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

[James L. Preston]

Kent Eschenberg wrote:

> 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
>

As Mark Beall pointed out, Data Explorer is quite powerful, but is very different
from vtk programming. I don't think that it would be very feasible to "integrate"
vtk and opendx, but opendx does provide an example of what a full-featured
GUI for vtk might be like.  Additional features like python scripting would make
a vtk "visual programming environment" very attractive.

later,
jlp