Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

At PSI hundreds of synoptic displays have been developed with MEDM. For many reasons (see my abstract below) we are developing a new tool based on Qt for displaying those.

The project is in a real advanced stage and hopefully I can give a presentation on this at the next collaboration meeting.

Abstract:

The EPICS display manager MEDM is a very powerful tool with many features and satisfies most of the needs for synoptic displays. However MEDM is based on MOTIF and X11, systems/libraries that are getting into age. Moreover applications using those systems are difficult to maintain and to extend. Today a candidate as a platform for new applications could be QT instead of MOTIF and some applications have already been written at PSI giving some experience with Qt. The step to try to use Qt as a base for a new EPICS display manager was therefore decided and a new application caQtdm (channel access Qt display manager) was started. In order to test the display manager, all the widgets and features existing in MEDM have to be tested. Moreover the thousands of MEDM data files (.adl) have to be used as a start for a new system. As of today the new manager integrates already most of the features of MEDM and a parser for translating the .adl files into Qt-Designer files is operational. The state of the project will be presented.

Best Regards

Dr. Anton Chr. Mezger

Head of Accelerator Operations

Accelerator division   (ABE)   

Paul Scherrer Institut, WBGB/103

CH-5323 Villigen PSI 

E-Mail:   [email protected]

Phone:  ++41 (0)56 310 3406

Fax :      ++41 (0)56 310 3383