Remapping rqt published topics

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I am developing an rqt GUI plugin to set some values in another node, but the rqt plugins seem to always place a namespace in front of my desired published topic name.

For example, my rqt plugin is called "rqt_blueview," and I declare a published topic in the rqt plugin like this...

this->max_range_pub_ = getNodeHandle().advertise<std_msgs::Float32>("sonar_max_range", 1);

However, the actual topic is published with the following topic name:

/rqt_blueview/sonar_max_range

I want to publish to /sonar_max_range

I tried to remap the topic, but I can't seem to get it to work. I tried the following in a launch file:

<remap from="/rqt_blueview/sonar_max_range" to="sonar_max_range" />
<node pkg="rqt_blueview" name="rqt_blueview" type="rqt_blueview" />

and

<remap from="rqt_blueview/sonar_max_range" to="sonar_max_range" />
<node pkg="rqt_blueview" name="rqt_blueview" type="rqt_blueview" />

I tried placing the remap tag inside the <node></node> tags as well, but with no results. I think this has something to do with how the rqt plugin is loaded into the rqt higher-level Qt window.

I was able to remap the subscribed topic /sonar_max_range to /rqt_blueview/sonar_max_range on the normal C++ ROS node subscribed side of the topic, but this naming convention doesn't seem natural to me.

Is there a best practice for naming topics when using rqt plugins? I won't want a launch file remapping the rqt GUI plugins since the idea is to open rqt and then "add" the other rqt plugins to the main window.

Thanks.