Re: Ray's Euro Visits

[Paul <Paul.Corner-at-tesco.net>]

Hi Ray,

Thanks for the insight into emc on the continent.

I've put a few comments below -


On Tue, 16 Jan 2001, Ray wrote:
> My EMC conclusions for what they are worth.
> 
> 1. We need to be able to configure the language displayed in the
> menus, buttons, and boxes of a gui.

There would appear to be a mechanism used by the various linux distros to do
this sort of thing. Mandrake has a set of files buried in the install tree with
a file extension of .po - Perhaps the same system could be used with emc.

  These need to be variables that are
> assigned values from a language file during startup.  The entire world does
> not yet speak or easily read and work from US English.
> 
> 2. We need to be able to assign different sets of keystroke bindings that
> work more easily on some of these international keyboards.

Also make it much easier to use a 'custom' keypad such as some of the ones sold
for certain gaming applications.

> 3. We must develop some international setup procedures.  A single
> configuration line should get us from US settings (inch +) to Metric
> settings.

The US is about the last nation still clinging to the old inch - As you point
out, most of the support for metric/imperial is allready there.

> This needs to include values in the ini, parm, and tool files

Whilst on the subject of ini files - A GUI front end to set it up would help in
setting up and tuning the configuration.

> 7.  Tcl/Tk is a quick way to develop and test Human Machine Interface
> features but we may need to translate these features to more efficient
> languages as we move ahead.

For computationally intensive tasks such as the 3D backplotter, I would agree.
But this one function aside, I would suggest that Tcl/tk is more than
sufficient for the Man Machine interface. Unless of course, an embedded control
system was being developed where flash disks and memory are at a premium.

Regards, Paul.