send_column for encoded image does not assign an encoded image visualizer

[oceanusxiv]

Describe the annoyance

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. run, where encoded_images is a list of binary blobs

rr.send_columns(
    "observation/wrist_image_left",
    times=[rr.TimeSequenceColumn("step", timesteps)],
    components=[
        rr.components.BlobBatch(data=encoded_images)
    ],
)

2. by default a spatial2Dview will not register a visualizer for this blob, even if I specify a MediaType column to specify the MIME type.

Expected behavior
Ideally if you pass the MIME type along, or really even if you didn't, the viewer should probably be able to guess a good visualizer for it, like other send_column types.

Your goals

Screenshots

Desktop (please complete the following information):

• OS: macOS Sonoma 14.6

Additional context

[Wumpf]

What makes the visualizer show up automatically is the indicator component, not the media type. This is why the example snippet for images first does a regular log first since that's the easiest way to get that in (this applies for encoded images just like everything else).

This is a bit of an arcane corner of Rerun and not super well documented (it is mentioned on https://rerun.io/docs/concepts/visualizers-and-overrides#how-are-visualizations-produced but easy to miss). However, we want to remove those indicators and bake them into individual component tags, see

• Tagged components #6889

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Overall definitely an annoying issue, very much agreed! But since it's technically documented, works as designed and should go away I'm closing this as a duplicate of tagged components

[oceanusxiv]

Oh that's how you do it! Thanks for the tip.