Since the note icon was added above nodes on the workspace, I suspect (hope) folk are now more aware of the fact that useful documentation can be added to every node.
A few of downsides for me personally are:
I need to either click the note icon to see what it says
When i do go to the effort of clicking it, I am context switched away from my focus to a semi-modal editor tray
It is shown as raw markdown - which is super handy if I want to edit it, not so handy for reading
If I do want to see rendered documentation, I need to open the info panel!
Proposal 1
Lets also support groups! They can have useful info too.
Flow Tabs (workspace tabs) are a worthy contender too, but they have other considerations (they are not part of the workspace SVG) so out of scope initially
Proposal 2
Why not just render the info content as in a popover - I just want to glance it, not edit it!
Outcome
wanna see the rendered info contextually beside the node? - hover the note icon (new)
wanna get to the editor to fix it up - click the note icon (no change)
wanna see render in the info panel like before - open the info panel, click the node (no change)
DEMO
This is a working demo (Code is local. No PR until I get a level of consensus - wouldn't wanna be accused of breaking any paradigms now would we!)
What this is not
I am not looking to provide a means of generating site documentation built from the nodes or any kind of searchable wiki - it is simply to empower a flow developer/reviewer/editor to quickly see/read/comprehend info notes with minimal context switching.
Both groups and tabs of course do have a place to enter descriptive mark-down, diagrams etc.
What they don't have is the informative icon.
Nick recently said he feels uneasy adding the note icon to tabs.
I don't personally see the problem: tabs happily show the blue dot to show the flow needs a deploy. I suppose the dot is inside the tab boundary versus outside a node boundary.
We really should be able to see the formatted notes with a single click on the icon.
There is Doc-red of course which does all this and more (I've not personally used it). Maybe it should be brought into the core rather than reinventing wheels?
Never used it. If they have something that deserves a place in core, then discussion and pull requests are the normal route forward. That may have already happened but I don't remember seeing anything?
In case it is not clear, proposal 1 and 2 are really just a way of breaking up the post.
Both have been implemented locally (the group node note icon and the quick render popover) to see how they feel/behave.
Doc-red led the way here but that doesn't mean things couldn't be even better.
Certainly groups. Absolutely.
Tabs - also absolutely deserve some love! But prepared to wait to a future iteration if needed. (though just a reminder that doc-red already does this).
The current node doc icon, when clicked, opens the Edit panel at the right tab. Perhaps that could be made double-click. Reserving click to open the popup? Though I'm slightly torn between a hover popup and a click popup. I guess it doesn't matter that much as long as extended text can be scrolled.
And now the thought of having it in Node-RED has been seeded - I want it (To be clear, it is a different feature & out of scope here, but i like it and it is now firmly lodged in my noggin!)
