[vtk-developers] Scope of VTK and it's potential as a common research language

[Biddiscombe, John A.]

To revisit this question :

I'd like to see VTK adopt a decent vector+maths library under the hood, a dependency on something like Eigen would not be a problem AFAIAC (Especially if it was inside Utilities and compiled along with VTK). VTK shouldn't reimplement these things, but should not introduce too many hard to solve dependencies. Using Utilities/Mathlibrary-1,2,3 etc is not a problem for me. There are many algorithms in VTK which mess round with points and the code is not very readable. A decent vector/matric template calss would make things much better.

In an ideal world all things like boost would work out of the box with cmake too and we could replace huge amounts of smartpointer stuff, lists, and the rest with stl/boost objects.

JB


> -----Original Message-----
> From: vtk-developers-bounces at vtk.org [mailto:vtk-developers-bounces at vtk.org]
> On Behalf Of David Doria
> Sent: 11 January 2010 03:50
> To: VTK Developers
> Subject: [vtk-developers] Scope of VTK and it's potential as a common
> research language
> 
> A recent discussion has raised, again, a point which has come up
> several times - that is, how much math should VTK include? I agree
> that it is very important to address. Here are my thoughts:
> 
> Although VTK is a visualization toolkit, I believe it can and should
> act as much more than that. It serves as a common language for
> scientists and engineers to share code (clearly within reason -
> typically in the computer graphics/computer vision/image processing
> fields). This is critically important as technology continues to
> advance at an accelerating rate. While yes, we don't strive to provide
> a full mathematics toolbox, I believe we should not hesitate to
> provide things to make it easy for people to share code. If a few
> simple matrix multiples force someone to include yet another 3rd party
> library, it makes it significantly harder to give to a colleague. If
> one says "here is my code, you'll need VXL, VTK, ITK, LAPACK, Boost,
> etc. etc", that will discourage people from actually use the code, as
> they will likely have to spend a week getting it to compile and link.
> If one says "I have implemented all of my research as VTK filters",
> the next researcher can simply use it as a building block for the next
> year's research. I've never seen an actual survey, but I bet the
> *majority* of most students (and probably professional's, too) time is
> spent re-implementing things that have already been written at least
> once (probably hundreds of times) and should already be
> "plug-and-play". The problem is 100% that the code is not written in a
> form that is compatible with the next guy's code base. If we strive to
> setup an environment in which this problem is alleviated, it would be
> a massive step in the right direction for the success of all future
> scientists. The Insight/VTK journal's are already in place to then
> make this work in a common environment/language easy to share and
> find.
> 
> That said, there is still clearly a line that needs to be drawn. We
> should probably not provide everything that is available in a
> mathematics package such as Maple. However, again, we shouldn't
> hesitate to provide things that are reasonably linked to the research
> fields that people who use VTK are involved with. If the logic is "VTK
> is only a visualization toolkit", then all of the readers and writers
> do not fit the description, which we all know to be critically useful.
> None of the mathematics functions should be exposed, which would make
> things much harder. My point is, we have already taken a giant step
> over the "only a visualization toolkit" line, so why restrain
> continued development in reasonable directions?
> 
> I realize I'm the "new guy" to VTK, but I think this allows me to
> bring a nice perspective to the table. Being a current PhD student,
> I'm experiencing first hand the "state of the art" of code sharing
> and, frankly, it is failing miserably.
> 
> I'd like to hear what some of you veteran VTK-ers and scientists think
> about this.
> 
> David D.
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