[Pipet Devel] request for advise

J.W. Bizzaro bizzaro at bc.edu
Fri May 7 18:30:59 EDT 1999


Locians,

I've been thinking about the 3-pane system I have set up for Loci, and I can't
see how to resolve one problem.  It would be nice if all we had to worry about
was 2D graphics, because this is how I would like a plugin to operate:


    plug-in (analytical tool) called by Loci
             |
             |
             |
            \|
    plug-in returns XML describing GUI
       for input controls
             |
             |
             |
            \|
    Loci sets up input controls in
        right pane (pane 3)
             |
             |
             |
            \|
      User puts in parameters, sends
        parameters to plug-in
             |
             |
             |
            \|
       Plug-in does analysis, and
       returns XML with new data
         and display information for
          the right pane

Now this is the tricky part.  The "display information" can be many different
things.  As I said, if everything would output 2D display info, we could just
use the GNOME canvas, which is already set up in the right pane.

But what about 3D displays?  Let's suppose OpenGL is all we need for 3D.  Then
we would have to put an OpenGL canvas in the right pane.  That's not so easy,
because the window is made with Python.  I would need (1) Python bindings to
OpenGL, (2) OpenGL bindings to GTK, and (3) Python bindigs to 2.  Well, 1
(PyOpenGL) and 2 (GtkGLArea) exist but 3 doesn't.

An alternative would be to make the display a separate window and maybe a
separate process (like we were originally planning).  This way the display could
be in PyGNOME or almost anything else, as long as it can work with the PAOS
server.  So the plug-in would return not only XML but some information about the
program to be launched as a display.  It sounds nice, but I think this would
make Loci considerably more complex.  And I am hoping for a nearly 100% Python
(except for the analysis tool) implementation, which would not be the case.

Can anyone help make (3) the Python bindings to GtkGLArea?  I asked the author
and the PyGTK maillist, and got no real bites.  This may be the best solution.

Can we make the GNOME canvas take output from a modeler like DND, and display it
as a 2D drawing?  Can we have an OpenGL engine without a GUI, process the image
and send it as 2D to the GNOME canvas?

Any suggestions?


Cheerios.
Jeff
-- 
J.W. Bizzaro                  mailto:bizzaro at bc.edu
Boston College Chemistry      http://www.uml.edu/Dept/Chem/Bizzaro/
--




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