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<== Date ==> <== Thread ==>

Subject: Re: Idea for new Display Manager
From: "Whitney R. Armstrong" <[email protected]>
To: Mark Rivers <[email protected]>
Cc: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>
Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2018 17:23:05 -0600
Do you happen to have link to these builds/instructions for CSS?
On Tue, Feb 27, 2018 at 07:16:52PM +0000, Mark Rivers wrote:
I understand your point.  I am an medm user.  But as a complete CSS novice I downloaded the CSS nightly build, ran a single unzip command, and had a nicely working CSS system.  Building CSS from scratch is a challenge, but installing and using a pre-built version is not.

The conversion tools from medm to CSS and caQtDM are working quite nicely, particularly when the medm displays themselves are well-designed (i.e. text actually fits in the text widget, menu widgets have the correct datatype (decimal vs string), etc.

Mark


-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf
Of Whitney R. Armstrong
Sent: Tuesday, February 27, 2018 11:53 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Idea for new Display Manager

Hello,

My recent experience with display managers left me with the conclusion
that a new DM is desperately needed. Here is a quick recap of my
experiences and thoughts dealing with the different display managers.
Note I am using the latest Ubuntu and Epics base-7 and my comments are
tongue-in-cheek.

1. MEDM : It works! This old gem works (almost) perfectly. It has a very
easy to use interface, but of course, is rather limited.

2. edm : Where do I download it? The webpage is broken. (Last
documentation update was in 2007: is also not a good sign.)

3. caQtDM: A home rolled build system is never a good sign. It compiles
but then crashes when launched. I get a horrible hand cramp trying to
debug things because who types "caQtDM" with ease? Does it work... I
don't know... maybe?

4. CS-studios: First I follow the instructions on the website: fails.
Eclipse cannot install all the needed parts. Next I try running maven to
build from the core directory. After maven downloads the entire internet
the build fails with some horrible java errors. (Why is java still a
thing?)  CSS looks nice from all the pictures but it has some bugs (or
undocumented features).

Anyway, if I missed any DMs please let me know. As you can tell,  IMO
MEDM is still the winner.

The idea for a new display manager is to use an "immediate mode" gui
(imgui) design  which is much easier than "retain mode" like qt, gtk,
etc. I have been playing around with Dear ImGui
(https://github.com/ocornut/imgui) which has become quite popular. A
test using ImGui and looks for PVs from the example ioc app can be found
here https://github.com/whit2333/imgui_DM .

My initial take away: It was easier to develop my own DM than build most
of the existing display mangers. I am not sure if this speaks to the
awesomeness of Dear ImGui, or the sad state of existing DMs (but not you
MEDM, you are my rock).

In summary, I would like to develop a new display manager around Dear
ImGui and any feedback or comments on the idea would be great.

Cheers,
Whit

PS This repo was super useful
(https://github.com/mdavidsaver/cmake4epics) and cmake could make life
easier by replacing many parts of the -- let's say, unique -- "Epics
build system".




Replies:
Re: Idea for new Display Manager Andrew Johnson
RE: Idea for new Display Manager Mark Rivers
References:
Idea for new Display Manager Whitney R. Armstrong
RE: Idea for new Display Manager Mark Rivers

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