Hi Anton,

While ago - with caQtDM-3.8.9, I did some investigation on how to develop caQtDM-based widgets with caQtDM_Lib changes if possible.  A prove-concept prototype was implemented to demonstrate a possible short-term solution. So the developers(e.g. someone like Tim Mooney: aps.anl.gov) from the EPICS community could be much easy to create caQtDM-based widgets(include deriving from existing caQtDM widgets).

The caQtDM has been improved a lot since then (now up to version 4.0.2).

Before I forgot all that, I would like to put the idea together as a recommendation.

During last weekend, I merged my changes into caQtDM-4.0.2 for the concept demonstration only.

Hope it helps to promote your caQtDM framework further especially for SLAC and EPICS Qt in general.

 

Brief description below and one tar file Attached - a few existing files changed and two new interface files created

 

 

 

Best regards

 

Zai Wang

=============================================================================================================

Subject:	RE: EPICS CA Interface for caQtDM and epicsqt
From:	"Mooney, Tim M." <[email protected]>
To:	Zenon Szalata <[email protected]>, Andrew Rhyder <[email protected]>, "Mezger Anton Christian (PSI)" <[email protected]>, "Williams Jr., Ernest L." <[email protected]>
Cc:	"[email protected]" <[email protected]>, "Shankar, Murali" <[email protected]>, "Babbitt, Alisha" <[email protected]>
Date:	Mon, 23 Mar 2015 21:18:01 +0000

For me, the advantage of having both caQtDM and epicsqt is that I can have a nearly exact replacement for MEDM, and also add custom widgets in an easily maintainable way.  At least, I hope this is or will be the case.  Here's why:

 

I wrote a custom widget for caQtDM (to display 2D raster-scan data as they are acquired), and added it to several versions of caQtDM as they became available.  It was great; I could never have done this with MEDM.  Now, I don't want to bother Anton Mezger with any additional maintenence that my widget might require, and it isn't ready for general distribution in any case.  But adding a custom widget to each new release of caQtDM is a complicated and error prone process, involving edits to nine sections of six caQtDM files, in addition to adding source files for the custom widget, and maybe editing them for compatibility with the new version of caQtDM.  It's not going to be exactly the same edits every time, of course, so some study is required in advance.  Every time.  I did it three times, and that's enough to persuade me to look for an alternative way to add custom epics-aware widgets.

 

What I would prefer is to be able to maintain my custom widget in my own repository, and use qt's native ability to include widgets from different sources into an application.  This is what I think epicsqt's widget model will enable me to do, though I'm not yet far enough up the learning curve to know that it will work or how to do it.

 

Tim Mooney ([email protected]) (630)252-5417

Software Services Group (www.aps.anl.gov)

Advanced Photon Source, Argonne National Lab

 

 

________________________________________

From: [email protected] [[email protected]] on behalf of Zenon Szalata [[email protected]]

Sent: Monday, March 23, 2015 2:07 PM

To: Andrew Rhyder; Mezger Anton Christian       (PSI); Williams Jr., Ernest L.

Cc: [email protected]; Shankar,      Murali; Babbitt,        Alisha

Subject: Re: EPICS CA Interface for caQtDM and epicsqt

 

Hi All,

I have been using epicsQT for a number of years.  My approach is to use

epicsQT widgets only when Channel Access is needed, for anything else I

use Qt widgets.  Also, I did not find the QEGui display manager useful,

since I prefer to create well defined standalone applications.

The related display I implement with a Qt push button and a little C++

code around, which works perfectly well for me.  I am using QEForm

widget the way I would use Embedded Window widget in EDM.

I have not looked at caQtDM, since I became aware of it some time after

I started using epicsQT.  I wonder what is the advantage of combining

epicsQT and caQtDM?  Perhaps caQtDM has some useful widgets which might

be missing in epicsQT?  In my opinion, epicsQT is very well written and

reasonably complete and yet when I find it lacking, I just subclass my

own widget either from a Qt widget, QWT widget, or from an epicsQT

widget, to get what I need.

Now, my concern is that should epicsQT and caQtDM merge into one

package, then all my epicsQT based application would stop working. But

perhaps this kind of merger is not what is being contemplated.

Anyway, my 2 cents,

Zen