[vtkusers] VTK 4.0 development

[Ken Martin]

Hello Folk,

I wanted to let you know about the VTK 4.0 development. We have been
working on VTK 4.0 for a while now and it contains some significant
changes. It is still undergoing development but I wanted to let you
know about it in case you were feeling adventurous and wanted to try
it out. You can obtain VTK 4.0 with anonymous cvs from

cvs -d :pserver:anonymous at public.kitware.com:/cvsroot/VTK login
vtk
cvs -d :pserver:anonymous at public.kitware.com:/cvsroot/VTK co VTK

do this in a clean directory as it will create a VTK directory and
possibly overwrite an existing vtk tree. You will also need CMake
which is a new cross platform build tool that replaces pcmaker. It can
be found at http://public.kitwre.com/CMake For testing purposes you
might wish to checkout VTKData from

cvs -d :pserver:anonymous at public.kitware.com:/cvsroot/VTKData login
vtk
cvs -d :pserver:anonymous at public.kitware.com:/cvsroot/VTKData co
VTKData

Nightly windows binaries are pushed out every day for
ftp://public.kitware.com/pub/vtk/nightly

A highlight of some of the changes are...

1) support for jpeg, and png images
2) better install support for UNIX
3) ability to build VTK that doesn't require an xserver connection
4) easier use of VTK from local projects
5) more robust and configurable make process
6) support for Microsoft dsw and dsp files on windows
7) easier testing of vtk (using ctest or Dart)
8) vtk executable built on windows
9) reorganized directory structure

Some of the documentation is a little rough but there are some
Examples under VTK/Examples. A lot of people have contributed to the
ongoing development of VTK 4.0 and continue to do so.

Thanks
Ken