[ros-users] Message serialization, rviz, and offline messages

[Ivan Dryanovski]

Hi everyone,

Does there exist a way view a ROS message from a file (non-rosbag) 
directly in rviz? I was thinking that would be a nice addition.

Basically, I'm looking for a C++ (or python) API that allows the user to 
save a single message of arbitrary type to a file. The rviz message 
display can then be modified to load messages from a file, in addition 
to the existing functionality to subscribe to a topic. This could 
perhaps be implemented using URI's, for example

topic://scan

vs

file:///home/username/ros/myscan.rosmsg

This would be useful in many situations, especially for examining large 
saved images, 2d/3d maps, pointclouds, etc.

Has any of this been implemented, and does anyone have comments on this 
idea?

Cheers,

Ivan