Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

Claude Saunders <[email protected]> · Tue, 28 Feb 2012 10:07:43 -0600

This is no knock on CSS-BOY at all, but I'll give you one concrete

example. For a facility that has been running with MEDM for ages (ex.

APS), the operations group typically has crafted scripts that populate a

dozen monitors with hundreds of pre-arranged, tiled sets of ADL screens.

And there are many other simple Tcl/Tk GUIs that pop up sets of screens

in hardcoded locations for particular needs.

Re-engineering all that to work with how CSS-BOY/Eclipse manages the

workspace could be viewed as prohibitive. So a replacement tool that

allows for X-geometry placement of individual screens would be much

easier to switch to.

So it's not that there is anything "wrong" with CSS - it's simply an

issue of the activation energy required to switch. At least, that's how

I read the motivation here for an alternative. Having said that, CSS-BOY

may well be a perfect fit for other situations such as beamlines.

   - Claude

On 02/28/2012 09:30 AM, Hu, Yong wrote:

Wow, what a hot topic! It's so great, so interesting, so exciting! BUT (sorry to say this word), my question is: is there anything wrong with CSS? what features are missing in CSS? What kind of applications CSS does not fit? Maybe there is nothing wrong with CSS, just personal flavors/tastes of different development environments. Maybe there is no one-size-fits-all solution. I just want to hear more and learn more about the motivations to create another GUI design toolkit.

My personal experience is that CSS is a great tool: hassle-free installation, ease of use, powerful and flexible. Another good thing about CSS is that the developers (Kay Kasemir, Xihui, Kunal, Gabriele, etc.) are very kind and responsive when you need help. Why not take this great tool and great service for free?

No perfect software. CSS is imperfect, too. I had been EDM user for a long time. I switched to CSS about 2 years ago and will never back to EDM. I was fascinated by its ease of use when I used CSS data browser to retrieve archived data and BOY to design screens for the first time. However, I did have quite a few frustration when I used CSS BOY to display large array data such as waveform and image: the CSS crashed several times in a week when I tested one digitizer; the CSS was extremely slow and became unresponsive when I used it to view 2MB @ 1Hz image data on 2-core with 2GB memory desktop. These things always make me doubtful of CSS stability and efficiency.

EPICS is a free, open, and diverse community. Anyone or any site can create their own tools. I'm looking forward to seeing another potentially great OPI tool. Good luck to Cute!

Yong

NSLS-II Controls Group

-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Andrew Johnson
Sent: Tuesday, February 21, 2012 4:42 PM
To: EPICS tech-talk
Subject: QT-based tools: Expressions of interest requested

Control System Studio (CSS) is now 5+ years old and has an excellent and rich selection of tools for creating GUIs and other programs for interacting with an EPICS control system. However (there's always a "but" after that kind of introduction isn't there!) there are sites, systems, programs, places and people for which Java, Eclipse and/or SWT are not seen as a suitable environment. This message are not in any way trying to replace or denigrate CSS, it's about providing an alternative where CSS is not appropriate.

This is a call for expressions of interest in a collaboration to develop tools and technologies based on the QT toolkit. A number of EPICS users have spoken about QT (pronounced "cute")as the most obvious replacement for the X11 and Motif tool-kits used by the old extensions MEDM, EDM, EDD/DM, dm2k, ALH, StripTool, Probe, Burt, etc. A number of QT-based projects have already been developed at various sites. If your lab/site/application has GUI needs which can't be fulfilled using CSS and you are interested in working together using QT, please respond to this email with what your needs and interests are, and what resources you might be able to contribute.

I hope to moderate a discussion on this "QT Initiative" at the EPICS meeting at SLAC in April; all interested parties welcome.

The APS has a long-term need to replace the Motif-based programs MEDM, ALH and
StripTool, which are heavily used by the operators in our control room and by
other staff around the site. John Hammonds and various others have developed
the ADL-to-BOY converter for CSS which is currently in use at one of the APS
beamlines, but we don't believe that all of our current users will be willing
or able to run CSS. We have a developer in our group who has fairly extensive
QT experience, and are particularly interested in the EPICS QT work that has
been developed at the Australian Synchrotron.

- Andrew

--
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 Claude Saunders<[email protected]>
 Software Services Group Leader
 Advanced Photon Source,   Argonne National Laboratory
 Argonne, IL  60439                   630 - 252 - 6619
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    We write suggestions, suggesting fading to silence
    And that must please you
    My mirror's tarnished with 'no help'
                      - Gary Numan
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Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System

Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System