[Gammaray-interest] Graph library

[Kevin Funk]

On Tuesday, 28 May 2019 16:49:23 CEST Volker Krause wrote:
> On Tuesday, 28 May 2019 08:48:37 CEST Kevin Funk wrote:
> > On Friday, 24 May 2019 08:20:58 CEST Christian Gagneraud wrote:
> > > On Fri, 24 May 2019 at 05:34, Kevin Funk <kevin.funk at kdab.com> wrote:
> > > > At some point you need to bite the bullet and just write code for one
> > > > use-
> > > > case; I've tried the too-generic approaches (wrapping GraphViz API in
> > > > an
> > > > "open-minded" way) before, which failed.
> > > 
> > > I see what you mean, i've already given up 2 layers of "genericity"! :)
> > > And what i'm trying now is to reduce and transform the params table
> > > into a controlled vocabulary so to speak, that's quite time consuming.
> > > As you said, this thing sometimes look like a powerful but fragile and
> > > hard to tweak system.
> > > 
> > > I decided to start looking at all the plugins, see how hard it is to
> > > write one, how to hook on the remote components, ...And i saw your VTK
> > > based object visualiser, so i installed the VTK dependencies (and
> > > fixed the CMake file), and ran it.
> > > That's quite interesting, it looks "bare", but it show stuff!
> > > 
> > > I ran it on a dead simple app, and then on QtCreator, it was not too
> > > bad once the graph is built and laid out. And then i decided to open
> > > the Gammaray project with it ... ouch!
> > > 
> > > I had to hide the labels, as it was cluterring the view, 'ive added a
> > > few (new) layout strategies, and well, that's interesting...
> > > I'm not familiar with VTK, it seems to be quite a complex beast, I had
> > > a quick look at their graph and layout and it looks good to me.
> > > What's the status about this plugin? Do you think it's worth spending
> > > time on it, are you aware of limitations or maybe you know it's a dead
> > > end.
> > 
> > Heya,
> > 
> > The object visualizer plugin initially was just a tool plugin to toy
> > around
> > with VTK. At that time I was working on customer projects using VTK - and
> > thus built up some knowledge in that area - and we came up with the
> > "lunatic" idea of visualizing the QObject hierarchies inside a VTK graph
> > layout ;)
> > 
> > It's fun to look at, but mostly useless to really debug Qt application. We
> > decided to keep it alive, but we haven't really spend time on the plugin
> > for a couple of years now. I haven't worked with VTK for quite a while
> > now as well...
> > 
> > If you can adapt to new VTK layouting strategies, fix bugs, etc. that's of
> > course welcome. But it's not like this is or will become a super important
> > feature of GammaRay, I believe.
> 
> That's mainly due to what it visualizes, not how it visualizes it, I'd say.
> QObject hierarchies are not the most interesting or useful information IMHO
> in real use. I see a lot more potential in Christian's work on visualizing
> object interaction though. How well that scales in 2D or 3D views to still
> be useful beyond simple examples is going to be very interesting though, I
> find that very hard to predict.

Oh, sure. I actually wasn't aware this could get useful for visualizing other 
things than just object hierarchies. Makes sense for other data.

In that case it might indeed make sense to revive and explore that plugin a 
bit more.

Cheers,
Kevin

> In general, not having to maintain visualization components as part of
> GammaRay would IMHO be preferable, but if we need something that isn't
> readily available otherwise I don't mind having such parts added either.
> 
> Regards,
> Volker


-- 
Kevin Funk | kevin.funk at kdab.com | Senior Software Engineer
KDAB (Deutschland) GmbH, a KDAB Group company
Tel: +49-30-521325470
KDAB - The Qt, C++ and OpenGL Experts
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