[kepler-dev] Additional menu items

Christopher Brooks cxh at eecs.berkeley.edu
Mon Jan 23 12:12:53 PST 2006


All - 

Maybe we should talk some about the general problem of getting changes
from Kepler in to Ptoelmy on Wednesday, February 8th?

We should discuss it further via email, but we may need to discuss this
face to face meeting.

I'll demonstrate the new menu Kepler structure to Edward tomorrow at
Ptolemy group lunch and get his feedback.

In as much as possible, modulo Edward's opinion, I'd like to use the
Kepler menu structure in Ptolemy II.

Perhaps it would be nice to fold Matthew's menu work in to Ptolemy so
that Ptolemy can use it?  Matthew's work makes it easier to configure
the menus without necessarily adding a class.  We would need to make
sure that Matthew and the Kepler project get lots of credit for this.
We could consider creating a third cvs repository with common code,
but this seems like overkill.  I'm also not sure when (if ever)
would be a good time to move the code.  We might just want to change
the menus in Ptolemy to better match the Kepler menus?

I think the biggest issue with folding changes in to the Ptolemy tree
is that the new code needs to follow the Ptolemy style guide and be
well documented.  I'm more than willing to work on this.

An issue for the Kepler group is that the Ptolemy style guide is
probably not what you want.

Another Kepler issue is that we don't want Ptolemy subsuming Kepler
and getting credit for work done by the Kepler project.  

Another issue is that in the past Edward and I have spent a bunch of
time cleaning up a contribution when maybe our time would have been
better spent elsewhere.  I think the Kepler work is of much higher
quality than the other contributions I've seen, but it is an issue
that has come up.

Anyway, I want to be flexible in how we proceed here, so I'm open to
suggestions.


_Christopher

Betram wrotes:
--------
    
    
    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 withou
   t
    EAL> having to include them in a library...
    EAL> 
    EAL> The corresponding Instantiate Attribute  is also useful (e.g. for crea
   ting
    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 "Act
   or
    >> 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 th
   e
    >> > Kepler Actor Ontology tree to a workflow! (And we have not included al
   l
    >> > the ones in Ptolemy.) Similarly, 'Instantiate Entity' allows one to ad
   d
    >> > actors; there are many Ptolemy actors/directories that we have not
    >> > included in our actor ontology and I have already been asked by severa
   l
    >> > users how to add such actors to workflows without having to recompile
    >> > the whole Kepler system. It also turns out that whole new actor classe
   s
    >> > 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-d
   ev
    >> >
    >> _______________________________________________
    >> Kepler-dev mailing list
    >> Kepler-dev at ecoinformatics.org
    >> http://mercury.nceas.ucsb.edu/ecoinformatics/mailman/listinfo/kepler-dev
    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> 
    EAL> _______________________________________________
    EAL> Kepler-dev mailing list
    EAL> Kepler-dev at ecoinformatics.org
    EAL> http://mercury.nceas.ucsb.edu/ecoinformatics/mailman/listinfo/kepler-d
   ev
    
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--------


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