[IGSTK-Developers] GUI

[David Gobbi]

To follow up on my own message...  I think I painted too 
negative a picture.

What we need to do with IGSTK is to make it GUI-independant,
the same way that VTK and ITK are GUI-independant.  Ideally,
the core of IGSTK should be completely free of FLTK code,
and FLTK should only be linked in at the application level.

With VTK, for example, all you have to do to get any GUI toolkit
to work is get the underlying pointer to the GUI window, and
pass that pointer to the vtkRenderWindow.  There are a couple
additional housekeeping details: making sure that your creates
a GUI window with an OpenGL drawable, making sure that Render is
called when necessary, and making sure the VTK is notified when
the window is resized, but I've been getting VTK to work with
Qt and wxWindows in this way since years ago.  For IGSTK, we
should use the same sort of a method and document how its done,
and then leave it up to the third-party developers to connect
IGSTK to whatever GUI toolkit they choose.

 - David


--- David Gobbi <dgobbi at atamai.com> wrote:

> Hi Kevin,
> 
> Right now the View classes are still tightly tied to FLTK,
> but there has been definite motion away from absolute
> dependence of IGSTK on FLTK.
> 
> The Qt licensing issue is a biggie... TrollTech is very
> explicit about their commercial licensing conditions.
> Anybody working on Qt code that will eventually become
> commercial, must hold a Qt commercial license before
> they begin working on the code, otherwise the code is
> strictly under the GPL and cannot be converted
> to the Qt commercial license at a later date.
> 
> We can't have GPL code in IGSTK.  We possibly could have
> Qt commercial code, but only if any developer who touched
> that code held a Qt commercial license.  That's a hard thing
> to regulate, but it is potentially doable.
> 
>  - David
> 
> 
> 
> --- Kevin Gary <kgary at asu.edu> wrote:
> 
> > All,
> > 
> > We have a dilemma with the validation tool we are writing. For the
> > GUI, it would be better to use Qt, but our understanding of the
> > Qt open source license is that it is GPL and therefore not compatible
> > with IGSTK licensing. Do we misunderstand Qt? I was under the
> > impression IGSTK was considering using it alongside FLTK?
> > 
> > Thanks,
> > K2
> > 
> > 
> > -- 
> > ===
> > Kevin A. Gary, Ph.D.
> > Assistant Professor
> > DCST, ASU East
> > (480)727-1373
> > http://kgary2.east.asu.edu
> > kgary at asu.edu
> > > begin:vcard
> > fn:Kevin Gary
> > n:Gary;Kevin
> > org:Arizona State University Polytechnic;Division of Computing Studies
> > adr:Bldg. 140;;7001 E. Williams Field Road;Mesa;AZ;85212;USA
> > email;internet:kgary at asu.edu
> > title:Assistant Professor
> > tel;work:(480)727-1373
> > tel;fax:(480)727-1248
> > tel;cell:(602)312-7397
> > x-mozilla-html:FALSE
> > url:http://kgary2.east.asu.edu
> > version:2.1
> > end:vcard
> > 
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