Sebastian Kuzminsky writes: > On 11/21/2017 03:31 AM, Alex Rössler wrote: >> Hello everyone, > > Hi Alex, > > >> I have started a new VCP project approximately 4 years ago because I was >> very dissatisfied with what was already available in LinuxCNC at the time. >> >> From a users perspective, the UIs were not usable for 3d printers and did >> not even come close anything visually acceptable by the post-smartphone >> era customers. >> >> From a developers perspective VCPs where completely outdated and not >> even close to what modern UI toolkits offer. No developer really want's >> to work with tk, we can argue about Gtk2. > > More UIs and UI frameworks are always welcome. > > >> From an OEM perspective, there was no option to build a close-source UI >> on top of LinuxCNC without a lot of effort. Additionally, if the OEM >> decides to stay with Gtk2, it's not supported anymore and (almost) no >> commercial help available. > > I am not at all interested in closed source UIs, or closed source > software in general. > > The whole point of the LinuxCNC project as far as I'm concerned is to > produce open source machine control software; anything that's not > directly aligned with that goal is at best distraction to me. > > I understand that not everyone agrees with my opinion on this topic, and > I hope we can make progress on the technical aspects without getting > bogged down in a political/philosophical conversation. Yes, I agree here. Open source software is important but I also think it is important to support close-source use-cases. Closing down the UI is common way for OEMs to "protect" their products and corporate design from piracy/fakes on the market.
> > >> That's why I started a completely new approach for creating a VCP >> development kit based on QtQuick - which is Qt's UI development >> technology. > > Awesome! > > >> QtQuickVcp comes with 2 reference UIs: >> - Cetus: designed as axis replacement: https://github.com/qtquickvcp/Cetus >> - Machineface: a generic and full-blown 3D printer UI: >> https://github.com/qtquickvcp/Machineface >> >> I agree both are not top notch when it comes to UI design. But with a >> little effort you can create great stuff with QtQuickVcp >> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uT-tAweP21U >> >> All UIs run on Linux, Windows, OSX, Android and iOS (not in the app >> store). > > How does the UI reach from the machine it's running on to the machine > running the motion controller? I understand that it's using some > innovation from Machinekit, but does it still end up talking to Task > using NML in the end? I haven't been following Machinekit at all so I > dont know what architectural changes y'all have made. If it ends up > being NML to Task we can probably support it in LinuxCNC. Machinetalk is the name of the middleware: https://machinekoder.com/machinetalk-explained-part-1-introduction/ Its Machinekit independent and does support multiple languages and platforms. > > >> To simplify remote deployment of the UIs one can simply download and run >> the "MachinekitClient" (yes, it's Machinekit only right now) and connect >> to the machine instance. > > So MachinekitClient is some kind of generic UI-running application, sort > of like a web browser, and the UIs are runtime-loadable front ends sort > of like web pages? That's exactly the idea. > > >> To support LinuxCNC would be quite simple. The machine/server part is >> based on Machinetalk - an open source middleware. >> >> Basically, it would be a matter of "adapting" mkwrapper, mklauncher and >> configserver (Python applications) over to LinuxCNC. >> >> HAL Remote - which is useful for custom extensions would require more >> effort, since it depends on the haltalk server - which goes deep into >> Machinekit. > > This to me seems like the bulk of the work. > > Remote UIs need a way to talk to the motion controller, and I understand > the interfaces available for this in Machinekit are far different from > what we have in LinuxCNC. We have working NML-over-TCP, but no MDNS-SD > auto-discovery and no remote HAL interface (halrmt doesn't count). So, the story is the following. NML is not replaced yet in Machinekit. For the CNC relevant interface we use wrappers around the linuxcnc Python module. So we should be pretty compatible with LinuxCNC when it comes to supporting the CNC UIs. Machinetalk can be packaged independently. Easiest way to install it is via Python pip. pip install machinetalk-protobuf > > >> From the user perspective, I think the split between LinuxCNC and >> Machinekit makes absolutely not sense and is very confusing. > > I agree with this statement, but it's another tangential topic that I > will stay out of, because it threatens to distract from the productive > technical conversation. > > >> Requiring the Qt toolchain, which can be cumbersome to install, is not >> an issue anymore thanks to live coding support: >> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5rYhq06wio > > What Linux distros can you run an existing QT Quick UI on, by installing > only software that's packaged for that distro (preferably from the > normal distro maintainers rather than from the upstream QT folks)? I > see that libqt5quick5 is available in Wheezy's backports and in the > normal repos for Jessie and newer. Is that what's needed to run QT > Quick UIs? What else is needed? > > https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=libqt5quick5&searchon=names&suite=all§ion=all > > What Linux distros can you *develop* a QT Quick UI on, again by > installing only software that's packaged for that distro by the distro > maintainers? So the official MachinekitClient comes packed as distro independent AppImage. If you want a Debian package you will need Qt 5.4 minimum, ideally Qt 5.7 (comes with Stretch) or newer. The Qt dependencies do not change a lot, so it is also possible to compile the newest Qt package from sid for Wheezy or Stretch. Ubuntu should be even easier, since they use Qt as their official UI toolkit for Unity/Ubuntu OS. Besides Qt, QtQuickVcp depends on libprotobuf and libzmq3/4/5 (changed in Debian). > > >> If there is enough interest, I will start porting the required tools. > > I'm cautiously interested and I welcome your work, if we can make it > fit. I think the UIs you've demoed look great, and I'd love to have > modern QT-based UI framwork(s) for LinuxCNC. Great! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
