Re: To Do List - program editor

[Ray Henry <rehenry-at-up.net>]

I recently wrote a TclTk gui for small screen (640x480) that is a blatant
rip off of much of Fred's code.  I did it to get experience with tickle.
And I did it because I plan to develop a set of menu buttons below or along
side the screen for my own projects.  My gui doesn't have the logging
feature or the axis stuff but the rest of it is there - menu driven.  Jan
is testing it for me in Belgium.  If anyone wants to try it I should have
it ready in a week or so.

I'm not very good at writing good TclTk but I can see many of its
advantages.  I've been playing with a stand alone g-code editor.  What I
had planned was to include many of the features that Dan mentioned in his
post.  

What I should do first is expand the tkemc editor so that it it numbers and
renumbers lines and allows for some modest, single button, standard code
lines - machine go home (g0 g53 x0 y0 z0) for example. I will do this
immediately. Let me know if you want to help or try it out when it's done.
Or if you have ideas that you'd like to see included.

I don't know how to get around the problem of editing one file while emc is
running another.  I'd like to figure out something because this would be a
really good application of the multi-user features of Linux.

I also discovered that it takes less than a second to switch files into the
emc interpreter.  You can pile up a whole bunch of sub-routines as separate
files and then sequence them through the interpreter with an autostart for
each.  This might turn out to be the most powerful way that we have, with
the existing emc system, for the kinds of programming that Dan suggests.

What do you think here?

Ray


At 11:24 PM 12/17/1999 -0500, Dan wrote:
>I would like to see some simple things done to EMC. For instance, the
>editor could be made more friendly to CNC coding, with some
>numbering/renumbering features that would later on help towards subroutines
>("go to line N100 and repeat").  Subroutines that were interpreted through
>the editor would be good - take a simple program with repeats-that would
>convert all the repeated parts into a longer program that EMC could use.
>At work, I sometimes write simple programs that mill out the same shape all
>over a piece, but in different locations.  Being able to insert macros
>(with the particular beginning and end codes desired) into the program
>would be nice.  Copy/Paste can be used, if you open up another editor with
>the desired macros, but it would be cool to be able to define standard
>macros when needed.