The February 2024 List of Limitations

[dt-woods]

1. Editing.
   Presently only two editing options exist in the notebook: adding a new actor and editing a product system's reviewer. For JSON-LD file connections, the editing process works; however, each edit made to the JSON-LD file triggers the extraction of the JSON-LD archive, which may take seconds to minutes depending on the size of the file. Because this behavior is slow, it is undesirable. For openLCA databases, the editing appears to cause internal errors in the database (e.g., the movement of the reference process's quantitative flow from an output to an input and the removal of certain flows from the exchange table). This is highly undesirable. Therefore, in version 3 of the notebook, it is recommended that the openLCA app be used for editing unit processes. Minor changes to metadata or reporting values can be made in the markdown version of the report without requiring changes made to either the openLCA database or JSON-LD file.
2. Global directories.
   The template is well-behaved when it is located in the parent directory of the netlolca repository. Its dependencies on Interface.py, NetlOlcaReport.py, and NetlOlca.py modules as well as its dependency on the "output" directory path may cause problems with users who move their notebooks. The data directory is modifiable in the Interface class (e.g., using the 'd' menu option); however, the output directory is hard-coded as an immutable global variable found in the NetlOlcaReport.py module. To overcome the issue with module dependencies, the class and function definitions found in the netlolca package directory can be copied into the Definitions section of the notebook (albeit, it would add over 4,000 lines of code to the notebook). The output directory dependency is quasi-handled in the NetlOlcaReport class, which looks for a local "output" directory, and, if not found, generates one. An alternative approach may be to utilize a common directory (e.g., in a user's home folder) to avoid tracking potentially several output and data directories.
3. JSON-LD export.
   While the template provides methods for reading (and editing) either an openLCA database or JSON-LD file, for openLCA databases, there is no option to export a product system to JSON-LD. This limitation means that for a given unit process, there is not a consistent method for data exporting. It is unclear what format unit process inventories should be shared. In version 3, it is up to the user to provide either an openLCA database (e.g., .zolca) or an exported JSON-LD file.
4. Report style consistency.
   The exported markdown report may be converted to HTML, Word document, and PDF. Each of these formats use the default styling template provided by pandoc; however, custom styling templates may be provided for a more consistent look across formats. These custom templates are not a part of version 3.