Dissections

A figure panel is a verdict: caloric intake predicts body weight. The evidence behind that verdict — twenty per-subject curves, the model comparison you didn’t show, the ANOVA table — usually lives in a scratch folder far from the figure, or nowhere at all. Dissections give that material a home attached to the plot itself.

The folder convention#

Any plot in plots/ can own a dissection folder named after it under plots/_dissections/:

plots/
├── growth.svg                      # the composed panel
└── _dissections/
    └── growth/                     # ← growth.svg's dissections
        ├── overview.svg            #   loose files form the default group
        ├── by_subject/             #   a subfolder is a named group (a tab in the viewer)
        │   ├── subj01.svg …
        └── _stats/
            └── anova.csv           #   CSVs/TSVs open as sortable tables

The name mirrors the plot’s path under plots/ (so plots/models/fit.svg owns plots/_dissections/models/fit/), with the extension dropped. Pasted images and PDF snips work too — they’re keyed by their file name.

That’s the whole contract. There is no manifest and no registration: the folder is the API. Your analysis script (or an agent) drops files in; Flux never writes or reorganizes anything there except when you ask it to create the folder.

What goes in#

Anything that explains the plot. Typical dissections:

• Breakdowns — one panel per subject / session / condition behind a summary plot.
• Alternative analyses — the same question answered another way (different model, different normalization), kept honest next to the version you published.
• Statistics — _stats/ CSVs with the tests behind the asterisks.
• Images of any kind (svg, png, jpg, webp — fluxplot outputs included) and csv/tsv tables are first-class in the viewer; other files are listed by name.

Dissections are deliberately out of the way of composition: nothing under _dissections/ turns up in an ordinary plot-gallery search (Alt+G), lands in a figure by accident, or rides along into an export. They are context, not content.

Out of the way is not locked away. In the importer, type _ and the reserved folders (_dissections, and _lighttable if the project has one) appear as rows you can enter with Enter. Inside one, searching only looks within that folder, so you can find a per-subject panel and insert it deliberately — ⌫ steps back out to the ordinary plots/ search.

Viewing them#

In the Figure workspace, select a plot and press D (or click Dissections in the Inspector — it shows a count). The viewer opens full-screen, and the ⧉ button shrinks it to a floating window you can keep beside the canvas:

• Arrow keys move through the grid; [ / ] change the column count; 1–9 switch group tabs.
• Enter expands a file. Images zoom at the cursor with Ctrl+scroll, pan with Space+drag or plain scroll, and toggle fit/1:1 with Enter. CSV/TSV files open as tables with a sticky header — click a column to sort, numeric columns right-align.
• Esc steps back: detail → grid → closed.

The viewer is live: files dropped into the folder while it’s open simply appear.

For scripts and agents, flux list-dissections [plot] prints a plot’s groups and files (or, with no argument, every plot that has dissections); see the command reference.

Troubleshooting#

• Pressed D and got “select a plot” — Dissect works on a single selected plot or image (or a drilled part; the part’s owning plot is used). Group selections don’t map to one dissection folder.
• The viewer says the folder doesn’t exist — nothing has created it yet. The empty state’s Create dissection folder button does it, and shows the exact path.
• Renamed a plot? Flux never renames files in plots/, so rename the matching folder under plots/_dissections/ yourself — until you do, the plot reports no dissections (nothing breaks, and the folder is never deleted).
• A file shows as a name card with no preview — only images and CSV/TSV files have viewers today. The file is still listed so you know it’s there.