Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System
Dear Reader:
This is a status report on EPICS Display Tools for WIN32.
For the impatient the 'bottom line' first:
National Instruments' Lookout seems to be a good option
for a PC based EPICS display manager.
Now some more details, also available nicely? formated! as
http://atlanta.atdiv.lanl.gov/WIN32EPICS/Display.htm,
at least when the Web server on my PC is running.
While there is still no full-blown EPICS specific display tool available
for Windows95 or NT (like edd/dm or medm for Unix),
we do already have some options:
1) Ca and EZCA DLLs
These are part of EPICS base and extensions resp. and in fact
this option has been available for some time now after Chris Timossi
has ported the Ca client code to WIN32:
Other that on Unix where you can use libraries almost only by linking the
code to your C(++) programs,
Windows DLLs (dynamic link libraries) can be used by
almost any Windows program which provides a macro language.
A good example might be MS Excel, where after putting a few lines of VBA code
in your spreadsheet you can use formulars like this
=GetCAValue ('HighlyImportantPV')
and the cell will reflect the current value of the given PV every time you
update the spreadsheet.
2) Ca DDE Server
The DDE server for channel access allows DDE-capable Windows applications to
monitor and modify process variables.
This was originally written for Lookout (see below) but can also be used by
e.g. Excel.
The advantages are:
a) It's easier to use, just put a line like this in your preadsheet:
==CaDDE|Get!'HighlyImportantPV'
- no additional VBA code needed!
b) You automatically get dynamic updates every time the PV changes!
3) 'EDM', the WIN32 Epics Display Manager
A WIN32 Display Manager is in developement.
It should offer similar features like edd/dm.
The basic class layout seems to be done,
some simple display elements as well as OLE support are implemented.
After implementing more editing features (alignment, multiple selections) and
an ASCII import/export it should be usable by the end of January 97.
4) Lookout, the main reason for this mail:
CaDDE allows you to use National Instruments' Lookout as
an EPICS display manager.
It has some limitations, partly in performance and partly because it was
not originally developed for EPICS.
All in all, however, this might right now be the most
complete option available:
* It offers many predifined types of switches, sliders, bar graphs
and you can also use your own bitmaps.
* Many editing features.
* Performance might be OK for most applications.
* Easy to use interface to EPICS via CaDDE, basically you select
'from DDE' and type 'CaDDE', 'Get', <your PV name>.
* Some archive and history tools included.
For more information please refer to
http://atlanta.atdiv.lanl.gov/Lookout/main.htm
-Kay
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