[VTK ARB] Planning the next ARB meeting

Sat Jun 26 20:07:57 EDT 2010

Great, this will be a great help. Thanks David!

On Sat, Jun 26, 2010 at 6:05 PM, David Gobbi <david.gobbi at gmail.com> wrote:
> This is very easy for me to add back to the wrappers.  I removed them
> when I was cleaning up the docstrings by e.g. making vtkWrapPython
> understand a few doxygen tags. But I see your point about the size
> information.
>
> All the docstring code in VTK was written by me, actually, both in the
> old wrappers and in the new wrappers, so I'm intimately familiar with
> it. ;)
>
> I'll add back the pythonic signatures next week.
>
>   David
>
>
> On Sat, Jun 26, 2010 at 5:48 PM, Claudio T. Silva <csilva at sci.utah.edu> wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> We currently have some issues with the new VTK wrapping as it related
>> to VisTrails. Here is the problem. VTK usually provides method
>> signatures for both Python and C++ function through Python's
>> docstring. For example, in Python, with the old VTK, if one does:
>>
>>>> help(vtk.vtkProperty.GetColor)
>>
>> it returns:
>> ====
>> GetColor(...)
>>   V.GetColor() -> (float, float, float)
>>   C++: double *GetColor ();
>>   V.GetColor((float, float, float))
>>   C++: void GetColor (double rgb[3]);
>>
>>   Set the color of the object. Has the side effect of setting the
>>   ambient diffuse and specular colors as well. This is basically
>>   a quick overall color setting method.
>> ====
>> the "C++:" is the C++ signature while the V.* things are Python's
>> signature. VisTrails use this to wrap Module's methods.
>>
>> However, in the new VTK, when doing the same help command we get
>> ====
>> GetColor(...)
>>   double *GetColor()
>>   void GetColor(double rgb[3])
>>
>> ...
>> ====
>>
>> So it looks like users have to convert C++ signature to Python
>> signature in order to use it. However, when VTK doing conversion, they
>> have internal information, and we do not. For the case above, the
>> correspond Python signature for
>> double *GetColor()
>> is
>> V.GetColor() -> (float, float, float)
>>
>> Note the 3-value returns. If we manually convert from C++, we don't
>> know how many value for the tuple. I guess VTK knows this from the
>> SetColor function. I am not sure why they drop Python signature (or
>> just not done yet with the new wrapping mechanism), but if they put
>> back this feature from the old code, it should be much better for
>> other systems like us to wrap VTK.
>>
>> Is this functionality going to be added back?
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Claudio.
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Jun 26, 2010 at 11:19 AM, David Gobbi <david.gobbi at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Hi Jeff,
>>>
>>> Since there is a lot of talk about wrapping, I should probably chip in
>>> my two cents even though I'm not involved with the ARB.  You could
>>> call me "an interested third party."  In addition to the wrapper
>>> changes that were recently merged with VTK, I'm also working on a
>>> "WrapVTK" project that contains several useful wrapper tools that I
>>> also plan to merge.
>>>
>>> The first two items will be merged into VTK as early as next week:
>>>
>>> 1) a new vtkParse that generates info for templates, constants, enums,
>>> arbitrarily complex function pointers, multi-dimensional array
>>> arguments, and that needs no BTX/ETX
>>> 2) a vtkWrapHierarchy tool for generating typing information for
>>> wrapper-generators to use
>>> 3) a vtkParseProperties tool for extracting "properties" from VTK
>>> header files by searching for Get/Set/Add/Remove methods, and storing
>>> the properties in a simple struct for the wrappers to use
>>> 4) a vtkParseMerge tool for merging all inherited methods into a
>>> single ClassInfo data structure
>>> 5) a vtkWrapXML tool for generating XML descriptions of VTK classes
>>>
>>> All the above is done and ready for anyone to download at
>>> http://github.com/dgobbi/WrapVTK .  It could easily be expanded upon
>>> to also parse useful items like typedefs and to recognize
>>> doxygen-style comments.  This is all intended to be a new but
>>> backwards-compatible front end for the wrappers.
>>>
>>> So all that I ask is that someone takes a look at it before the
>>> meeting, it takes only two minutes to generate XML info for all the
>>> VTK header files and it requires zero configuration apart from setting
>>> VTK_DIR.  This isn't a VTK fork, it is a separate, small package that
>>> builds on top of an existing VTK.  Of course, I would have no
>>> objection if it was all moved into the VTK core eventually.
>>>
>>> That's my two cents, plus a dime and a nickel.
>>>
>>>   David
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sat, Jun 26, 2010 at 10:02 AM, Wylie, Brian <bnwylie at sandia.gov> wrote:
>>>> Can we put introspection on the agenda as well?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>   Brian Wylie - Org 1424
>>>>
>>>>   Sandia National Laboratories
>>>>
>>>>   MS 1323 - Building CSRI/242
>>>>
>>>>   (505)844-2238 FAX(505)284-2518
>>>>
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>>>>
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>>>>
>>>>        chown -R ours /ur/bases
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> From: arb-bounces at vtk.org [mailto:arb-bounces at vtk.org] On Behalf Of Jeff
>>>> Baumes
>>>> Sent: Monday, June 21, 2010 1:26 PM
>>>> To: arb at vtk.org
>>>> Subject: [VTK ARB] Planning the next ARB meeting
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Hello all,
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Hope everyone's summer is starting off well (or winter to those in the
>>>> southern hemisphere). It's been a few months, so I wanted to start planning
>>>> a date to meet again. How does Wednesday, July 14th, 2pm EDT work for
>>>> people? Feel free to suggest alternate times.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Here are some potential topics:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> VTK 6.0 planning, timing
>>>>
>>>> Wrapping changes
>>>>
>>>> Library reorganization
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Thanks,
>>>>
>>>> Jeff
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Jeff Baumes, Ph.D.
>>>> Technical Lead, Kitware Inc.
>>>> (518) 881-4932
>>>>
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>>>>
>>>>
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>>
>