component reference from library

[forresto]

zoom in to see ports and port descriptions, potentially even sending test data through to see output

Re: #34 needs work in noflo

[bergie]

We can also utilize the source and getsource methods of the FBP API here, and show a source code card for the component, or a graph preview for subgraph

[jonnor]

Really liking this idea. Has come up several times as 'having a (visual) datasheet' for them. Now that we have fbp-spec support with declarative and parse-able tests - we could integrate that somehow.

[automata]

I'm imagining something like Jupyter/iPython-like notebooks as 'visual datasheets'. Someone can start creating a component as a notebook, specify its inports/outports at some point and use it as a real component, keeping the notes as documentation (after some possible clean up).

[jonnor]

I think the key wrt to interactive creation of such visual datasheets, is to be able to select representative data from what has been executed before, and mark it as belonging to the datasheet. This could be a kind of 'add as fbp-spec testcase' action. Right now we don't have ability to select/act on data in the past in the UI. As the component/graph may have changed since that input/output data was generated, I think it should re-execute, to (re)build the datasheet/docs.

Built datasheet should probably be HTML (possibly incl PNG/SVG).