Users are often confused by the complexity of save dialog and that they have to choose file formats and decide what files to overwrite. Saving to MRB simplifies things: everything is saved, and only a single file is used. However, it is not easy to discover this option (people don’t even know that single-file save feature exists).
Should we split the current “Save data” dialog to two independent features (listed separately in the menu)?
Save scene: save as MRB, use only a simple file selector
Export data: current save data dialog, maybe with MRB option removed
MRB has double steps of writing to temporary directory and then compression, which can be slow for large scenes. I would suggest to turn off compression, or default to “save to folder” even in this simplified dialog. Perhaps with the folder name corresponding to the MRML filename.
I would vote for using a single dialog but with mrb selected by default, and then with a radio button that allows saving individual items.
@ihnorton’s idea of saving the volumes uncompressed when they are going into an mrb is interesting and should be easy to test. I also like offering options to easily organize the data even if it’s not being zipped.
(Slightly related note, I also would like to see the mrml scene loader provide a method to specify the path to any data file that isn’t found at the path specified in the mrml file, i.e. because someone moved or renamed it.)