Re: TkEmc problems

[Fred Proctor <proctor-at-cme.nist.gov>]

EMC Folks,

Jon Elson reported some EMC controller and GUI quirkiness. As far as the
GUI is concerned, it looks like Ray Henry has fixed the bugs and posted
the improvement in the linuxcnc.org drop box. Ray now has probably a
better understanding of the TkEMC than I do. I looked over his
corrections and they look good to me.

I'm going to make Ray's latest TkEMC part of the next EMC distribution.
To be honest I would be delighted if Ray became the Number One EMC GUI
guy. This will free me up to work on the motion stuff that I'm better
suited to doing. We can make the linuxcnc.org drop box the primary place
to get the EMC code. The GUI crowd can drop GUIs in there, and I can
drop the rest of the stuff until I foist it off on someone else. 

If I were to split this up I'd do it like this:

EMC Board: decides what features to add, which platforms to port to.

EMC Architecture Committee: responsible for the pieces and how they tie
together. At this point it means editing emc/src/emcnml/emc.hh, writing
scripts, adding INI file entries, etc. I would also include the EMC task
controller here, since it's the point of entry to the controller.

EMC GUI Committee: responsible for operator GUI.

EMC Motion Committee: responsible for motion control. Outstanding items
here include full 6-axis support, and fixing the numerous bugs that keep
popping up.

EMC PLC Committee: responsible for the bridgeportio/minimillio mess. I
have some Tcl/Tk ideas on this, in which you program the PLC using Tcl
scripts.

There must be models we can follow to set this up. Linux is an obvious
one; the Apache web server group is one. I don't have preferences,
except  to say that the more we divide responsibilities the faster we
can make progress and the better the documentation will have to be. If
anyone wants to take a piece then go ahead. I'll explain how it works
and how it fits in.

--Fred