| Re: IDL Widget Toolkit [message #92295 is a reply to message #92282] |
Thu, 12 November 2015 10:32   |
tumanjong
Messages: 7
Registered: October 2012
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Junior Member |
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On Wednesday, November 11, 2015 at 1:11:40 AM UTC-5, Chris Torrence wrote:
> On Tuesday, November 10, 2015 at 12:09:51 PM UTC-7, tuma...@gmail.com wrote:
>> Approximately 3 years ago there was a brief discussion on this forum about the IDL widget toolkit. Mark Piper, who was then the IDL Product Manager, mentioned that it was something that will be looked into after IDL 8.3 was released. He also suggested that a web-based widget system was something that will be explored but that when the time comes he will be open to input from the community. Well, we are now at IDL 8.5 and there has been no mentioned of whether there is indeed any work being done on updating/replacing the aging (especially on Motif) widget toolkit. It will be very much appreciated if someone from Exelis can enlighten us on this issue.
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> Hi all,
>
> Well, this is a tricky question. We would love to refurbish the IDL widget toolkit. However, given the complexity of the current programming interface (API), and all of the weird widget properties and behavior, it would probably have to be a completely new API. That makes it difficult to justify based purely upon the number of IDL customers who actively develop widget apps.
>
> However, we are currently developing a new "browser" widget, which will allow you to embed a web browser inside an IDL widget app. Using this widget, you would be able to create an HTML5/Javascript app and host it inside an IDL application (which could be a base widget with nothing else in it). That way, you could create an IDL application which would have a modern look-and-feel, but still have it be cross platform. This is still in the prototype stage, so no promises on release date.
>
> Finally, I would strongly urge you to contact your IDL/ENVI sales representative. It's difficult for us to drive these huge projects from inside engineering - we *really* need customer feedback to sales! This is especially important for Mac and Linux, as those platforms don't get nearly as much love & attention as we would like.
>
> I hope this helps.
>
> Cheers,
> Chris
Hi Chris.
Though not the news I was hoping to hear it is really helpful to know where things are heading. At my organization we write and distribute a large cross platform IDL application and the dated look & feel as well as the limited functionality of the widgets is really disappointing to our users. At some point, if not already, this might become a deal breaker to some so I welcome any efforts towards providing an alternative way of constructing a user interface. Let me be the first to volunteer as a beta tester, if Exelis still makes use of that, whenever this browser widget is sufficiently mature.
I really appreciated the feedback.
Richard
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