[ome-devel] Launching VisBio from the OME web interface

[Curtis Rueden]

Hi Josiah, and everyone,

I added support in VisBio for downloading images from OME. Right now, 
you have to provide an image ID, which isn't the most user-friendly 
requirement, but it's a start. With VisBio v3.00 beta4b or later, just 
click "Add >", "OME image" on the Data tab.

I added support for a command-line argument that causes VisBio to pop up 
the OME login window upon startup, with the specified server and 
username value (but still requiring you to type your password). An image 
ID is also passed in, so as soon as you type your password VisBio 
immediately begins downloading that image from the specified server 
using your credentials. The format of this argument is: 
"ome-image=user at server:id"

I got VisBio working with Java Web Start. You can try it out at:
     http://www.loci.wisc.edu/visbio/download_jws.html

To get VisBio to launch from that page, you have to have Java3D 
installed (for some reason, the JWS class loader barfs if there is no 
Java3D, even though VisBio should normally work without Java3D installed).

I wrote a simple perl script for dynamically generating a JNLP file to 
launch VisBio with the aforementioned command line argument. The script 
is very simple, and just takes arguments using the GET protocol. I have 
set up a test web page demonstrating all of this:
    http://skyking.microscopy.wisc.edu/curtis/visbio-ome.html

What should happen is that the OME web interface should have a link 
somewhere that says "Launch in VisBio" that links to dynamically 
generated content similar to that produced by the visbio-ome perl 
script. You could just use visbio-ome.jnlp if you want, with an href of 
the form "visbio-ome.jnlp?username+server+imageId", or you could figure 
out an alternative, since my way is kind of an ugly hack (especially 
using the ".jnlp" extension when in fact it is a perl script).

Let me know if you have any questions.

-Curtis