[vtkusers] I think this is the problem......

[Joey Mukherjee]

On Mar 18, 2004, at 8:16 AM, James C. Robinson wrote:

> designing the look and feel of the interface):- graphics is something 
> that I
> want to be able to take for granted - this is why I have opted for a 
> 3rd
> party solution.

We all want something for nothing!

> You see, you still haven't addressed (a) the issue of why we have so 
> many
> objects that replicate so many similar functionalities and (b) why at 
> least
> very specific explanations of these objects aren't given (preferably
> referring to the other similar objects and clearly distinguishing why 
> one
> might want to use one as opposed to the other).

I don't know how this could ever be solved.  There are so many 
applications for which VTK is useful that you could never write them 
all.  The whole concept of VTK is having a bunch of building blocks to 
do as you want, but when it comes to putting them together, you are 
essentially on your own.

> Surely there is room for a very clear document that says explicitly, 
> for
> example:
> Heading: Representation of finite element quadratic hexahedra mesh.
> 	Topic 1: Displaying element materials. Take the following steps:
> 	Topic 2: Displaying a scalar field. Take the following steps: etc.
>
> You see what I mean?

You hit two ideas, neither of which are useful for me, but useful for 
you.  Who is going to write all the very clear documents that cover 
more and do the stuff that I want?  You can never get it all.  If you; 
however, write such a document, I think it would be very welcome.

>  We could have a
> proforma document to fill in and submit. I feel the suggestion of just 
> going
> to the mail list and doing a search is a total cop out. There must be
> thousands e-mail, all very weakly titled and not in a structure that 
> would
> make it easy to find anything specific.

Prahbu's Wiki is a good idea for this, but people would have to be 
willing to submit pages for this to work.  I haven't got that kind of 
time, but maybe others do.  Since this is a high volume list, I spend 
only about 10/20 seconds looking at each message.  I ignore any 
messages that are on topic I know nothing about, and with this list, 
that's a lot (no windows/java/python - virtually all specialized 
analysis, etc).  I imagine lots of people are like that so you have to 
hit the right people at the right time which is hard to  do.

I understand your frustration, but a support contract might be the best 
thing for you.  If I had to ask Kitware for one thing, it would be to 
improve the search.  I always have problems with it, but maybe its just 
me.

Joey