GUI from within a Stage CTRL plugin?
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GUI from within a Stage CTRL plugin?
by Tyler Gunn
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I'm coding up a control plugin for Stage and would like to provide my
own UI from within. I've tried using FLTK within my plugin to create a simple window. Under Linux, it works fine. However, under OS X, I need to run Fl::run in my plugin or the window doesn't display. When it does display, the window from my plugin is VERY unstable; crashing at random when I select menu items. I suspect the two Fl:run calls present in the same address space is messing things up. SO, I've managed to get a GTK+ window up and running from within my plug. But I'm curious, has anyone done something like this before? Any reason why this won't work? My other thought was to have a standalone gui app that my plugin communicates with over sockets, but since one of my goals is to display the maps that a robot builds, I figure sockets would introduce an unnecessary speed penalty. Thanks, Tyler -- Tyler Gunn University of Manitoba tyler@... ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Let Crystal Reports handle the reporting - Free Crystal Reports 2008 30-Day trial. Simplify your report design, integration and deployment - and focus on what you do best, core application coding. Discover what's new with Crystal Reports now. http://p.sf.net/sfu/bobj-july _______________________________________________ Playerstage-users mailing list Playerstage-users@... https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/playerstage-users |
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Re: GUI from within a Stage CTRL plugin?
by Geoff Biggs
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A standalone GUI would probably be more stable, more responsive, and
easier to maintain. If you're only interested in POSIX systems (this includes Linux and OSX), you can use a FIFO instead of a socket. They are programmatically simpler to use, but the speed difference is likely to be negligible when running both on the same system (at least in Linux, anyway, where it skips the networking stack for loopback addresses), and it also isn't likely to be less responsive than having it in Stage's update loop. Using a socket would give you the ability to run your GUI non-locally, though, which a FIFO can't do. This could be useful if you want to run your simulation on a faster remote computer. Geoff Tyler Gunn wrote: > My other thought was to have a standalone gui app that my plugin > communicates with over sockets, but since one of my goals is to > display the maps that a robot builds, I figure sockets would introduce > an unnecessary speed penalty. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Let Crystal Reports handle the reporting - Free Crystal Reports 2008 30-Day trial. Simplify your report design, integration and deployment - and focus on what you do best, core application coding. Discover what's new with Crystal Reports now. http://p.sf.net/sfu/bobj-july _______________________________________________ Playerstage-users mailing list Playerstage-users@... https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/playerstage-users |
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Re: GUI from within a Stage CTRL plugin?
by Tyler Gunn
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On 2009-11-09, at 9:21 PM, gbiggs wrote: > A standalone GUI would probably be more stable, more responsive, and > easier to maintain. If you're only interested in POSIX systems (this > includes Linux and OSX), you can use a FIFO instead of a socket. They > are programmatically simpler to use, but the speed difference is > likely > to be negligible when running both on the same system (at least in > Linux, anyway, where it skips the networking stack for loopback > addresses), and it also isn't likely to be less responsive than having > it in Stage's update loop. > > Using a socket would give you the ability to run your GUI non-locally, > though, which a FIFO can't do. This could be useful if you want to run > your simulation on a faster remote computer. Thanks for the response Geoff, I put the GTK+ main event loop in a thread my controller spawns. It seems to work, but it just doesn't feel right to me. I'm definitely only worried about linux and Mac as this is the primary development target for my project. I'm going to look into FIFOs for IPC, and see if they'd suit my needs. I'm not too concerned about running my GUI on a different machine that the simulation as everything will be on one machine (my Mac Pro). I'll rethink this and probably use a FIFO, or some other form of IPC. Thanks, Tyler -- Tyler Gunn tyler@... http://www.egunn.com/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Let Crystal Reports handle the reporting - Free Crystal Reports 2008 30-Day trial. Simplify your report design, integration and deployment - and focus on what you do best, core application coding. Discover what's new with Crystal Reports now. http://p.sf.net/sfu/bobj-july _______________________________________________ Playerstage-users mailing list Playerstage-users@... https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/playerstage-users |
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Re: GUI from within a Stage CTRL plugin?
by Geoff Biggs
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You should consider also making your GUI a separate application. This
will isolate your simulation from crashes in the GUI (i.e. if the GUI thread crashes, you have to restart the whole application, but if a separate app crashes, you just restart the GUI). Geoff Tyler Gunn wrote: > Thanks for the response Geoff, > I put the GTK+ main event loop in a thread my controller spawns. It > seems to work, but it just doesn't feel right to me. > I'm definitely only worried about linux and Mac as this is the primary > development target for my project. I'm going to look into FIFOs for > IPC, and see if they'd suit my needs. I'm not too concerned about > running my GUI on a different machine that the simulation as > everything will be on one machine (my Mac Pro). > > I'll rethink this and probably use a FIFO, or some other form of IPC. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Let Crystal Reports handle the reporting - Free Crystal Reports 2008 30-Day trial. Simplify your report design, integration and deployment - and focus on what you do best, core application coding. Discover what's new with Crystal Reports now. http://p.sf.net/sfu/bobj-july _______________________________________________ Playerstage-users mailing list Playerstage-users@... https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/playerstage-users |
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Re: GUI from within a Stage CTRL plugin?
by Richard Vaughan-4
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On Mon, Nov 9, 2009 at 7:14 PM, Tyler Gunn <tyler@...> wrote:
> I'm coding up a control plugin for Stage and would like to provide my > own UI from within. I've tried using FLTK within my plugin to create > a simple window. > > Under Linux, it works fine. > However, under OS X, I need to run Fl::run in my plugin or the window > doesn't display. When it does display, the window from my plugin is > VERY unstable; crashing at random when I select menu items. I suspect > the two Fl:run calls present in the same address space is messing > things up. I think Fl::Run never returns, so you may be calling it recursively, which would explain the bad behaviour. Do you know why there's a difference between Linux and OSX? Is Stage doing something wrong that I can fix? - rtv > SO, I've managed to get a GTK+ window up and running from within my > plug. But I'm curious, has anyone done something like this before? > Any reason why this won't work? > > > My other thought was to have a standalone gui app that my plugin > communicates with over sockets, but since one of my goals is to > display the maps that a robot builds, I figure sockets would introduce > an unnecessary speed penalty. > > Thanks, > Tyler > > -- > Tyler Gunn > University of Manitoba > tyler@... > > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Let Crystal Reports handle the reporting - Free Crystal Reports 2008 30-Day > trial. Simplify your report design, integration and deployment - and focus on > what you do best, core application coding. Discover what's new with > Crystal Reports now. http://p.sf.net/sfu/bobj-july > _______________________________________________ > Playerstage-users mailing list > Playerstage-users@... > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/playerstage-users > -- Richard Vaughan Autonomy Lab / Computing Science / Simon Fraser University ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Let Crystal Reports handle the reporting - Free Crystal Reports 2008 30-Day trial. Simplify your report design, integration and deployment - and focus on what you do best, core application coding. Discover what's new with Crystal Reports now. http://p.sf.net/sfu/bobj-july _______________________________________________ Playerstage-users mailing list Playerstage-users@... https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/playerstage-users |
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Re: GUI from within a Stage CTRL plugin?
by Tyler Gunn
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> I think Fl::Run never returns, so you may be calling it recursively,
> which would explain the bad behaviour. I had set it up so that my controller just calls "Fl:run" in a new thread it creates; that way it would only get called one. > Do you know why there's a difference between Linux and OSX? Is Stage > doing something wrong that I can fix? I'm not 100% sure what the difference is. My working hypothesis is that it has something to do with how libtool loads in the plugins on each platform. FLTK keeps a global static object with all kinds of state information in it. I suspect on linux, when my plugin loads in that its able to access the global static state object and thus works fine. In OS X it appears that the global state is not available, requiring the creation of one local to the plugin. I need to dig into it in more depth to determine for sure what is going on; it could also be how I'm linking FLTK into my plugin and into stage (static linking). Thanks, Tyler ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Let Crystal Reports handle the reporting - Free Crystal Reports 2008 30-Day trial. Simplify your report design, integration and deployment - and focus on what you do best, core application coding. Discover what's new with Crystal Reports now. http://p.sf.net/sfu/bobj-july _______________________________________________ Playerstage-users mailing list Playerstage-users@... https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/playerstage-users |
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