[kepler-dev] "getting started" questions

[Chad Berkley]

Hi Ken,

See my responses below.

Kenneth Jones wrote:
> I would like to build a custom version of Kepler.  I have used the 
> Kepler build system (which is really great, btw) to download the latest 
> version from the svn repository and I've followed your tutorial and 
> successfully built the "Hello World" actor.  I now have four packages in 
> my workspace:
> 
> hello-world
> kepler-1.0
> kepler-1.0-jar-tag
> loader-for-kepler-1.0
> 
> Everything seems to work just fine except for one thing -- the actors 
> don't display icons.  They just show up as boxes with black borders and 
> white interiors.  Any idea what I did wrong and how to go about fixing it?

Are you talking about the helloWorld actor or all of the actors in the 
actor library?  You can set icons in the file 
kepler-1.0/kepler-1.0-jar-tag/configs/ptolemy/configs/kepler/uiSVGIconMappingsByClass.properties

You just need to provide the class name and the SVG icon you want to 
use.  You can also assign icons by LSID (if you have given your actor a 
unique LSID) with the file uiSVGIconMappingsByLSID.properties in the 
same directory.


> 
> One more question: I only want to display a subset of the Kepler actors 
> (and some others that I will create) and organize them in a taxonomy 
> that is different from the default Kepler taxonomy.  How do I go about 
> creating a custom taxonomy, filled with custom sets of actors and 
> display it in the Components tab of the Components and Data View of Vergil?

We're currently in the process of making this easier, however it is 
currently not an easy thing to do (especially in Kepler 1.0).  The actor 
library is laid out using an ontology of the actors.  You can find the 
current ontologies in 
kepler-1.0/kepler-1.0-jar-tag/configs/ptolemy/configs/kepler/ontologies

The ontology itself defines the categories into which the actors are 
placed.  Each actor then gives itself one or more semantic types which 
are defined in the ontology.  When the actor library is rendered, the 
actors are then placed into the categories for which they have a type 
defined.

In order for you to make your own classification, you would need to 
create your own OWL ontology, then add semantic types to the actors you 
want to categorize that link into your custom ontology.

Like I said, we're in the process of making this easier in the future 
Kepler 2.0 (or whatever the version turns out to be).  Let me know if 
you want further details.

Thanks,
chad