[kepler-dev] Additional menu items

[Bertram Ludaescher]

Edward et al:

I am a strong advocate of an incremental approach (and have said so
before :-). I share the concern that we might be decoupled from new
developments in Ptolemy and thus should make every effort to make
"smooth" changes, so that Ptolemy can follow when it makes sense, and
conversely, we can inherit new developments from Ptolemy..

Easier said than done, I know..

Bertram

>>> On Mon, 23 Jan 2006 09:19:36 -0800
>>> "Edward A. Lee" <eal at eecs.berkeley.edu> wrote: 
EAL> 
EAL> Instantiate Entity brings up a dialog into which you type a class name.
EAL> The class can defined in Java or in MoML, and the command will create
EAL> an instance of the class...
EAL> 
EAL> This mechanism is very useful for experimenting with new actors without
EAL> having to include them in a library...
EAL> 
EAL> The corresponding Instantiate Attribute  is also useful (e.g. for creating
EAL> an instance of a new director that is under development).
EAL> 
EAL> Any class in your classpath can be instantiated this way.
EAL> 
EAL> BTW: One downside of creating a new, parallel menu structure in
EAL> Kepler is that Kepler will not automatically benefit from capabilities
EAL> we add to Ptolemy II.  This consideration should be balanced against
EAL> aesthetic considerations...  Also, we are more than happy to rearrange
EAL> menus in Ptolemy II when reasonable suggestions are made...
EAL> 
EAL> Edward
EAL> 
EAL> At 06:46 PM 1/22/2006 -0800, Shawn Bowers wrote:
EAL> 
>> Dan,
>> 
>> Can you give a little more description of how the "Instantiate Entity"
>> works?  Does this work by pointing Ptolemy at a MoML file (e.g., an "Actor
>> Class") or by pointing it at a java actor class (e.g., "org.kepler. ...").
>> 
>> Thanks,
>> 
>> -shawn
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Sun, 22 Jan 2006, Dan Higgins wrote:
>> 
>> > Matthew,
>> >     Congratulations on getting the new Kepler menu layout working (and
>> > the ability to change the configuration)!
>> >
>> >     However, it looks likes we left out a couple of menu items that I
>> > just recently learned to appreciate! --- namely 'Instantiate Attribute'
>> > and 'Instantiate Entity' under the 'Graph' menu.
>> >
>> > I must admit that I did not understand just what these menu items were
>> > used for until recently (and I might have suggested to Laura that we
>> > leave them out in Kepler).
>> >
>> > 'Instantiate Attribute' allows the user to add attributes to the
>> > workflow by name. This allows one to add attributes that are not in the
>> > Kepler Actor Ontology tree to a workflow! (And we have not included all
>> > the ones in Ptolemy.) Similarly, 'Instantiate Entity' allows one to add
>> > actors; there are many Ptolemy actors/directories that we have not
>> > included in our actor ontology and I have already been asked by several
>> > users how to add such actors to workflows without having to recompile
>> > the whole Kepler system. It also turns out that whole new actor classes
>> > can be added using this menu item (i.e. new classes).
>> >
>> > So I think these two menu items should be included in the new menu
>> > layout, probably in the Workflow menu. Maybe Laura will want to change
>> > the menu item names?
>> >
>> >
>> > Dan
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > Kepler-dev mailing list
>> > Kepler-dev at ecoinformatics.org
>> > http://mercury.nceas.ucsb.edu/ecoinformatics/mailman/listinfo/kepler-dev
>> >
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EAL> 
EAL> ------------
EAL> Edward A. Lee
EAL> Professor, Chair of the EE Division, Associate Chair of EECS
EAL> 231 Cory Hall, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720
EAL> phone: 510-642-0253 or 510-642-0455, fax: 510-642-2845
EAL> eal at eecs.Berkeley.EDU, http://ptolemy.eecs.berkeley.edu/~eal  
EAL> 
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