Hi Bryan, I played around some with the python-brlcad project, good work !
I have a few additions and some topics to discuss, I wonder where (what forum) and in what form would be the best to go ahead ? While on the first encounter I disliked python because its "duck typing" (I have a java background where strong typing is seen as an advantage), lately I use it more and more for prototyping work - and in my opinion it's hard to beat there. That's why I would really like to see a python interface to BRL-CAD, and I guess that's very well possible due to it's modular structure. The areas I made changes/had thoughts so far are related to: * specify a custom installation directory for the wrapped brl-cad libraries (possibly passed as parameter to the setup script); * add libged to the wrapped library list; * add higher level python classes to experiment with a somewhat different approach of building geometry, where structure and positioning are separated as concepts: geometry is described only using structure parameters (lengths, radii, angles - no points in space !) and positioning is described by resolving constraints between objects (or between well defined points on them); * thoughts about writing the python equivalent of mged, where python replaces tcl - in my opinion that would really boost geometry scripting; I didn't check out yet the git sources, but if that's necessary for sharing code, I will do - just that I have absolutely no experience with git, so not sure how this process works. I would appreciate any thoughts you might have ! Cheers, Csaba On Mi, 2013-11-27 at 12:25 -0600, Bryan Bishop wrote: > On Wed, Nov 27, 2013 at 12:10 PM, Csaba Nagy <[email protected]> wrote: > > In fact it likely doesn't need much documentation, but an example script > > would be good for starters (the "examples" folder mentioned in the > > README is missing in the source download), and possibly pointers to the > > I opted to not include the examples in the pypi distribution, but I > could be convinced to do the opposite. I will likely forget to do this > unless you file a bug over here: > > https://github.com/kanzure/python-brlcad/issues > > > documentation of the wrapped brl-cad libraries, and perhaps to the ctype > > documentation. > > Well, the wrapped libraries operate very close to how they would > upstream. There are differences, and I am hoping to hide these > differences behind a higher-level abstraction so that nobody has to > use ctypes as a downstream consumer of this library. For example, at > the moment I have to do some weird ctypes-related list manipulation > when passing lists into brlcad: > > https://github.com/kanzure/python-brlcad/blob/master/examples/wdb_example.py#L42 > > yuck :-) This is something that should go away when a high level API happens. > > > I tried to get the source via the git command from the README, it fails > > with: > > > > Permission denied (publickey). > > fatal: Could not read from remote repository. > > You can switch to git cloning over HTTPS until you setup public key > authentication with github: > > git clone https://github.com/kanzure/python-brlcad > > > I'll read up on ctypes, that will perhaps be enough to get me started. > > Another dependency to be aware of is the ctypesgen project, which is > what I am using to generate the ctypes bindings during installation. > Actually, I am using my own fork of ctypesgen: > > https://github.com/kanzure/ctypesgen > > > In any case thanks for your work and I'm interested in any further > > development ! > > Cool. > > - Bryan > http://heybryan.org/ > 1 512 203 0507 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Rapidly troubleshoot problems before they affect your business. Most IT organizations don't have a clear picture of how application performance affects their revenue. With AppDynamics, you get 100% visibility into your Java,.NET, & PHP application. Start your 15-day FREE TRIAL of AppDynamics Pro! http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=84349831&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk _______________________________________________ BRL-CAD Developer mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/brlcad-devel
