[kepler-dev] Building Actors

[Kenneth Evans]

Hi,

 

After working on it several hours again last night, I still can't build
Kepler.  I'm not complaining.  It is as good a way to learn the program as
any, and I am confident it will be fixed.

 

The problem is that I shouldn't have to be building it.  While contributing
as a developer may be feasible at some time, I only learned about Kepler
last week and I am presently not sufficiently knowledgeable to contribute.
I would not like uniformed amateurs contributing to my projects, and I would
not do that to others.

 

All I want to do is implement an actor.  I wrote one in about 15 min. (using
the HelloWorld tutorial) two days ago.  I still can't run it.

 

I am aware of a program, JAS3, that is developed at Stanford and is used by
the high-energy physics community.  (You can Google it.)  This program has
plug-ins, which are similar to actors in that they [may] consist of a
relatively simple Java file.  They have a tree view with the plug-in on the
left, similar to what is in Kepler.  However, in their GUI you can create,
edit, and compile the Java program, and add it to the tree or modify it
while in the tree.  (You can also use it from the tree, of course.)  This is
actually not that hard to implement.

 

Perhaps I've missed something, but it seems very inconvenient to create and
debug actors in Kepler.  If I were running an experiment using the Kepler
workflow, I would like to be able to correct mistakes or change things
deeper than the flow diagram on the fly during a run.

 

(I realize it may not be wise to be critical when you are an uninformed
amateur, but hopefully this will be taken in the right spirit. ;-)

 

        -Ken

 

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