[Paraview] stability of paraview

Tue Jun 13 16:56:10 EDT 2006

I think there is a misunderstanding here. Releasing ParaView 3 (which will
be the first version based on Qt) on OS X is a priority. We will have the
source code available very soon and we will release a Mac binary soon after
that.

Initially, we had issues with releasing ParaView on OS X because Tcl/Tk did
not work well. Eventually, we switched to using Tcl/Tk built on X11. This is
the main reason behind most of the compilation confusion.

We actually have several Macs here and can test ParaView on them if we chose
to. However, our development efforts are driven by our commercial contracts
and so far, our customers have not made OS X support a high enough priority.
It has always been "if it is easy to do it, support Mac, otherwise do more
important stuff". So far, it has not been that easy but things will change
once we switch to Qt (I hope).  Also, given that ParaView is an open-source
project, Mac users are free to submit patches to fix problems they
encounter.

As for being a Mac person, we have around 30 developers at Kitware, all of
whom are given a choice of hardware/operating system to use. Most work on
Intel/MS Windows, some work on Intel/Linux, some (including me) work on
both. I believe one of us has a Mac as a secondary system and does
development on it. He is not part of the ParaView team.

As I mentioned, our decision is not based on market research but what our
customers require. However, if you have any references to marketing surveys
that strongly suggest that we should change our priorities, I would love to
see them.

-Berk

On 6/13/06, Mike Jackson <imikejackson at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> <rant>
>     What I am seeing is that you are moving to a cross-platform GUI
> toolkit and not actually USING part of it. I mean, if you stick to
> the QT apis what is the deal with mac support? It is built INTO QT.
> It is _harder_ to NOT have mac support than to actually include it.
>
>     So what you are doing is FORCING me to PURCHASE a NEW computer
> because somewhere someone simply decided that Mac support was not a
> priority. At the moment I am sitting in a room full of Researchers
> from the commercial, academia and government sectors and the Mac/PC
> ratio is just about 50/50.
>
>    This absolutely flies in the face of every marketing survey done
> and is what I am going to presume is what Kitware basis it's decision
> on. That decision is just plain WRONG. I am going to guess a good
> portion of your market is Scientists, Researchers, and Engineers.
> This particular market has a much larger number of Mac users than the
> general part of the market. I would suggest a serious rethinking on
> that priority. The longer you take to get Paraview in a workable
> state the more users you are going to lose. Each one of those
> Engineers is going to tell his colleges that Paraview doesn't work
> and try something else. I know I do. This will just keep spreading
> and my NEXT YEAR when you finally decide to release support for OS X,
> most of the people who would have used it and became loyal users, are
> now using competing products. And to top it off, they are now telling
> all their colleges how well the competing product works.
>
>     I was told in the past by Kitware employees that Macs were not
> supported because they were so slow that no one at Kitware wanted to
> use one. Take a look from under your rock. I now have the exact same
> hardware that Dell is running. I have the speed. The machines are not
> any more expensive than a comparable Dell, IBM, or Toshiba.
>
>    And to top this off, you _could_ purchase a MacBook Pro and Dual
> Boot XP and OS X on it. That way your engineer could work in what
> ever system he/she needed at the time. But to just outright dismiss
> OS X is a mistake in my not so humble opinion.
>
>    I can not believe there isn't one Mac guy at Kitware? There is
> usually at least one per company. Sometimes they are in a "closet",
> so you have to dig them out. Buy them a Shiny new Mac and let them
> have at it getting ParaQ to compile and run cleanly on OS X.
> </rant>
>
> --------
> Mike Jackson
> imikejackson <at> gmail <dot> com
>
>
> On Jun 13, 2006, at 3:54 PM, Berk Geveci wrote:
>
> > Hi Folks,
> >
> > I would like to remind that our Mac support is at alpha stage at
> > best. I have mentioned many times on this mailing list that a
> > stable Mac build is not a high priority. We release Mac binaries
> > and try to help with the build process so that Mac users are not
> > completely left out. However, judging ParaView's stability based on
> > how it runs on a platform we do not officially support is not fair.
> >
> > We will focus on getting ParaView 3.0 work well on the Mac in the
> > next months. Switching to Qt for our GUI toolkit will make this
> > process easier. ParaView 3.0 will be at alpha stage hopefully
> > before the end of the year and will be supported on the Mac.
> > ParaView 2.6 (to be released in the fall) will still use Tk and
> > will not be officially supported on the Mac.
> >
> > -Berk
> >
> >
> > On 6/12/06, Mike Jackson < imikejackson at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Jun 12, 2006, at 4:31 PM, Peter J. Bismuti wrote:
> >
> > >
> > > Hi, here at Boeing we're contemplating using Paraview as one tool
> > for
> > > visualizing solutions from an in-house CFD code (Navier-Stokes).
> > > There is
> > > concern that an open-source produce won't have an acceptable level
> > > of QA.
> > > There have been some reports of frequent crashes.  Anybody care to
> > > share
> > > their experiences or opinions?
> > >
> > > Thanks
> > > Peter Bismuti
> > > Boeing
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > ParaView mailing list
> > > ParaView at paraview.org
> > > http://www.paraview.org/mailman/listinfo/paraview
> >
> >
> > For starters, Paraview will NOT run on an Intel Based Mac. With that
> > out of the way, Paraview 2.4.4 from Kitware's site tends to crash a
> > lot on me, like every few minutes or so. I have no idea if it is my
> > system, my data set, or paraview. I have not tried compiling Paraview
> > on Windows to take that part out of the equation. Just my experience.
> >
> > Like every other software package out there, save often.
> >
> >
> > --------
> > Mike Jackson
> > imikejackson <at> gmail <dot> com
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > ParaView mailing list
> > ParaView at paraview.org
> > http://www.paraview.org/mailman/listinfo/paraview
> >
>
>
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