[ome-devel] Existing client side code in C

[Joshua Moore]

Ok. After a discussion among several of our developers, we'd like to 
make something of a proposal.

We have a standalone C++ GUI which does various image processing tasks. 
It's called Tikal, and the folks in Dundee have seen an albeit 
less-than-perfect demonstration. It is used by our department, several 
other departments of the DKFZ, and by the folks at EMBL. Perhaps others, 
but it's certainly our main imaging platform.

We are in the process of getting our users onto OME, this of course 
dependent on import and export. (Hence this and my previous thread.)  
Leaving imports aside for a moment, the most critical step for us now is 
to allow Tikal to access the OME servers, both DS and IS. (DS is 
important for getting the time stamp info, Ilya, which we need for 
simulations.) With such a comunication library, Tikal quickly becomes 
YAOC (Yet another OME client).

What we'd suggest is that we combine our efforts. We can start working 
together with Zachary on a libcurl/libwww solution ( though I think we 
need to return to the XML-RPC/SOAP discussion ). Chris, it might be 
helpful if you posted/submitted to CVS your code. Also, Zach, do you 
have anything prototyped? Perhaps another round of brainstorming is in 
order to work out some implementation details. Then we'll get started.

That's the first part of the discussion. The second deals with Tikal 
itself. Tikal was (thankfully) designed to operate mostly as a library. 
There's a thin layer of OpenGL that does 3D visualization, etc. 
...Perhaps I'll just open this up for debate: does it make sense, once 
we have the C bindings, to provide Tikal as a library and rewrite the 3D 
code in JOGL for Shoola, or do you see a benefit in having a C client?

Ok. Enough for today. I'm going to the lake.
-Josh.