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digitalmars.D.learn - [ot] D and graphics on Linux

reply Georg Wrede <georg.wrede nospam.org> writes:
Slightly off-topic, but:

I may be in a position to make the first Processing Plant Production 
Line Control Software in D. To my knowledge, at least. :-)

That would include, among other things, a display of some of the vital 
parameters of the process as real-time graphs. (Temperatures, wattages, 
production speed, etc.)

The choice of language and operating system is mine, and being a D 
bigot, I really would like to do the stuff in D. And Windows is excluded 
because the plant can't afford an unstable OS for 24/7 operation. Since 
D is (more or less) a Win/Lin language, it'll be Linux.


Now, being a pay-project, I need to find a productive choice of 
libraries and tools to maximise Productivity. (Specified as man-hours to 
delivery.)

The graphs will be on X (as opposed to Linux console graphics), so that 
they can be viewed off-shopfloor too.

Does anybody have experience on this kind of stuff?
Apr 12 2006
next sibling parent reply BCS <BCS_member pathlink.com> writes:
Georg Wrede wrote:
 Slightly off-topic, but:
 
 
 Now, being a pay-project, I need to find a productive choice of 
 libraries and tools to maximise Productivity. (Specified as man-hours to 
 delivery.)
 
Is that only your man hours? With this crowd you might be able to get it mostly written while you are out fishing (or waterer). On the other hand, I'm sure you have some kind of deadline calender wise so letting us dink around with parts might no be a good idea (as it might get done using DMD v2.0). :P I'm glad to here this and hope to hear good results.
Apr 12 2006
parent Georg Wrede <georg.wrede nospam.org> writes:
BCS wrote:
 Georg Wrede wrote:
 
 Slightly off-topic, but:

 Now, being a pay-project, I need to find a productive choice of 
 libraries and tools to maximise Productivity. (Specified as man-hours 
 to delivery.)
Is that only your man hours? With this crowd you might be able to get it mostly written while you are out fishing (or waterer).
Sure. But not paying everybody while I'm getting paid myself is embarrassing. :-) OTOH, we're all here doing free work for Walter, so maybe I shouldn't be that embarrassed. :-P Besides, in my own mind I probably should think I'm charging for consultation and delivery (just as if I were delivering an OSS thing), and not for programming as such. Then the code would be in the Public Domain, and so help other folks too.
 On the other 
 hand, I'm sure you have some kind of deadline calender wise so letting 
 us dink around with parts might no be a good idea (as it might get done 
 using DMD v2.0).   :P
I can always blame the guys doing the welding and stuff!
 I'm glad to here this and hope to hear good results.
It would be cool for Walter to be able to brag around that D is already used in Factory Control!!!
Apr 13 2006
prev sibling parent reply John Demme <me teqdruid.com> writes:
Georg Wrede wrote:

 Slightly off-topic, but:
 
 I may be in a position to make the first Processing Plant Production
 Line Control Software in D. To my knowledge, at least. :-)
 
 That would include, among other things, a display of some of the vital
 parameters of the process as real-time graphs. (Temperatures, wattages,
 production speed, etc.)
 
 The choice of language and operating system is mine, and being a D
 bigot, I really would like to do the stuff in D. And Windows is excluded
 because the plant can't afford an unstable OS for 24/7 operation. Since
 D is (more or less) a Win/Lin language, it'll be Linux.
 
 
 Now, being a pay-project, I need to find a productive choice of
 libraries and tools to maximise Productivity. (Specified as man-hours to
 delivery.)
 
 The graphs will be on X (as opposed to Linux console graphics), so that
 they can be viewed off-shopfloor too.
 
 Does anybody have experience on this kind of stuff?
There's Ant's D OO frontend for GTK, but I've found it to be pretty incomplete. I ported the GTK headers to D some time ago (they're close to correct) and they're on dsource.org... I'd recommend using GTK and the GTK headers, this way you can use all the existing GTK stuff. I also posted headers for Glade, which allows you to design the UI graphically, save it to an XML format, and load the UI from the XML when the program loads. It's pretty cool, but it's another library you need. Alternatively, Glade can generate C code to create your interface, and since D works with C.... I haven't made any attempts as using Qt since Qt is c++ based, whereas GTK is pure C. There's also a D header for ncurses, but I haven't used it. Personally, I don't like GUI programming in D (it's only slightly better in Java.) I'm waiting for full shared object support so we can integrate D with python and I can write the GUI stuff in python and everything else in D. $.02 ~John Demme
Apr 12 2006
next sibling parent Georg Wrede <georg.wrede nospam.org> writes:
John Demme wrote:
 Georg Wrede wrote:
 
Slightly off-topic, but:

I may be in a position to make the first Processing Plant Production
Line Control Software in D. To my knowledge, at least. :-)

That would include, among other things, a display of some of the vital
parameters of the process as real-time graphs. (Temperatures, wattages,
production speed, etc.)

The choice of language and operating system is mine, and being a D
bigot, I really would like to do the stuff in D. And Windows is excluded
because the plant can't afford an unstable OS for 24/7 operation. Since
D is (more or less) a Win/Lin language, it'll be Linux.

Now, being a pay-project, I need to find a productive choice of
libraries and tools to maximise Productivity. (Specified as man-hours to
delivery.)

The graphs will be on X (as opposed to Linux console graphics), so that
they can be viewed off-shopfloor too.

Does anybody have experience on this kind of stuff?
There's Ant's D OO frontend for GTK, but I've found it to be pretty incomplete. I ported the GTK headers to D some time ago (they're close to correct) and they're on dsource.org... I'd recommend using GTK and the GTK headers, this way you can use all the existing GTK stuff.
Yes, this has been one of the alternatives.
 I also posted headers for
 Glade, which allows you to design the UI graphically, save it to an XML
 format, and load the UI from the XML when the program loads.  It's pretty
 cool, but it's another library you need.
This would save a lot of time, I think.
 Alternatively, Glade can generate
 C code to create your interface, and since D works with C.... 
I'd like to do as much as possible in D. But this has been an alternative too.
 I haven't
 made any attempts as using Qt since Qt is c++ based, whereas GTK is pure C.
Yeah, besides, being a pay-project, I don't even know if Qt would be ok.
 There's also a D header for ncurses, but I haven't used it.
Character-block graphics might even be sufficient, but then the users and managers would look down on it. (This is just so typical!)
 Personally, I don't like GUI programming in D (it's only slightly better in
 Java.)  I'm waiting for full shared object support so we can integrate D
 with python and I can write the GUI stuff in python and everything else in
 D.
Yeah, there's so much drudgery and so little interesting things. Ideally a RAD system (Kylix comes to mind, a vast choice Java IDEs, etc) would be the smart thing to use here, but "I wanna do it in D".
Apr 13 2006
prev sibling parent reply Lars Ivar Igesund <larsivar igesund.net> writes:
John Demme wrote:

 Georg Wrede wrote:
 
 Slightly off-topic, but:
 
 I may be in a position to make the first Processing Plant Production
 Line Control Software in D. To my knowledge, at least. :-)
 
 That would include, among other things, a display of some of the vital
 parameters of the process as real-time graphs. (Temperatures, wattages,
 production speed, etc.)
 
 The choice of language and operating system is mine, and being a D
 bigot, I really would like to do the stuff in D. And Windows is excluded
 because the plant can't afford an unstable OS for 24/7 operation. Since
 D is (more or less) a Win/Lin language, it'll be Linux.
 
 
 Now, being a pay-project, I need to find a productive choice of
 libraries and tools to maximise Productivity. (Specified as man-hours to
 delivery.)
 
 The graphs will be on X (as opposed to Linux console graphics), so that
 they can be viewed off-shopfloor too.
 
 Does anybody have experience on this kind of stuff?
There's Ant's D OO frontend for GTK, but I've found it to be pretty incomplete.
Well it's been through a makeover, and I'm finding it quite complete now, although it hasn't been through much testing yet to be totally sure that everything works as it should. Ant is fairly responsive whenever somebody reports an issue though. Of course, I'm currently using it, so I say the more, the merrier :) Whether it's the most productive solution is another question, if you know gtk, it should be quite easy to find the D'ified solution.
Apr 13 2006
parent Ant <Ant_member pathlink.com> writes:
In article <e1lnfk$2hn5$1 digitaldaemon.com>, Lars Ivar Igesund says...
John Demme wrote:

 Georg Wrede wrote:
 
 Slightly off-topic, but:
 
 I may be in a position to make the first Processing Plant Production
 Line Control Software in D. To my knowledge, at least. :-)
 
 That would include, among other things, a display of some of the vital
 parameters of the process as real-time graphs. (Temperatures, wattages,
 production speed, etc.)
 
 The choice of language and operating system is mine, and being a D
 bigot, I really would like to do the stuff in D. And Windows is excluded
 because the plant can't afford an unstable OS for 24/7 operation. Since
 D is (more or less) a Win/Lin language, it'll be Linux.
 
 
 Now, being a pay-project, I need to find a productive choice of
 libraries and tools to maximise Productivity. (Specified as man-hours to
 delivery.)
 
 The graphs will be on X (as opposed to Linux console graphics), so that
 they can be viewed off-shopfloor too.
 
 Does anybody have experience on this kind of stuff?
There's Ant's D OO frontend for GTK, but I've found it to be pretty incomplete.
Well it's been through a makeover, and I'm finding it quite complete now, although it hasn't been through much testing yet to be totally sure that everything works as it should. Ant is fairly responsive whenever somebody reports an issue though. Of course, I'm currently using it, so I say the more, the merrier :) Whether it's the most productive solution is another question, if you know gtk, it should be quite easy to find the D'ified solution.
I'll make a formal announcement of the new version soon. Before that I'm finising converting leds to the new version and I need to test and fix the windows version. The big change is the binding/wrapping is now totally automated. (I'll also be changing the name from DUI to GtkD (maybe)). Ant
Apr 13 2006