Iris UI's: Forms, tk, etc.

[DanKarron at UCBVAX.BERKELEY.EDU]

>Organization: NAS Program, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA
>
>

>Essentially, we're trying to decide what user interface to use on a number
>of future projects, here, and Forms would be a favorite, if it were supported
>by SGI.  (Nobody wants to mess with supporting Panel-lib any more...)
>

>Curiously yours,
>
>Dan Wallach
>dwallach at nas.nasa.gov
>

Well, I have done quite a bit of messing with the Panel-lib, and have
used it to build a quite elaborate package. I have reworked the internals
in such a way that it is multi-threaded, and can reach into your running
application from the GUI thread, lookup the symbol table for the address
you want to attach the actuator to, and either read or write values in your 
application thread (via the /debug/<PID> debugger low lever interface).
I have concentrated on making the panel lib a tool to support
my applications by reducing the overhead code in the application(how about
zero UI code in the application). I use the panel editor daily, and I have 
panels with 100+ actuators in various threads using sgi brand shared memory 
(Arenas). 

I have put in a real time scripting/playback for animation camera and object
path tracking, and lots of real neat stuff for my own projects.

However, I have been enjoined from releasing ANY code for the panel library,
and I am casting around to build on another gui from source. My mods are
too extensive to release as diffs on the 9.7 source, and while the panel
lib may be dead for the rest of the world, I like using its framework to
build and elaborate on. It may be more the case that I have become used to it 
(and all its bugs, but then I find it easier to fix'em than to get bothered
by them.) than have made an informed choice from the broad selection of
freeware GUI's avaiable today :-> .

My main thrust is my application, not the GUI, but I could not have written
my application without the panel library, and being able to mung the source.

I like the idea of a c++ rewrite, and I may look into the Forms library when
it comes time for my next major re-write. However, I will have to re-engineer
my mods into Mark's library, and that will be a challange, unless he is
ahead of me.       

I must say that having a good gui really changes the way I work for the better.
I can concentrate on my application, not the GUI. But that only came after 
spending months and months on the GUI...       

Cheers!

dan.


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