Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

Andrew Johnson <[email protected]> · Tue, 27 Feb 2018 17:29:29 -0600

Hi Whit,

On 02/27/2018 05:23 PM, Whitney R. Armstrong wrote:
> Do you happen to have link to these builds/instructions for CSS?

Try starting at http://controlsystemstudio.org/ (I haven't done so
myself, but that looks like the right place).

I will change the link on the EPICS website from their old SourceForge site.

- Andrew

> On Tue, Feb 27, 2018 at 07:16:52PM +0000, Mark Rivers wrote:
>> I understand your point.  I am an medm user.  But as a complete CSS
>> novice I downloaded the CSS nightly build, ran a single unzip command,
>> and had a nicely working CSS system.  Building CSS from scratch is a
>> challenge, but installing and using a pre-built version is not.
>>
>> The conversion tools from medm to CSS and caQtDM are working quite
>> nicely, particularly when the medm displays themselves are
>> well-designed (i.e. text actually fits in the text widget, menu
>> widgets have the correct datatype (decimal vs string), etc.
>>
>> Mark
>>
>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: [email protected]
>>> [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf
>>> Of Whitney R. Armstrong
>>> Sent: Tuesday, February 27, 2018 11:53 AM
>>> To: [email protected]
>>> Subject: Idea for new Display Manager
>>>
>>> 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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Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System

Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System