More flexible Phoebus Layout memento file selection proposal.

[wbadgett]

When one has many memento Phoebus Layout files, the Phoebus layout selector popup pane becomes very large. May I propose using a more flexible approach, at least recognizing subdirectories in the ${HOME}/.phoebus area? Or bring up a general purpose file browser? What would be the best approach?

[kasemir]

Previous EPICS display managers (edd/dm, medm, dm2k, edm, ...) didn't have any idea of a layout. You open some top-level "start" display, and on there you'd typically have some top-level view of the machine with buttons to drill down via related displays.
The result is a well-known startup scenario from which you can reach what you need within a few clicks.
With layouts we offer a few different starting points. On a Beamline/instrument, you thus may have a "User" and "Expert" option. But if the layout menu turns into a multi-page phone book, the "shortcut" idea is somewhat lost.

So I think it's a bad idea.

Technically, however, I suggest you add AppResourceDescriptor support for *memento files to the UI framework.
That way, you could start CSS with a -resource /path/to/xx.mememto command line option, or click on a *memento file in the file browser. That App would then load the memento.