Re: QT-based tools: Expressions of interest requested

[Dirk Zimoch <dirk.zimoch@psi.ch>]

PSI is working on QT, too.

Anton Mezger has written a .adl to .ui converter and a prototype medm 
replacement with most medm widgets re-implemented in QT. He will present 
his work at the collaboration meeting in April.
We also have development running on a broader scope. Jan Chrin's "CAFE" 
(Channel Access interFacE) implements Corba-like features on top of CA 
and provides a simple to use C++ interface that can be used for writing 
CA clients. He has a QT widget set which is quite network protocol 
agnostic. At the moment it can connect to CAFE and it is planned to 
extend it to EPICS 4 soon. These Qt widgets does not try to mimic medm 
but has additional features (e.g. showing units, improved alarm color 
coding, etc.)
Dirk


Andrew Johnson wrote:
> 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