Re: Questions from a new EPICS user...

[Till Straumann <strauman@SLAC.Stanford.EDU>]

Hi Steven.

Welcome :-)

Just a quick answer to your first question:

This is considered a "feature" (which also confused me in the early days).
Data shouldn't be written out as a result of the widget losing the focus
(which could happen accidentally). Instead, EDM  (like dm2k in earlier
days) expects you to explicitely 'commit' your modifications by hitting
the 'Enter' key. If a text entry loses focus prior to you hitting 
'Enter' your
modifications are reverted (which can be annoying but is safer).
EDM has no way to know about a relation between your 'Dial' button
and the Text Entry. They are connected to two different PVs and EDM
sees those as two totally independent entities.

Regarding the segfaults: use a debugger and submit stack traces etc.

HTH

-- Till

Steven.Banks@doi.vic.gov.au wrote:

> I'm a new EPICS user and am in the initial stages of learning how to use
> it.  I wonder if anyone could comment on some behaviour that I'm seeing in
> a small EPICS application I've just written.  I'd be interested to know if
> similar things happen in anyone else's environment.
>
> The application is just a simple driver to dial out a phone number on a
> modem attached to the serial port.   It's driven by stringout records in
> the database using a very primitive device driver to send commands out to
> the modem.
>
> It's based on the GPIB Driver tutorial written by Eric Norum.
>
> The application uses an EDM user interface to allow a telephone number to
> be entered into a text field with command buttons used to dial that number
> or hangup.  The behaviour I'm questioning is as follows:
>
> 1) I've noticed that you need to hit Tab or Enter on the text field prior
> to pressing the Dial button or else the field isn't updated in the
> database.  I would have thought that just pressing the button would have
> caused the text field to lose focus and update the record but this doesn't
> seem to happen.
>
> 2) I am seeing Segmentation Faults at various times.  In particular, this
> sometimes happens when I exit from EDM and also when I exit the iocsh
> command shell.  In addition, entering the command dbgf with no parameters
> causes a Segmentation Fault.
>
> I'm using the following software versions:
>
> Redhat Linux 9.0
> EPICS Base 3.14.3
> GPIBcore 1-2
> EDM 1-9-6q
>
> Thanks,
>
> Steve Banks
> Australian Synchrotron Project
> Department of Infrastructure
> Level 18, 80 Collins Street
> Melbourne   VIC   3000
> tel:  +613 9655 6303
> fax:  +613 9655 8666
> web: www.synchrotron.vic.gov.au
>
>
>