel

Agree in the end iconify will probably not happen though, it is gonna take a serious effort

I could have a look, it is an interesting feature and I do not see immediately why it would be so difficult to implement.
Maybe simply a new icon provider?

[mstormi (Markus Storm)]

@wertzui

Im already using MainUI and driving it from the semantic model that I have defined in my .items files.

Where’s the point of iconify then? It’s in Main UI as an item option.
As you say you are using Main UI you should import your .items one-time rather than continue maintaining them

[Pedro_Liberal]

@Lolodomo

@lsiepel

Agree in the end iconify will probably not happen though, it is gonna take a serious effort

Maybe simply a new icon provider?

Or a lookup field that searched directly in an icon provider…?

[Lolodomo]

@mstormi

As you say you are using Main UI you should import your .items one-time rather than continue maintaining them

Everyone has the choice between UI or files for items.
Power users (more technical users) would certainly prefer keeping items in files because there are some advantages to that option.

[Lolodomo]

@wertzui

I would like to see iconify support in .items files.

Can you precise your wish please ?
Is your wish to have support of iconify in a sitemap UI (like BasicUI or the Android app) ?

[splatch (Łukasz Dywicki)]

@hmerk

I think there is a big misunderstanding. The icon in the items file is configuring the category of an Item in MainUI and even there is no support for other icons than the classic set.

According to docs it looks like items file format is:

// general syntax
Type Name "Label" <icon>
// example
Switch Livingroom_Light "Livingroom Ceiling Light" <switch>

From what I remember icons are looked up in backend through IconProviders and “classic” is one of them, notably a default icon provider which is always enabled.

So bringing a new icon provider and new set of icons through openahb core is possible. If one would hold a beer… maybe not for me but maybe for @Lolodomo

[Lolodomo]

@splatch

So bringing a new icon provider and new set of icons through openahb core is possible. If one would hold a beer… maybe not for me but maybe for @Lolodomo

Looking a little more what is iconify, I understand now that a new icon provider is probably not the right option. It is more the UI page that must be updated to use these online icons. So this would be more an enhancement to do in BasicUI. And we could probably use the existing “icon” attribute of the sitemap element to specific this icon (small change in core framework probably required to be backward compatible with all existing sitemap UIs).
That way, the iconify icon will not be assigned to an item but to a sitemap element.
Using the item category from the item definition to specifiy an icon would have certainly more impacts as the item category is certainly for UI rendering but also for other usages. And an item category is not exactly an icon.

[rlkoshak (Rich Koshak)]

Concerning the iconify icons, it sort of half way works already. If you know the name of the Item already you can enter that for the Category in MainUI and it’ll let you use it (e.g. f7:power). However it won’t show up everywhere it needs to. So it might not be as much work to make it work than it first appears.

There was a recent thread on this which I can’t seem to find at the moment.

However, I think one of the challenges is these Icons come with a default color (e.g. black) and in MainUI one would use a color field to select the desired color (or an expression to set the color based on some condition). I’m not sure how useful it would be to have all black icons for the categories and adding the ability to choose the color will become a significant;y bigger job.

[wertzui]

My wish is to specify icons in .items files that will then be used in the MainUI.
My MainUI is driven by the semantic groups defined in .items files, so everything under Locations, Equipment and Properties in the MainUI is automatically populated.

Maybe something like this:

Number:Dimensionless Battery <iconify:material-symbols:battery-horiz-000> [ "Battery", "Level" ] { config="some JSON object" } 

[splatch (Łukasz Dywicki)]

I’ve made offline iconify iconset which contains only below iconsets:

• Material Symbols, iconset material-symbols
• Google Material Icons, iconset ic
• Material Design Icons, iconset mdi
• Remix Icon, iconset ri
• Carbon, iconset carbon
• Unicons, iconset uil
• MingCute Icon, iconset mingcute
• Memory Icons, iconset memory
• Unicons Monochrome, iconset uim
• Unicons Thin Line, iconset uit
• Unicons Solid, iconset uis
• IconPark Outline, iconset icon-park-outline
• IconPark Solid, iconset icon-park-solid
• IconPark TwoTone, iconset icon-park-twotone
• IconPark, iconset icon-park

(they are licensed under Apache and fit into “general” category).

Attached link is ~30 megs, so it may slow down startup of your system https://co7.io/CFHi ;-).
Icons are available via two paths: /icon/baseline_1k.svg?iconset=ic, in schematic it is <icon>.svg?<icon-set>, or using classic iconset with scheme <icon-set>-<icon>.svg.

If you request icon containing _ it will be replaced with -. Assuming above example of baseline_1k or ic_baseline_1k final icon request will be baseline-1k or ic-baseline-1k.
This is due to two facts first 1) special meaning of dash for dynamic icons, 2) assumption that classic is default iconset (its hard to override it through UI config).

Note, using above icons will make main ui freak and display no icons. At least that was case for my test setup. Anyone interested in testing this - feel free to play with it.
Sources as usual available here: connectorio-addons/bundles/org.connectorio.addons.ui.iconify at master · ConnectorIO/connectorio-addons · GitHub

// edit 20.02.2023
Marketplace entry with provider: Iconify icon provider.

[rlkoshak (Rich Koshak)]

@wertzui

My wish is to specify icons in .items files that will then be used in the MainUI.
My MainUI is driven by the semantic groups defined in .items files, so everything under Locations, Equipment and Properties in the MainUI is automatically populated.

There is nothing related to Items that you cannot define in a .items file and have it work exactly like it does in MainUI. You point out would be the same as setting the icon to “iconify:material-symbols:battery-horiz-000” which you can do in MainUI too. And if you did that, it would work/not work in exactly the same ways.

[splatch (Łukasz Dywicki)]

I think both main ui and basicui could use same category/icon syntax if items file would relax validation of icon/category field. I may be reading it wrong but the definition - openhab-core/Items.xtext at 8d64ecfd8db99844d79a776fef37cbe527c1f0c6 · openhab/openhab-core · GitHub, of ID and STRING do not include : character used by UI and jsondb.
From that point of view your statement that you can do same does not pass…
Edit: existing issue for core: Item - Category field · Issue #3052 · openhab/openhab-core · GitHub

[supersjel (Michel)]

I’ve got another one. I would love to be able to configure the period of the oh-charts in widgets with a formula or reference to props. Now I’m making copies “xx_h”, “xx_2h” and so on. So

props:
  parameters:
    - context: String
      label: period
      name: period
      type: TEXT

....

    - component: oh-chart
      config:
        options:
        period: = props.period
  
       or period: "= props.period=='day' ? 'd' : 'h' "

[crnjan]

@supersjel AFAIK this should already work in latest 4.0 snapshots (Generalize evaluating expressions for charts & fix diff_last aggregates by crnjan · Pull Request #1649 · openhab/openhab-webui · GitHub) …

[Lolodomo]

@rlkoshak

However, I think one of the challenges is these Icons come with a default color (e.g. black) and in MainUI one would use a color field to select the desired color (or an expression to set the color based on some condition). I’m not sure how useful it would be to have all black icons for the categories and adding the ability to choose the color will become a significant;y bigger job.

I have almost implemented iconify in BasicUI yesterday.

Regarding icon color, my idea is to add a iconcolor to sitemap syntax, similar to existing labelcolor and valuecolor. Would be added in a second step.

[Pedro_Liberal]

@Lolodomo

I have almost implemented iconify in BasicUI yesterday.

Legend.

[supersjel (Michel)]

@crnjan

AFAIK this should already work in latest 4.0 snapshots

That’s really great news! I’m on the 3.4 production release but now I know it’s coming

[Lolodomo]

@Pedro_Liberal

@Lolodomo

I have almost implemented iconify in BasicUI yesterday.

Legend.

For those wanting to follow the development of this new BasicUI feature:

[BasicUI] Add support for iconify and Google material icons

[glhopital (Gaël L'hopital)]

It would be nice (UI-wise) to have the ability to associate an icon to Things.