Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

Ryan Slominski <[email protected]> · Wed, 28 Feb 2018 15:43:06 -0500 (EST)

Whit,
  I'm not a maintainer of MEDM, but I'm interested in display managers and maintain WEDM (https://github.com/JeffersonLab/wedm).  I agree that Motif is an old technology and a proprietary file format requiring a custom parser and encoder isn't optimal today where most languages now provide XML and JSON support.  However, the cost of creating and maintaining a display manager from scratch is high, and there are many existing ones already.  So it is an interesting question whether it just makes more sense to use an existing one as requirements not met can usually be worked around.  At JLab we mostly rely on EDM, but we create custom applications (in whatever language) for very custom screens.

Ryan

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Hi Ryan,

That it is not a nightmare is one feature. MEDM is pretty great 
considering how old it is, and it easy to compile/install.

IMO not looking like windows 95 would be a major improvement. Also, the 
ability to easily add new displays, interfaces, and interface behaviors 
is missing.

One thing that would be nice is if the "adl" format was something 
standard like json. I have not looked at the MEDM code yet.

I have been looking for an excuse to play around with Dear ImGui. It 
turns out that a display manager is an ideal use for it. ImGui is 
written in c++ (actually it is written like c code). I don't care what 
language is used but it is probably best to do everything in c++ for 
speed purposes. There are a lot of wrappers for Dear ImGui. 

Are you a maintainer of MEDM?

Cheers,
Whit

Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System

Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System