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

[Kent Eschenberg]

Some random thoughts on this topic ...

(1) The visualization package formerly marketed by IBM, Data
Explorer, is now in the public domain. The commercial
version had a GUI and I believe it worked under NT and UNIX.
Has someone worked with the public domain version? Could
some pieces be used to build a VTK GUI?

(2) What should be the scope of this VTK GUI project? One
goal would be a GUI that would update itself automatically
by scanning the VTK source code, and that would work on all
OS used by VTKers. This is a lot of work. Could it be done
in phases?

(3) How portable? Building a GUI that works under, say, NT
and UNIX, using non-commercial software could be tough. Is
this important? Do any of the proposed GUI packages
accomplish this? A solution (although not a great one) is to
have a seperate GUI for each flavor of OS with a way to read
and write the "network" to a portable file.

Kent Eschenberg  kee at athena.wes.hpc.mil
Technical Lead for Scientific Visualization
ERDC MSRC Supercomputer Center, Vicksburg, MS