mathbox / threestrap options

[ChristopherChudzicki]

Goal: decide how mathbox-react should mediate interactions with mathBox/Threestrap options.

My understanding of mathBox/Threestrap options.

The options passed to const mathbox = mathBox(options) are passd directly to Threestrap, so really this is a discussion of mathbox-react's API for interacting with Threestrap options.

The Threestrap options are generally of the form { plugins: string[], ...pluginOptions }. In general, plugins have options and an API with methods and properties. For example, the loop plugin has:

• options:

  {
    start: boolean, // whether to start the render loop on initialization
    each: number    // render every nth frame 
  }`
  

• API

  {
    // methods:
    stop(): void, // stop the render loop
    start: void,  // stop the render loop
    get(): void   // get current options
    set(options): // set new options
  
    // properties:
    each: number    // render every nth frame 
  }`
  

Observations:

1. Some options only affect initialization behavvior: For the Loop plugin, updating the start option doesn't really make sense because the start option is specifically "start the loop on initialization". It only affects the initialization behavior. Several other plugins have initialization options like this. In contrast, updating the each option DOES make sense.

2. Some options don't actually work: In particular, the "each" option on Loop does not actually work at the moment. (And in an alternate timeline it was renamed "rate").

3. See animation loop pause / slowdown? #19 (comment).

4. Some options work, but can't be updated: I'm not 100% sure about this, but I suspect that there are some options (Camera may be one) that function correctly at initialization (e.g., perspective vs orthographic) but then can't be updated without re-initialization.

   (I'm not sure that mathbox wroks with orthographic cameras anyway, I would really like it to!)

Questions

1. Should mathbox-react do full re-render when options are updated?
2. Should mathbox-react provide a declartive interface for interacting with the Threestrap plugin "APIs"? For example, should there be a declarative way to start/stop the render loop?

See also discussion in #20

[ChristopherChudzicki]

My current thinking:

• (A): In regards to (1)... No: mathbox-react should not do a full re-render just because some options have changed.
• (B): It would be relatively straightforward to allow updating pluging options declartively... Basically mathbox-react would just call set() whenever options were updated. In contrast, a declarative interaction with the Plugin APIs (think: stop(), start()) is a little trickier, mostly because the existing plugin API is pretty imperative, so mathbox-react would have to invent the declarative version of that AP
• (C): Threestrap options are probably not updated very often. Most updates are going to be to things like "size", "width", or functions used on the mathbox nodes themselves. Updating mathBox(options) will be rare. I could be wrong :Shrug`

Overall, I'm inclined to say:

1. Change mathbox-react so that updating the options does not do a full re-render, but just updates the options.

2. Do NOT provide a declarative interaction with plugin APIs, only plugin options. So the loop rate could be updated like below, but could not be declaritively started/stopped.

   <Mathbox options={{loop: { rate }}} >

   (Although: we could potentially implement declarative start/stop by hijacking the running property on the loop API, but not as a first step.)

All that said, in regards to point C above...I'm inclined to not work on this at the moment. Not that it wouldn't be useful... But the current full re-render doesn't seem so bad, at least for now, and I think there's probably more value elsewhere. (Like, fixing "rate" in threestrap.)

The end of this post got a little rushed because it's time to work on work!

[ChristopherChudzicki]

@sritchie Let's continue discussion fro #20 here... that PR is closed so I am going to forget about it 😄

[sritchie]

Added some notes here from unconed/mathbox#57.