[VTK ARB] Planning the next ARB meeting

David Gobbi david.gobbi at gmail.com
Sun Jun 27 15:14:34 EDT 2010 

The pythonic signatures are back.  They are word-wrapped at 70 chars
due to the new docstring formatting, but other than that they follow
the old pattern exactly.

  David


On Sat, Jun 26, 2010 at 6:07 PM, Claudio T. Silva <csilva at sci.utah.edu> wrote:
> 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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>>>>>
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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
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Arb mailing list
>>>>> Arb at vtk.org
>>>>> http://public.kitware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/arb
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>>
>>>
>>
>

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