Re: Idea for new Display Manager

[Hugo Slepicka <hhslepicka@gmail.com>]

Hi Whit,

Here at SLAC we reached the same conclusion (white paper attached) and based on the result of this study we started to develop PyDM (https://github.com/slaclab/pydm) which is a PyQt-based framework for building user interfaces for control systems.

Currently the project is in use at SLAC, at LNLS/Sirius in Campinas, Brazil and at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, Germany.

The documentation is being improved and also the tool capabilities (http://slaclab.github.io/pydm/).

Support for structured data (pvAccess) will be available on the next months.

Feel free to give it a try and send back your impressions and considerations.

Cheers,
Hugo

On Tue, Feb 27, 2018 at 10:16 AM Whitney R. Armstrong <warmstrong@anl.gov> wrote:

Hello,

My recent experience with display managers left me with the conclusion
that a new DM is desperately needed. Here is a quick recap of my
experiences and thoughts dealing with the different display managers.
Note I am using the latest Ubuntu and Epics base-7 and my comments are
tongue-in-cheek.

1. MEDM : It works! This old gem works (almost) perfectly. It has a very
easy to use interface, but of course, is rather limited.

2. edm : Where do I download it? The webpage is broken. (Last
documentation update was in 2007: is also not a good sign.)

3. caQtDM: A home rolled build system is never a good sign. It compiles
but then crashes when launched. I get a horrible hand cramp trying to
debug things because who types "caQtDM" with ease? Does it work... I
don't know... maybe?

4. CS-studios: First I follow the instructions on the website: fails.
Eclipse cannot install all the needed parts. Next I try running maven to
build from the core directory. After maven downloads the entire internet
the build fails with some horrible java errors. (Why is java still a
thing?)  CSS looks nice from all the pictures but it has some bugs (or
undocumented features).

Anyway, if I missed any DMs please let me know. As you can tell,  IMO
MEDM is still the winner.

The idea for a new display manager is to use an "immediate mode" gui
(imgui) design  which is much easier than "retain mode" like qt, gtk,
etc. I have been playing around with Dear ImGui
(https://github.com/ocornut/imgui) which has become quite popular. A
test using ImGui and looks for PVs from the example ioc app can be found
here https://github.com/whit2333/imgui_DM .

My initial take away: It was easier to develop my own DM than build most
of the existing display mangers. I am not sure if this speaks to the
awesomeness of Dear ImGui, or the sad state of existing DMs (but not you
MEDM, you are my rock).

In summary, I would like to develop a new display manager around Dear
ImGui and any feedback or comments on the idea would be great.

Cheers,
Whit

PS This repo was super useful
(https://github.com/mdavidsaver/cmake4epics) and cmake could make life
easier by replacing many parts of the -- let's say, unique -- "Epics
build system".

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