Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

"Wang Xiaoqiang" <[email protected]> · Wed, 22 Feb 2012 08:38:12 +0100

Hi Andrew,

Through years various attempts, at least 4, have developed Qt/PyQt based
OPI. Finally comes a Qt initiative!

Just a technical comment, current epics aware widgets, as far as I see,
are based on QWidget. 
While Declarative UI (QML) would be a better choice,
  . Display items are lighter than Qwidget, especially good for OPI with
a lot of elements.
  . Naturally scriptable.
  . Integrated drag/drop development with Qt Creator.

Best,
Xiaoqiang

-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Andrew Johnson
Sent: Tuesday, February 21, 2012 10:42 PM
To: EPICS tech-talk
Subject: QT-based tools: Expressions of interest requested

Control System Studio (CSS) is now 5+ years old and has an excellent and
rich selection of tools for creating GUIs and other programs for
interacting with an EPICS control system. However (there's always a
"but" after that kind of introduction isn't there!) there are sites,
systems, programs, places and people for which Java, Eclipse and/or SWT
are not seen as a suitable environment. This message are not in any way
trying to replace or denigrate CSS, it's about providing an alternative
where CSS is not appropriate.

This is a call for expressions of interest in a collaboration to develop
tools and technologies based on the QT toolkit. A number of EPICS users
have spoken about QT (pronounced "cute")as the most obvious replacement
for the X11 and Motif tool-kits used by the old extensions MEDM, EDM,
EDD/DM, dm2k, ALH, StripTool, Probe, Burt, etc. A number of QT-based
projects have already been developed at various sites. If your
lab/site/application has GUI needs which can't be fulfilled using CSS
and you are interested in working together using QT, please respond to
this email with what your needs and interests are, and what resources
you might be able to contribute.

I hope to moderate a discussion on this "QT Initiative" at the EPICS
meeting at SLAC in April; all interested parties welcome.

The APS has a long-term need to replace the Motif-based programs MEDM,
ALH and 
StripTool, which are heavily used by the operators in our control room
and by 
other staff around the site. John Hammonds and various others have
developed 
the ADL-to-BOY converter for CSS which is currently in use at one of the
APS 
beamlines, but we don't believe that all of our current users will be
willing 
or able to run CSS. We have a developer in our group who has fairly
extensive 
QT experience, and are particularly interested in the EPICS QT work that
has 
been developed at the Australian Synchrotron.

- Andrew
-- 
Optimization is the process of taking something that works and
replacing it with something that almost works, but costs less.
-- Roger Needham

Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System

Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System