[vtkusers] GUI integration

Wed Aug 4 07:36:41 EDT 2010

Hello Eli,

Thank you very much for your post. I was hoping for someone to step in and
reassure me that Java was a workable solution, and you did it. That's great.
I did not think about the java web start, but it is true that it is nice
advantage too... I'll have a look at the classes you mentionned. I have
already playing a bit with that solution and it is indeed quite straight
forward to setup and use. I still have some stuff I need to explore:

- Anyone notice some flickering on the JFrame resize (this is on the simple
cone example).

- Can I add vtk objects from the C++ layer and display it in Java by sending
a reference to the vtkRenderer(Window) to the C++ layer? Obviously, I would
need then to manage the memory of these objects my-self. I am thinking of
doing it this way to keep a maximum of my vtk programming in C++:
 1. so that I can easily switch to another GUI layer in case of problems 
 2. because I have anyway to interact with an existing C++ library that
contain most of the data to draw the vtk objects.

Again, thank you very much for your post, I really appreciate it.

Cheers

Nicolas

Bugzilla from egk865 at yahoo.com wrote:
> 
> Hi Nicolas,
> 
> I have been using the Java wrappers on a project for almost a year now
> and I think they're great. I personally think VTK is the best 3D
> graphics library available for the Java platform.
> 
> Any memory problems seem to have been solved with the 5.6
> release. I have been able to run long running batch programs for days
> without memory leaks. A new class (see vtkJavaGarbageCollector.java
> within Wrapping/Java/vtk) was written to provide automatic garbage
> collection of VTK objects, though sometimes I've found that I needed
> to explicitly call Delete on some objects to ensure they got deleted
> (haven't yet investigated why). I don't think it's any more work now
> dealing with memory management in Java than it would be in C++.
> 
> For GUI programs, an AWT widget is provided which can be integrated
> with swing programs. See vtkPanel.java, vtkCanvas.java, and
> vtkRenderWindowPanel.java within Wrapping/Java/vtk. (I usually use
> vtkRenderWindowPanel since that contains the most functionality. It's
> missing mousewheel support however, but that can easily be added). See
> also
> http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/GUI/mixing_components/index.html
> for useful information about mixing heavyweight and lightweight
> components. I've found though that crashes often occurred if things
> weren't done properly, especially related to picking. Such crashes can
> be difficult to debug since often the entire virtual machine crashes
> without leaving any stack trace. I've found reading through the code
> in these 3 classes very helpful in understanding how best to use them.
> 
> Another advantage I've found in using Java is that I was able to
> easily distribute my application by making use of Java Web Start. This
> made it easy to provide updates to users on mac, windows and linux
> platforms (which I needed to support). Making a new release usually
> meant simply updating a single jar file on the server, and users on
> all 3 platforms would instantly get the new version. The jar files
> containing the native VTK libraries would usually never needed to be
> touched, unless I needed to update VTK.
> 
> Eli
> 
> 
> --- On Mon, 8/2/10, nclemeur <nclemeur at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> From: nclemeur <nclemeur at gmail.com>
>> Subject: Re: [vtkusers] GUI integration
>> To: vtkusers at vtk.org
>> Date: Monday, August 2, 2010, 6:58 AM
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> > I know you said you're familiar with Java and
>> wxWidgets, but another
>> > possibility is Qt with c++. There are a few examples
>> to get you going
>> > here:
>> > 
>> 
>> Yes, thank you for the hint. It looks like the Qt options
>> is quite popular.
>> But it is not really an option for me. I would really
>> appreciate some
>> comments from people using the java and/or python wrapping
>> (or maybe from
>> people that I have stopped used these wrapper?). Are these
>> wrappers working
>> well enough for a relatively simple useage? Anything to
>> stay away from? Any
>> good reason to choose python rather than java (other than
>> language
>> preferences) or even C++ with wxWidgets?
>> 
>> I am pretty sure there would be quite a lot of people
>> interested by this
>> topic, so please don't hesitate to comment, even if is
>> simply to say "it is
>> (not) working".
>> 
>> Cheers
>> 
>> Nicolas
>> 
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> 
> 
>       
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> 
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