Move recursive folding functionality from the Scene Tree dock to the Tree node, so that it can also be used in projects

[AThousandShips]

Describe the project you are working on

A PR involving large trees

Describe the problem or limitation you are having in your project

Folding items in large nested trees can become highly cumbersome and impractical

Describe the feature / enhancement and how it helps to overcome the problem or limitation

Add recursive folding of tree nodes, folding children and grandchildren, etc.

Additionally allow folding of children of an item (both recursively and not)

This would make getting an overview of the tree easier by collapsing all the children of the node, or the node itself, when unfolded it would then be easier to get an overview once again.

Describe how your proposal will work, with code, pseudo-code, mock-ups, and/or diagrams

Folding and unfolding would be handled directly by TreeItem, through new function(s), a small mockup I made appears to work well. I believe I would be able to implement this feature.

For input I would suggest the following:

• Right click on the fold icon collapses/uncollapses recursively
• Shift left click on the fold icon collapses/uncollapses the children of the item (based on the collapsed status of the first visible child, collapsing if uncollapsed and vice versa) but leaving the item itself uncollapsed, if the item was collapsed it uncollapses and uncollapses all its children.
• Shift right click does the same but recursively

If this enhancement will not be used often, can it be worked around with a few lines of script?

The direct behavior of recursive folding is straight forward to do in script with call_recursive, I would like to see this as a feature in the editor in general.

Is there a reason why this should be core and not an add-on in the asset library?

I believe this would be a quality of life improvement for the editor.

[YuriSizov]

Are you talking about your own UI needs from the Tree node or about editor usability in, say, the Scene dock?

[AThousandShips]

Both, but I encountered the frustration in the editor, though I feel I could be benefitted by it in my own projects as well but I have not used the Tree much in those projects. In this case it was related to the Editor Help Search which I'm working on a PR for

[YuriSizov]

Well, for general UI needs this is probably better implemented on the per project level in the way that makes the most sense with some recurring traversal of children.

But if editor usability suffers, we can solve this for specific parts of the editor where it makes sense. I.e. also solve it on per project level 🙂

[KoBeWi]

This seems to already exist though? Shifth+click on the fold icon collapses recursively. At least in scene tree dock.

[AThousandShips]

Oh I didn't realize it was a thing for Scene Tree dock, and there I saw how that was solved so now I see how to do it in script reasonably well, thank you!

Then for now I'll just consider adding the equivalent behavior to Help Search where I encountered this as a limitation

[AThousandShips]

I'm sorry I was far to focused on the Help Search where I was working