[Pipet Devel] Greetings.

[Brad Chapman]

Hi Deanne; 
    I just went through the overwhealming task of getting up to speed 
with Loci a few months ago, so I know it can be quite a task! If you 
are interested in coding, I have quite a few small (and large) 
projects that I would be more than happy to direct your way, if you 
are interested :-) Of course, Jeff coordinates this project but it 
might be helpful to start with a few small things at first to get the 
feel for the code and all that (unless you are all ready to jump off 
on a big project!).
    As Jeff said, we are going to be merging with two other projects 
(GMS and Overflow) into one huge project tentatively called VSH. There 
are currently tons of coding choices, including programming in C, C++ 
or python, depending on what you have experience in or are interested 
in. The Loci code provides a beautiful GUI courtesy of Jeff's creative 
mind and a bunch of classes to represent the GUI as XML. The GMS and 
Overflow projects will eventually provide the processing power behind 
all of this, and we'll be communicating with them via a CORBA 
interface (which is nearly designed in it's first stage) using the 
XML descriptions of the GUI.
    If you are creative (unlike me!), there are millions of things to 
work on in the graphical user interface. We use the python bindings to 
Gnome/Gtk for the current GUI (although multiple GUIs are planned) and 
Jeff has a lot of great ideas for things that still need 
implementation. There is also lots to do with XML processing (we use 
the SAX interface for parsing XML and DOM for manipulating it) and 
other stuff.
    Sorry to go on--Loci is a big project and can be quite 
overwhealming at times, so I am very excited to hear someone is 
interested in pitching in. And, as a graduate of Michigan State, I 
won't even hold it against you that you go to U of M :-) Thanks again 
for writing--look forward to hearing more from you!
    
Brad