Mixedrealitytoolkit-unity: It's unclear how to generate and edit copies of sub profiles making for a bad MRTK configuration experience

[chrisfromwork]

Overview

Its unclear how to generate copies of sub profiles. If I create a copy of the default mixed reality toolkit configuration profile, the inspector ends up in a state where some items are editable. However, drop down menus for things like "Show Camera Profile contents" and "Show Input System Profile contents" don't seem to allow generating copies of the default input system profile. This makes for a bad developer experience and detracts from understanding the worth in creating/using profiles.

Expected Behavior

If I create a copy of the default mixed reality configuration profile, I should be able to create copies of the sub profiles (Input System Profile, Camera System Profile, etc).

Actual Behavior

If I create a copy of the default mixed reality configuration profile, It's unclear how to create copies of the sub profiles. The inspector remains dithered for these components marking default profiles as non-editable.

Steps to reproduce

1) Create a few copies of the default configuration profile
2) Attempt to create copies of the subprofiles

Note: It seems like there is sometimes a button for copying/creating a new sub profile. However after creating one additional profile, it no longer appears possible to create more profiles.

Unity Editor Version

n/a

Mixed Reality Toolkit Release Version

v2/mrtk_development

[StephenHodgson]

If you create a copy of the main default configuration profile, then you should see a button with < / >
I'd like to update this with a real copy image to make it clearer, but didn't have time on the fist pass.

Users should also be able to copy/paste profile values and create a clone via the gear on the top right of the inspector.

[chrisfromwork]

I've seen this button before, but for some reason it has disappeared in my local setup.

Reset seems like some important functionality and may be what I was looking for. That going said, this UX story feels unclear. As a new user, my first instinct wasn't to right click anywhere in the inspector.

[StephenHodgson]

Reset is a default on all context menus. I didn't intentionally highlight it.

[StephenHodgson]

@Railboy has the new foldouts effected the visibility of the copy button?

[chrisfromwork]

I'm curious to see what Lars has to say. This issue may get resolved by other work already underway. I just want to make sure that this issue is acknowledged/documented

[Alexees]

I found that all the copy buttons turn into selection indicators when manually assigning to one of them profiles. Reselecting the profile lets them appear again.

[SimonDarksideJ]

True, the "Copy" option is only currently available from the "Default" profiles, If you create a new/copy, then the "Copy" option is no longer available. There wasn't an intent that you would want multiple copies of your own profile as most systems only need one.

Can you think of use cases @chrisfromwork where you would want to copy a copy?

Perhaps @StephenHodgson the Cog Copy profiles option is really key then.

[Railboy]

@StephenHodgson I don't believe so. This is the line controlling whether it appears:

if (!renderedProfile.IsCustomProfile && profile.IsCustomProfile)

And it seems to works as expected. When the base profile IS custom and the rendered profile is NOT custom, the copy button appears.

@SimonDarksideJ I could see wanting to copy your own profile if it has taken a while to set up and you want to try a couple of permutations.

[Railboy]

This is slightly off topic but what's the reasoning for the copy button saying </> instead of this:

[StephenHodgson]

I think that's a very simple fix! Let's do it 😆

[StephenHodgson]

Although in reality it should probably say "clone"

[Railboy]

@StephenHodgson @SimonDarksideJ Is there ever an unwanted side effect to cloning a profile? I'm trying to grok why we don't keep the clone button active by default.

[Ecnassianer]

This is slightly off topic but what's the reasoning for the copy button saying </> instead of this:

At first glance, I interpret that to mean "Copy the contents of this field to the clipboard".

Given some sleuthing I would figure out it means "Make a copy of this profile and insert it here", so it's better than "", which still doesn't mean anything to me.

I wonder if there's another word that works at first glance?

[StephenHodgson]

I'm trying to grok why we don't keep the clone button active by default.

That's a good point, I don't see any valid reason why we _don't_ but we need to make sure that when the object reference is null the + button shows up correctly

[Railboy]

@Ecnassianer I think Stephen's 'clone' suggestion is pretty good.

@StephenHodgson In the next PR I'll turn it on by default and we can see how it strikes us. I think it will be less confusing.

[chrisfromwork]

Missed a refresh, seems like everyone is on the same page. :) Thanks @Railboy for stepping in.

Original comment:
I think that there may still be a bug here (or at least I experienced this) where if you reselect the default profile after having cloned the default profile that the button remains hidden.

@SimonDarksideJ I don't know that having the ability to clone a profile you created is the highest priority. But a developer team working in their own fork may create their own "default" profile and then also want this same clone functionality for their "default" profile. We could probably also avoid any regressions/testing around this button appearing/disappearing by having it visible all the time.

[StephenHodgson]

But a developer team working in their own fork may create their own "default" profile and then also want this same clone functionality for their "default" profile.

This functionality already exists in the context menus, so keeping it enabled/visible makes sense to me

[wiwei]

Closing this out - I was looking through old issues and I think that @Railboy already fixed this particular issue in PR #3610