[vtkusers] GUI for VTK (was [DEMO] amira)

[Jan Ehrhardt]

Hi folks,

now my simple thoughts about the topic:

Two visual programming environments are named: AVS and Amira.
At least one remains to name: Khoros. (www.khoral.com)

I think Khoros is the favorite environment for image processing
in the educational sector. To bad: its not free anymore (but there
is a free students version).

The good thing: I think its very (or relative) easy to incorporate
VTK in Khoros (I have partially done this) and -- bang -- you have a 
visual programming language !!

There a three steps to do:
1. Readers and writers are needed to convert the VTK-datastructures
   in the khoros-data model. (in a first step the VTK-file format 
   can be used but no pipes or shared memory communication is possible).
2. For every VTK-class a simple program to call the class is needed.
   (This program can be written with a wrapper).
3. The calling programs needs a GUI. The khoros UI-description files
   are very simple and I think for an experienced perl-hacker its easy
   to write a wrapper.
4. A kroutine must be written to call the program inside cantata
(Khoros).
   This can be a simple TCL, Perl or shell-script


Benefits: You don´t have to write a whole application with a low-level
	Toolkit like Tk,GTK,wxWindows,Qt....
	The visual programming functionality is already implemented by Cantata
!!
	I think the whole work can be done in 2-3 weeks by an experienced
	perl hacker.

	You can incorporate your own TCL/(Python??) scripts or little programs
in
	Cantata. You can combine all Khoros programs and functionalities 
	(distributed computing) with VTK ! 

	Khoros is available for Unix and NT.

Disadvantages: Khoros isn´t free anymore :-( (Students and educational
versions are available).
	For every VTK-class a single program is needed -- the VTK streaming
functionality
	can´t be used.(?) The installation of Khoros is needed (lots of
disk-space!)
	
	
If there is some more interrest, I can explain more technical details.


Regards,

	Jan

	
	



-- 
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Jan Ehrhardt
mailto:ehrhardt at medinf.mu-luebeck.de
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