[polucifier]

Description

This PR addresses the follow-up design and UX improvements for the newly introduced "Copy" button in GUI tool dialogs, as outlined in issue #7368. It focuses on unifying the Python API selection within the global GUI settings, introducing persistence for the chosen copy format, and ensuring fully portable script generation and parameter sharing across all available Python APIs and JSON formats.

Fixes #7368

Key Changes & Visual Proofs

1. Global Python API Selector in Preferences

• Integrated a global preference selector into the GUI Settings -> Tools tab under the cmd group using UserSettings.
• Using standard pythonAPI within core/settings.py and connected via wx.Choice in gui_core/preferences.py.
• Users can now explicitly choose their preferred core API flavor (Tools API, Script API, or PyGRASS API).

Example of the new dropdown selector inside the GUI Settings -> Tools tab:

The menu:

2. Dynamic Copy Button Tooltips & Sticky Mode

• The main Copy button now implements a persistent "sticky" state via wx.Config (CmdPanel/CopyMode), remembering whether the user last copied a Shell command, Python script, or JSON settings.
• The button tooltip updates dynamically (_updateCopyButtonUI) to explicitly state the active mode and selected Python API flavor.

Active Mode / Flavor	Tooltip Preview
Python (Tools API)
Python (Script API)
Python (PyGRASS API)

3. Fully Portable Python Code with Inline File Support

• Extracted the inline file parsing to a clean standalone helper method (_getInlineFiles).
• Solved the tempfile portability issue across all three Python APIs for interactive text inputs (e.g., custom color rules typed into r.colors).
• Code snippets are generated clean and portable out-of-the-box, ensuring string literals are safely escaped via pythonic repr() formatting ({!r}).

Generated Outputs Examples (r.colors with custom text rules):

• Tools API Flavor:

import io

rules_txt = '0 red\n50 yellow\n100 blue'

Tools().r_colors(map='elevation@PERMANENT', rules=io.StringIO(rules_txt))

• Script API Flavor:

import tempfile

rules_txt = '0 red\n50 yellow\n100 red'

with tempfile.NamedTemporaryFile(mode='w', delete=False) as f:
    f.write(rules_txt)
    rules_file = f.name

gs.run_command('r.colors', map='elevation@PERMANENT', rules=rules_file)

• PyGRASS API Flavor:

import tempfile

rules_txt = '0 red\n50 yellow\n100 red'

with tempfile.NamedTemporaryFile(mode='w', delete=False) as f:
    f.write(rules_txt)
    rules_file = f.name

Module('r.colors', map='elevation@PERMANENT', rules=rules_file)

4. Seamless JSON Copy/Paste for Interactive Content

• Overhauled the JSON serialization inside OnCopyJSON and OnPaste.
• Instead of serializing volatile local temp paths, the raw multiline text of the interactive layout is embedded directly into the JSON configuration payload.
• Upon pasting, OnPaste intercepts the text parameters, safely clears out the text field for paths, and properly populates the secondary multiline interactive input control (wxId[1]).

Generated Output Example (r.colors with custom text rules):

{
    "module": "r.colors",
    "params": {
        "flags": "",
        "map": "elevation@PERMANENT",
        "rules": "0 red\n50 yellow\n100 blue"
    }
}

Screencast demonstrating copying a tool configuration to JSON, completely wiping out the input fields, and cleanly restoring the multiline rules via Paste:

Paste1.webm

5. Other changes

• Refactored gtask.cmd_to_python_args to cleanly return formatted argument strings, allowing the GUI frontend to handle the closing syntax gracefully.

How to Test

1. Go to GUI Settings -> Tools and change the Default Python API (the default option is Tools API). Save settings.
2. Open r.colors or any other tool with direct multiline text input blocks.
3. Enter rules interactively, click the Copy dropdown, and choose your format.
4. Verify that clipboard string matched the formatting guidelines shown above.
5. Copy the config as JSON, clear inputs, click Paste JSON settings, and verify that the content re-populates correctly.

[landam]

I think this PR is a step in the right direction. On the other hand, users should still have the option to switch to the scripting or the PyGRASS API when needed. The settings could managed by the GUI configuration (Tools tab):

[petrasovaa]

This looks great, thank you!