| Re: several quick questions [message #13193] |
Sat, 24 October 1998 00:00  |
davidf
Messages: 2866
Registered: September 1996
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Senior Member |
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Philip Aldis (teal@dera.gov.uk) writes:
> -I'm writing a visualisation program for displaying some ray tracing data. A C
> program that has already been written translates ray path histories for an engine
> duct and translates them onto a flattened version of the duct, so a 2-d appreciation
> of where the rays are in real-time can be obtained. I have to animate these images.
> I could build my widget program using the cw_animate widgets but they direct output
> to their own window. The problem is that I want to display the animation inside a
> frame of the duct with some drawings, and a second animation of the end plate of the
> duct and a drawing of the duct. So, can you direct output from cw_animate into
> specific parts of draw widgets. Or would it be best just to do the pixmaps myself?
I'll just add a bit to Liam's useful advice. If you still have
the files from your programming course, look at the file XMOVIE.PRO.
That is an example of how you can do an animation correctly
into any draw widget you like. (The file is on my web page, too.)
> - If I am building a widget application, but wish to do all my actual processes
> using objects - which contain data and methods - then is it best to program the
> widgets as normal - functionally - then create my objects in the widget program and
> use the methods on the objects.
Yes. Program your widgets as normal and call the object's methods
from within your event handlers. Your objects can exist in the
info structure. Be sure you clean them up properly in your clean-up
routine.
> -I am still not sure about how much functionality one can put into event handlers.
Uh, you put ALL your functionality into event handlers. Just do the
processing as quickly as you can. When you are going to take a long
time at it, follow Liam's advice and put up the hour-glass and
desensitise the widgets. If you prefer NOT to desensitise the widgets,
you could clear all the built-up events in the event queue at the
end of the processing:
Widget_Control, /Clear_Events
> - Finally, I was on a course with David Fanning and he mentioned something about
> distracting the user while you did something to make it look as if you'd done the
> process faster. How would you go about this?
I am quite sure that David Fanning would never recommend
something so devious. Smoke and mirrors is not his usual
modus operandi. The poor fellow must have been at the
end of a gruelling teaching tour to say something like
this. :-)
If he *did* say it, then I'll bet he would implement the
smoke as a beautiful image or perhaps as a modal text
widget that gave the user something to look at for a moment
(knowing Fanning, it would probably be a Rumi poem) while
he was feverishly doing his calculating. The mirrors would
certainly be implemented as pixmaps.
Cheers,
David
----------------------------------------------------------
David Fanning, Ph.D.
Fanning Software Consulting
E-Mail: davidf@dfanning.com
Phone: 970-221-0438, Toll-Free Book Orders: 1-888-461-0155
Coyote's Guide to IDL Programming: http://www.dfanning.com/
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