Re: FLAME medm

[winans@aps.anl.gov (John R. Winans)]

> well, i've cooled off now and so apologize for the flame (which used east 
> coast speak -- here's the west coast version)

At the risk of heating you back up again...

> i'd like to suggest that those of you working on epics software which is in
> general use remember that there may be people out there who
> depend upon the possibly unusual or undocumented behavior of that software
> 
> it would be nice if all all visible changes were well documented,
>
> it would also be nice if all public interfaces were well documented. i was
> not able to find on the web (perhaps someone could tell me where i overlooked
> it) any info on the adl file formats (old version and/or new improved version)
> 
> for general information, we are using this information for 3 projects:
> 
> 	-- a library of routines which create .adl files (we generate the 
> 	   majority of our screens by software, not a human editor)
> 
> 	-- converting medm .adl files into dm .dl files to allow dm and medm
> 	   to be used interchangeable (we prefer dm performance but medm editor)
> 
> 	-- continuing to develop john winans applet which will eventually be
> 	   able to display medm .adl files within netscape

I think (and have always THOUGHT) that this java app is a wonderful idea. I
regret that the MEDM and DM file formats are incompatible.  I would have not
influenced the divergance, but it is/was my understanding that DM was having
its file format changed for whatever reason.  Fred mentioned that to me when
I was asking for clarification of some aspects of it.  Fred then mentioned a
few ideas he had that he wanted to see added to MEDM's file format and that
he was going to add them since DM was going off on its own anyway.  I responded
with "if they are different, they are different.  Lets fix the bogosities while
were at it and reduce the size of the file by 50%."  So we did.  

I don't want to ask who came up with that horribly unorganized mess of a 
format in the first place.  I suspect that it is the same $#&&^% that came up
with the unbelievably odd message-button behaviour (that has hopefully been
fixed by now) that I recall from 1992.

So anyway... the point of today's rambling is to let the folks at JeffersonBAF
know that my Java stuff is not exactly in sync with the new MEDM format
either.  It needs to have the RGB parser changed to read the 3-byte RGB
values instead of the R=, G=, B= cruft that it had in it when I sent it
to you.  You might consider adding a little logic to let it read both formats
automagically... though I'd rather see the old format not supported at all
since it adds something like 70KB to every screen and taked several
seconds to parse using my (admittedely less-than-optimal) logic.


--John Winans