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

[Sebastien BARRE]

At 10:59 14/06/00 -0400, Dave Reed a écrit:

> > The idea of building a serious GUI has been around for a while. What I'd
> > like to see, as features :
> > **************************
> >          - OpenSource, and free
>
>I was planning to do this - although it would be great to get some
>funding from Kitware to develop it :-)

Kitware is hiring, isnt'it :) ?

> >          - platform independent
>
>I admit I'm not interested in developing for Windows.

Fact is that, although I love Linux, we just can't drop Windows (and 
windows users). Although XFree 4 looks promising, 3D drivers are much more 
stable for Windows, and there is a lot of high-end cars that are even NOT 
(and won't get) supported for Linux (I've got a Oxygen GMX 2000 at home, 
and a SGI 320 NT at work). I guess Linux will grow on the 3D market, but 
they are still a lot of people using VTK with Windows. And as far as I'm 
concerned, I can't even install Linux on my SGI 320 NT box. I'm feeling 
concerned with platform independency, therefore I test my VTK applications 
on my Linux box at home from time to time (at 1 frame per sec.), but most 
of the time I'm sticking to NT.

> >          - completeness and consistency (i.e., access to ALL VTK 
> functions,
> > and unified access, meaning that it has to be done automatically, see 
> below).
>
>That's the main reason I think Python is the appropriate choice - you
>can ask it what all the functions are for an object.

In Tcl too. Functions are one thing, but parameters are also mandatory (to 
my opinion) if you want to link these parameters to the objects that are 
already existing in your GUI, and make the appropriate suggestions to the 
user (this makes the difference). Does Python allow you to ask for the 
parameters types ? Not sure. Even though, it would be interesting to allow 
other bindings (Tcl, Java) to access this VTKDB database.

>I definitely like Python even though I've used it for less than 6
>months now.  I've never used Tcl.

Lucky you :)

> >          - when I click in an object in an object browser, I would like to
> > see ALL functions that might be applied on that object, AND (that's
> > important) the TYPE of the parameters of these functions, and the actual
> > values (using Tcl, it's possible to access the list of one object's 
> method,
> > but NOT the parameter's type).
>
>My initial thoughts weren't this grand.  I was going to assume people
>would have to know what connections to make themselves.

But VTK is so huge. I guess most of us have a vision of the API that is 
limited or constrained to our specific domain (medical imaging for me).