IRC log for #brlcad on 20090328

00:04.50Ralithpokes jonored
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00:51.40``Erikeeks, take that somewhere private, ralith O.O
00:52.20Ralithprude.
01:09.55Ralithdiscovers that all the pkgconfig files appear to be broken.
01:09.59Ralithdoes something about this.
01:11.14CIA-40BRL-CAD: 03ralith * r34099 10/brlcad/trunk/misc/pkgconfig/ (13 files): Fixed fatal dependent variable mis-ordering
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01:40.48kanzureHi all. Has anyone any experience with elmerfem?
02:03.47Ralithdear god it's hard to get RBGui to build
02:34.53Ralithrewrites most of g3d's build system
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03:20.39CIA-40BRL-CAD: 03ralith * r34100 10/rt^3/trunk/src/g3d/ (10 files in 2 dirs): Extensive build system cleanup/reliability fixes: BRL-CAD is now correctly autodetected, reliability of all other dependency detection has vastly improved.
03:21.37*** join/#brlcad Ralith (n=ralith@216.162.199.202)
03:24.30Ralithbrlcad: do you know if mafm's returning this year to GSoC on the GUI?
03:27.50Ralithalso, seems to work fine(ish) on OGRE 1.6.1
03:28.06Raliththe build system's largely Done Right now :]
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04:27.32brlcadRalith: actually I don't know -- he's had personal matters to take care of, he may not
04:27.55brlcadglad to hear it worked ;)
04:29.41RalithI think I'll apply for that, then
04:29.50Ralithseeing as I've some degree of familiarity with it
04:33.48brlcadfeel free to mail him or the mailing list to check up with him
04:34.25brlcadit would be nice to see someone continue making progress
04:57.55Ralithyeah, I'm looking forward to having it hooked up and doing things
04:58.30RalithI'll see if I can get in touch with him, and get my app started in the meantime
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06:01.42brlcadRalith: if you do apply for a previous gsoc project, please try to also put forward another application for one of the other ideas as well
06:01.57brlcadthat goes for anyone and any previous gsoc project
06:03.55brlcadit often happens that some of the most desirable students all put in for the same project, rejecting several desirable students that would have otherwise been selected for a different project
06:04.40brlcadcourse that's only if someone can put together two *good* applications, and the second one doesn't decrease the quality of the first one!  if you just have time for one, then so be it
06:05.18brlcadalso an even better reason to submit it earlier rather than later so we can give feedback and gauge whether there are conflicts
06:06.32Raliththere're multiple people going for that one?
06:07.30RalithI'm certainly happy to apply to another, though; I'm quite interested in getting in on GSoC, so anything that increases my chances...
06:07.48Ralithnot to mention this is a fun project.
06:08.06brlcadthere usually are three or four projects that get several submissions each by the deadline
06:08.45brlcadlast year, there were about 20 valid interesting applications, about 10 of those were very good, from there we narrowed down on 4
06:08.57Ralithwhile you're around; do you remember if there was any reason g3d is using RBGui rather than something more active?
06:09.02Raliththe project's outright abandoned these days.
06:09.29Ralithsays as much on the site, and it took me half an hour of hacking to make it and its dependent lib build, including writing a build system for it.
06:09.45brlcadyeah, there was a long long series of discussions about a gui framework
06:10.46Ralithso, preferable to adopt RBGui over switching it out?
06:10.59brlcadrbgui being dead was one of its downsides, but wasn't seen as a huge one iff it did everything that was needed (and it had several very interesting extension aspects) -- it was on par with two or so others iirc, and it came down to just running with any one of them
06:11.12brlcadno, not tied to rbgui
06:11.51brlcadit was just to move past dwelling on it since there were so many questions about it vs others that really couldn't be answered without just trying it out
06:12.33Ralithhm.  I'd imagined there must have been some compelling reason to work off of a dead project.
06:12.52brlcadif it can be made to work, great -- I highly suspect we will end up with a lot of customized widgets and interactions as it starts coming to demo-state
06:13.31brlcadRalith: have you seen their demo?
06:13.36RalithI don't think so
06:14.08brlcadsome of the previous discussion, fwiw -- http://brlcad.org/wiki/Talk:OpenGL_GUI_Framework
06:14.10RalithI'll admit that when brought to a working state it doesn't look half bad in g3d
06:14.36Ralithquite modern.
06:14.50brlcadhttp://rightbraingames.com/Gui.wmv
06:15.16Ralithpulls it down
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06:19.00Ralith...that is *very* aesthetically appealing
06:19.43Ralithput even a reasonably usable editor behind that and we'd probably get quite the spike in users out of ooh-shiny factor alone.
06:19.57brlcadnods
06:20.20brlcadthe basic skinny about cegui (which I love in concept, btw), is that it doesn't/didn't yet have vector gui elements, and some widgets are missing
06:21.06Ralithanything really that hard to add?
06:21.09Ralithoo, those spline widgets are neat
06:21.39brlcadyeah, it would be -- cegui is based around a markup description layer similar to html
06:21.53Raliththat extensively? I thought that was just for layout.
06:21.55brlcadso window decorations and borders are all themed using images
06:22.22Ralithdo you know how extensive RBGui's vector support is?
06:22.41brlcadhave talked to a couple of the devs that work on it before -- they plan to add it at some point, just will take a lot of api changes
06:22.49brlcadnope
06:22.54Ralithkk
06:23.09brlcadyeah, isn't to say that rbgui solves that problem
06:23.11Ralithfirst glance suggests just fills and gradients, but I haven't looked at the code yet, and those cover most practical use cases anyway I guess
06:23.11brlcadeither
06:23.21brlcadmore just what came up about cegui
06:24.01brlcadyeah, it's a simple enough library that the assertion was it can probably do just about everything we need it for in the immediate future regardless
06:24.26brlcadas could a couple others, and if we had to live with maintaining rbgui or one of the others, so be it
06:24.26Ralithwell, you've talked me into agreement with the decision.
06:24.45Ralithas you say, considering the amount of customization we're ultimately likely to apply to anything, that's not unreasonable.
06:25.05brlcadstill better than rolling our own :0
06:25.18Ralithindeed.
06:25.30brlcadnow another option that came up just in the last year
06:25.46brlcadthat was previously a non-starter due to licensing.. qt
06:26.05brlcadcould see someone trying out a qt+ogre swap out
06:26.12Ralithqt has bad licensing?
06:26.19RalithI thought it was LGPL
06:26.28brlcadthat just happened this year
06:26.31Ralithah, right
06:26.58Ralithwell, I dunno.  Qt can't render inside an OpenGL context, can it?
06:27.29brlcadhm, I don't know -- would be a little surprised if it couldn't
06:27.32Ralithif that's correct, that limits our freedom in design significantly.
06:27.33Ralithreally?
06:28.02RalithI'd be surprised if it did; maybe I have a misconception of it, but it seems wholly targeted at, uh
06:28.05Ralithnot sure what the term is
06:28.06Ralithnormal apps?
06:29.25RalithI wouldn't expect gtk to render within a OpenGL context, either.
06:29.29Ralithnever seen them used that way, certainly
06:29.54Ralithevery Qt/gtk opengl app I've seen always just had an embedded context, with the GUI surrounding it.
06:30.17Ralithnot that that doesn't have a history of working perfectly well, but I like the possibilities offered by having them render to the same place.
06:30.26brlcadnods
06:30.36Ralithnot to mention the plain visual appeal of all the neat fading, smooth movement, etc. that RBGui implements and that can't be reliably done otherwise.
06:30.41brlcadcertainly can say definitely without some research/testing
06:30.47Ralithyeah
06:31.35brlcadrbgui gets away with it simply by rendering everything itself, which has the cost of lost native look and feel (which is a good and bad thing!)
06:31.57brlcadi don't mind not looking native if it looks really good, and it should
06:32.01RalithI'm not sure anyone expects a modeling app to have native look and feel thesedays.
06:32.10Ralithor maybe that's just graphics apps.
06:32.42brlcadyeah, modeling is a lot like the gaming industry in that regard where custom guis are more the norm than the exception
06:33.00Ralithand beyond that, native look and feel is only an element on OSX/Windows
06:33.07brlcadhttp://doc.trolltech.com/3.3/opengl.html seems to indicate it's like any other widget
06:33.17brlcadimplying it could be layered as needed
06:33.26Ralithit's nigh-impossible to guarantee an app fits in well on a *nix environment.
06:33.37Ralithoh, I didn't know Qt had capacity for that kind of layering.
06:33.41RalithI guess it would make sense.
06:34.09Ralithwould be an odd omission for something so large and widely used
06:35.04brlcadRalith: you've seen the IOE video, yes?
06:35.08Ralithyup
06:35.13brlcadokay, great
06:35.14Ralithit was quite a while back though
06:35.42Ralithit struck me as very unique
06:35.50brlcadthat pretty much surveys the basic look, feel, and interaction direction I'd like to start with
06:35.54Ralithhave a link for it? I should probably review it.
06:36.04brlcadbrlcad.org/design/gui
06:36.10Ralithhehe
06:36.28Ralith_final or _full?
06:38.30brlcadfinal I believe
06:39.05brlcadinteresting qt interface with opengl contexts, http://www.qtsoftware.com/images/customers/coolapps/realflow4.jpg
06:39.33Raliththat looks about like what I'd expect
06:39.45Ralithblender-style UIs have always felt a lot more integrated to me, tbh
06:39.48brlcadyeah
06:42.01brlcada little better, http://chaos.troll.no/%7Egunnar/jambi_image_viewer.jpg
06:42.40brlcadit's faked, though ;)
06:42.47brlcadrather, it's just an image
06:42.54Ralithyeah, looked that way
06:43.01Ralith(I can tell because of the pixels and etc)
06:43.25Raliththat and the inconsistent widgets.
06:43.51Ralith...and the "Image Viewer" in the title.
06:44.25RalithI suppose I like the idea of sticking with RBGui, then, and extending it to fit our needs; might well even be easier than adapting a more fully-realized lib.
06:44.32brlcadhere's what I was looking for
06:44.52brlcadmore in line, http://stellarium.org/img/screenshots/0.10-stel_gui.jpg
06:45.06Ralith...that's Qt?>
06:45.09brlcadyep
06:45.12Ralithwow.
06:45.17Ralithbecause that doesn't look like Qt at all.
06:45.20Raliththat looks fully integrated.
06:45.26RalithI wonder how hard it was for them to do that.
06:45.56brlcadyeah, qt's various classes (QtButton, etc) can have their display method overridden in various ways
06:45.59Ralithstill probably can't offer the more 'fun' visual effects, but that's pretty impressive.
06:46.16brlcadbasically allowing custom widget look and feel
06:46.40brlcadwhile still providing all the same "basic widgets" that you want like tabs, sliders, scrollers, textareas, etc
06:47.24brlcadyeah, don't know how hard in practice that is, just have seem several projects customize their qt gui that way
06:47.38brlcadif we ended up with something like that, I'd be content to live with qt ;)
06:47.40Ralithexample code in abundance, then.
06:47.56brlcador rbgui, or whatever, means to an end
06:48.33Ralithis inclined to favor the status quo for now, in the absence of any compelling reason to switch.
06:49.15Ralithreminds me, I recall reading on the Ogre forums a while back of someone working on a GPU backend for Cairo
06:56.42Ralithhttp://github.com/akyrtzi/cairo-gral/tree/master
06:56.45Ralithmay be of interest.
06:57.45brlcadwow, stellarium gui is really impressive
06:58.42Ralithinstalls
06:58.48Ralithwhat's caught your eye with it?
06:59.17brlcadit's very neatly integrated
07:00.32brlcadtranslucent overlay windows, persistent menus, an info bar, a persistent info overlay, drawer menus, clean window/full-screen support
07:03.01Ralithhm.  I wonder what license they use, and how easily torn out their GUI code is.
07:03.41brlcadgpl
07:03.49Ralithah.
07:03.56Raliththat would be a problem, then, right?
07:04.00Ralithas far as taking directly.
07:04.08brlcadto use their code direclty, yes
07:04.20Ralithgaaah
07:04.24Ralithsomething on my system hates xinerama
07:04.36Ralithmy mouse keeps dying >:|
07:04.53Ralithanyway.
07:04.57RalithQt's an awfully big dependency.
07:05.11brlcadintersting that they have many of the same widgets as ioe, just in different places, slightly different behaviors
07:06.38Ralithbrb, need to restart X
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07:08.51brlcadyes, it is a big dep.  if it did exactly what we needed, though, I'd certainly live with that over anything else that didn't give us a crisp beautiful gui
07:09.05brlcadif we could get that gui with something else, something smaller, even better
07:11.20Ralithfor all its size, does Qt actually offer much relevant to us that RBGui doesn't?
07:16.01brlcadthat's hard to say without doing an evaluation
07:16.27brlcadlaying out some of the basic requirements and features and directly doing a comparison
07:16.49brlcador just dropping the code in and giving it a go to see how it works
07:18.00brlcadthe glitzy things that make stellarium very compelling are not exactly provided by qt directly either, so it's really just a matter of widgets and extensibility
07:18.23Ralithnods
07:18.36Ralithexamines the RBGui widget implementations
07:19.41brlcadrbgui is so simple that my initial reaction last year was that we could probably gut and extend rbgui to do what we needed with a minimal amount of effort (no less than most frameworks), at least to get to an end state that looks and feels like IOE
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07:21.52brlcadwhere rbgui will fail is if we need native look and feel, native widget support and the bells and whistles that come with native widgets (like pervasive spell-checking, copy paste support, shortcut navigation and selection keybindings, etc)
07:22.51Ralithcopy/paste support should at the very least be trivial to tack on.
07:23.01Ralithat least in X
07:23.02brlcadeach feature individually is trivial
07:23.15brlcadthere are just about a hundred of them :)
07:23.18Ralithpoint.
07:24.09Ralithand Qt is very, very well supported.
07:24.38Ralithand documented, and ported, and maintained, and...
07:24.46brlcadand big ;)
07:25.01Raliththe counterpoint to that is that most users will have it anyway.
07:25.11brlcadbut yeah, it'd be a non-issue otherwise
07:25.19brlcadas it pretty much just works
07:25.50Ralithit certainly has its attractions.
07:26.51brlcadso that could be a gsoc project in itself
07:27.03brlcadmake [insert toolkit here] work
07:27.30Ralithnot nearly as fun as getting g3d able to actually interact with some geometry, though.
07:27.32brlcadtaking it all the way to matching most of the look and feel intended with customizations
07:27.45brlcadtrue
07:28.00brlcadbut the latter is also complicated by the fact that the backend is a rapidly moving target
07:28.19brlcadthere's the libged library (which it presently hooks to)
07:28.35brlcadand which will give it most of mged's command-line functionality
07:29.13brlcadand there's also the new geometry engine, which is ready for basic geometry management but not for a full-blown editor just yet (not this summer)
07:29.46brlcadand there's the geometry service, which is what it should ultimately be using but is even farther still away from completion
07:30.07Ralithso, time might be best spent on the frontend?
07:30.33brlcadprobably, that's the one piece that can be worked on in relative isolation
07:30.59Ralithalright.
07:31.10brlcador working entirely on the backend, working on one of those three, but then there's not much to see
07:31.34brlcaddoing just a little of the front and little of the back would be a bit of a mess I think
07:31.34Ralithand a lot more familiarity with BRL-CAD required, no?
07:32.20brlcaddepends, for GE yes, for GS slightly less so, for GED not really (it's mostly refactoring and api cleanup now, almost done)
07:33.16RalithI think my real reservation about Qt is not so much its raw size as that it tries to be an entire application framework rather than just a GUI.
07:33.24Raliththat said, I suppose this is not necessarily a bad thing.
07:33.33brlcadthat is true
07:33.54Ralithif it's good at what it does--which I don't know--that might make things a lot easier.
07:35.07brlcadit would be a gsoc-sized project to convert existing rbgui portion over to qt, i'm sure there's refactoring that would need to happen along the way
07:35.46RalithI'm not sure it wouldn't be easier to start mostly from scratch
07:35.59Ralithconsidering that even an interface to Ogre is missing
07:36.40brlcadhm, I wouldn't like that -- there's a lot of good effort invested already
07:36.55Raliththat's my feeling too.
07:36.55brlcadthings like various mouse interaction modes for example
07:37.27brlcadI'd rather see it evolve that be replaced, even if it feels like it's a slower path
07:37.33Ralithit's hard to say how much of it would survive such a major switch
07:38.08Ralithbut, I certainly see your point, and I'm sure such an approach is not infeasible.
07:38.29brlcadperfectly valid to evolve into something completely new
07:40.16brlcadbut that would be determined by doing the work and seeing the incremental steps it needs to take to get there
07:40.39Ralithyeah.
07:42.16brlcadanother good gsoc project.. de-tcl'fying the core libraries (libbu, libbn, libwdb, librt, libged)
07:42.24Raliththere's TCL in those? O.o
07:42.25brlcadthat's a big refactoring task
07:42.47Ralithwhat's it doing there?
07:42.48brlcadthe C api of tcl
07:43.11brlcadtcl actually has a very nice C library
07:43.23Ralithhuh?
07:43.33Ralithmaybe I just need to look at the code
07:44.39brlcadtcl provides a slew of basic utility classes and callback mechansisms that slowly integrated into the libs over two decades
07:45.13brlcadthings like hash tables, appending results to strings, and evaluating callbacks
07:46.09Ralithso, move implementations of all that into libbu?
07:46.10brlcadthat aspect of tcl is actually very nice, but for simple containment reasons, I'm reverting a decision that was made about 15 years ago to allow tcl to mix in with core code
07:46.50brlcadyeah, some things we have implementations for, other things would need some basic support added or alternatives found
07:47.31Ralithsounds fairly straightforward.
07:48.01Ralithif involved.
07:48.30brlcadit is, it's just a lot of work
07:48.48brlcadprobably would end up refactoring somewhere around ...
07:48.59brlcaddoes a quick line count check for tcl'isms
07:51.41brlcadso at a minimum, that is refactoring about 4000 lines of code
07:54.10Ralithrefactor linecounts can be misleading
07:54.32Ralithconsidering how much can be done with careful application of regular expressions.
07:54.46brlcadalso includes about 200 functions apparently .. so expand that out to all callers and you're probably looking at 20k or so
07:55.51brlcadyou could do a few things with regexps, but it'll still be a little tedious
07:56.38Ralithwell, sure.
07:56.47brlcadmost of it won't just be a function change though, it'll be a different interface and there will be a hundred files that have to be hand-edited because of all the different styles of use
07:57.40brlcadplus given this hits the grand-daddy librt library, extra care would have to be taken to verify changes don't break anything
07:58.08Ralithat least the benchmark suite is helpful there.
07:59.07brlcadthat's just a minimum, but yeah
08:01.47Raliththere's also plenty to be said for a very well-defined task.
08:03.05brlcadrefactoring tasks are often my favorite to work on
08:03.38brlcadthey're well defined, you usually have an exact work list that you can identify, however long and tedious it may be
08:04.11brlcadi'll have the files in my emacs buffer and can watch the % complete increase as I make progress
08:04.52brlcadbest part is usually the "clean" feeling that usually results
08:04.59Ralithyeah.
08:05.12brlcadand invariably, the code is then easier for others to understand and extend with new functionality
08:05.55brlcadseems to happen every time, gets cleaned up then someone takes it to the next level
08:11.39Ralithreviews the gsoc paperwork
08:27.17RalithI should be able to get my applications in tomorrow.
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12:09.57CIA-40BRL-CAD: 03Homovulgaris 07http://brlcad.org * r1312 10/wiki/Libpc: /* Objectives */
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12:34.16CIA-40BRL-CAD: 03Homovulgaris 07http://brlcad.org * r1313 10/wiki/Libpc: /* Structure */
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14:49.05``Erik<PROTECTED>
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15:48.54starseekergapes in awe at the stellarium
15:48.59starseekerscreenshot
15:50.23starseekerAs to the point about it being GPL - that will be true for ALL code (up until QT4.5) using QT.  It was a licensing requirement
15:51.01starseekermany will probably stick with GPL, but it wouldn't hurt (if there is interest) to talk to the authors and see if they would be willing to re-license under LGPL now that they can
15:51.43starseekerif we find a code base that is genuinely interesting in terms of wanting to drop code straight into BRL-CAD, that's certainly a reasonable first step
15:52.06starseekerif they say no, not a big deal - we simply identify the techniques used to achieve the effect and write our own solution
15:53.22starseekerI've never seen QT used in that way before, but seeing that it can be makes my interest in it rise by at least a factor of 2.
16:00.25``Eriknifty app
16:06.43starseekerwooof.  apparently my system isn't up to handling that
16:07.22starseekerchecks website for minimum hardware requirements
16:08.06starseekerhmmmm
16:08.31starseekermy system is much faster than that....
16:08.34starseekerweird
16:08.51``Erikdoing something silly like running linux on it? :D
16:09.17starseekeruh, vice versa actually
16:09.30``Erikmeant the system
16:09.37starseekerheh
16:09.46``Erikenglish sucks for context sensitive statements :D
16:10.26``Erikhopes it has a 'light pollution' slider O.o
16:13.02starseekeryuck:  frames per second = 0.018
16:16.32``Erikfires it up
16:20.12starseekerwonders if his nvidia support didn't get reset or something...
16:22.49``Erikhm, a light pollution selector
16:22.54``Erikacceptable, I suppose
16:24.16starseekeryech.  well, bzflag does it too so it's not stellarium's fault
16:24.24starseekerstarts checking nvidia driver versions
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16:25.49starseekeroh, cute, it's using the software one.  why????
16:25.53starseekeralrightie...
16:26.05``Erik50fps here :)
16:26.11``Erikthat's a pretty nifty app
16:30.20starseekeryep, there we go
16:30.38starseekerin the 40 range here (after fixing acceleration)
16:30.43starseekerthat is cool
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16:32.29``ErikI might stick my head out tonight to look for saturn
16:39.33``Erikwonders why he has to put .cvsignore in his .cvsignore O.o
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17:52.59brlcadstarseeker: it's not a big deal either way, it's really not that hard to design a custom interface (even with or without qt)
17:53.41brlcadwe're talking about days or weeks of time, not months, generally speaking
17:54.35brlcadbut yeah, stellarium is one of several projects that have a really nice custom interface (there are others)
18:21.00starseekerbrlcad:  Indeed.  That's what inclines me more towards QT in fact - since it allows the custom part (and that wouldn't be a big deal, agreed) it gives us for free native look and feel when/if we want it, which is a lot harder and more maintainance headache
18:36.10brlcadnot quite for free, but it does make that option a little bit easier
18:37.43brlcadstarseeker: another really nice 'streamlined' but gorgeous interface to look at is one of the apple opengl source code demo applications
18:40.25brlcadthat's actually more in-line with what I would really like to see for an initial pre-release interface with single main display manaer context with some bindings, text overlays, crisp opengl with various render modes available, and an on-demand command prompt
18:41.03brlcadalas, that demo itself is mac-specific
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18:50.34starseekerbrlcad:  any movies of it?
19:18.55brlcadstarseeker: hm, no
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20:02.09brlcadcontemplates stealing a couple of the bz buttons for menu items
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22:28.08Ralithbrlcad: I find myself still wondering if the benefits of relatively easy native integration are worth the effort necessary to openglify it; blender, for example, seems to get by fine with little to no native integration.
22:28.15Ralith(re: Qt)
22:28.59Ralithalso, do you ever sleep? :P
22:29.59andaxRalith: opengl is not supported by all graphics cards. would there be alternatives?
22:30.19Ralithit's not?
22:31.05andaxi remember i had a Asus AMD64 board with onboard graphics card (Chrome) which had no opengl
22:31.35RalithI would be very surprised if that's the case.
22:31.54Ralithbesides, anybody who expects to use a modern CAD app will need OpenGL one way or another.
22:31.58Ralithit's the industry standard
22:35.13Raliththat said, I believe RBGui + Ogre will allow us to run on DirectX for no extra effort
22:36.24andaxit was a via s3 unichrome pro graphics card. okay, it was a cheap office PC but i remember i had vector graphics even on our first DOS-box with a 8086 CPU and wondered why i need that opengl support from hardware side for practically all 3d applications
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22:38.44Ralithbecause OpenGL is the standard.
22:39.04Ralithancient hardware doesn't always implement the standards; this is one of the reasons it has been superseded.
22:39.11kanzureHi all, does anyone know of anything capable of converting a .sldprt file that I have laying around here?
22:40.06Ralithkanzure: from solidworks?  I think you'll have to convert it to something more standard using solidworks as an intermediary first.
22:42.15Ralithandax: you have to admit, "there used to be some hardware that didn't support it" is not a very strong argument.
22:42.21Ralithas it could be applied to anything.
22:42.46kanzureRalith: I don't have solidworks.
22:42.47andax_Ralith: yes, but on the other hand we already had 3d graphics on this acient hardware before anyone talked about opengl. i remember f-18 flight simulation from microprose, for example :)
22:42.56Ralithkanzure: that sounds like a problem.
22:42.57kanzureBlah. I told these guys why they shouldn't use non-free software.
22:43.09kanzurethrows a fit
22:43.16Ralithandax_: usually not hardware accelerated, though.
22:43.25Ralithyou can always use mged.
22:43.37kanzure?
22:43.43kanzureto convert the file?
22:44.04Ralithwas talking to andax_
22:44.06kanzurethe problem is that I have a dot sldprt file, and a dot stl of the file, but the dot stl is wrong- there are some triangle errors and so on that 'netgen' is able to find though not fix
22:44.26kanzuremaybe I'll go pray to the netgen folks for "Dr. STL" to start working
22:45.08kanzurecontext- here's what I've been doing today- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPY84NelFO4
22:49.30Ralithkanzure: meshlab maybe?
22:53.08kanzurehaven't heard of it
22:53.25Ralithit seems to be good at cleaning up that sort of thing
22:56.45kanzurehttp://meshlab.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Compiling
22:56.49kanzurewtf is wrong with these people? :p
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22:58.07Ralith?
22:58.23kanzureguess they've never heard of dependency management and autogen
22:58.54Ralithwhere do you get that idea?
22:59.02Ralithjust because they list the dependencies?
22:59.42kanzurebecause I downloaded it and I have to manually compile all of these sub packages or whatever
23:00.01Ralithor you could just, you know, install them with your package manager.
23:00.02kanzurealso, that's a non-standard way of listing dependencies
23:00.11kanzurenope, they are not available from the package manager
23:00.12Raliththere's a standard way?
23:00.15kanzureI checked before I started ranting :)
23:00.18Raliththat's your distro's fault, then
23:00.19Ralithnot theirs
23:00.31kanzurewell, most distributions have standdard ways of managing dependencies
23:00.33kanzurenot really
23:00.37kanzurethey could have just picked any standard format
23:00.46kanzurefor instance, on debian there is an 'alien' tool to convert between rpm and to deb and such
23:00.51Raliththen they would have been unable to support the others.
23:00.56Ralithand that's a binary release, not source.
23:01.18kanzurerecalls obtaining source packages through package managers
23:01.22Raliththey're not responsible for making their tools available in your repository of source
23:01.26Ralither
23:01.27Ralithof choice
23:01.38Raliththat's up to whoever manages the repository
23:01.39kanzureI guess they could make it completely unavailable
23:01.52Ralithif you don't like it, ask whoever manages the repository to include it
23:01.59brlcad2yeah, same here
23:02.04kanzurestill, lack of a make file..
23:02.17Ralithnothing big comes with makefiles
23:02.22Ralithqmake is a build system that generates makefiles.
23:02.29Ralithjust like autotools, cmake, etc
23:02.31kanzureso is autogen, like I mentioned :)
23:02.32kanzureyeah
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23:02.43Raliththere's nothing wrong with using something other than autotools
23:02.54kanzurethere's something wrong with using nothing.
23:02.58Raliththey're using qmake
23:03.01Ralithqmake != nothing
23:03.06kanzurewtf? /me checks the directory again
23:03.30Ralithbrlcad: did you get my earlier comment?
23:03.32kanzurehow can you tell?
23:03.38Ralithkanzure: because it says so in the wiki page you linked.
23:03.39kanzureah, there's a make file at least
23:05.33kanzureokay, nevermind, you're right.
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23:36.32starseeker_hmm - is bz having trouble?
23:36.58starseeker_can't ssh in
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