gled

Current version of Gled is v1.2.5, released on 10th of June 2005.

The first public release of Gled (v1.2.0) has been announced on 3rd of June 2003.

Main priorities for further development are a closer integration with the ROOT project, stability and portability.

Gled v1.2 is a functional base upon which higher-level functionality can be built. Minimal changes in the core implementation are expected. Gled as an OO framework/toolkit is stable enough to allow development of user classes and applications.

It can be used for development of object-system prototypes, visualization systems and for distributed computing. VR scenes can be set-up and several users can modify them cooperatively. Authentication and access control system is fully functional and allows the usage of Gled across untrusted networks.

Another goal of the v1.2.x releases is to attract outside developers.

Compilation and run-time environment:

• build environment

Libsets:

• GledCore contains the implementation of all central features
• RootGeo interface to ROOT's detector-geometry description package
• Geom1 some geometrical shapes
• Numerica some numerical algorithms
• GTS interface to GNU Triangulated Surface Library - GTS
• Audio1 minimal interface to Open Audio Library - OpenAL
• EHS minimal interface Embedded HTTP Server - EHS

The following development activities are planned for transition towards v1.3. Some of them are already well underway.

Server-client protocol:

• Handling of buffer fill-ups, network timeouts and disconnects.
• Queen transport protocol (currently beta); must handle queen dependencies; possibly use rootd as transport layer.

Handling of files:

• Implementation of IceQueens and FileQueens.
• Manage catalog of opened (ROOT) files, preferably as lenses in fire-space.
• Extend ROOT to allow different threads to read/write from different files simultaneously (agreed with ROOT developers); add support on Gled level.

User authentication and access control: DONE

• User authentication is needed for operation over unsafe networks and for implementation of access control. Add glasses representing users, groups and virtual organizations; decide where user/group data is stored and how it accessible to clients.
• Extend MIR & thread infrastructure to contain UID information; extend MIR handling elements (Saturn, Queens).
• Glasses for representing access lists. For now assume read-only access is always granted. Implement write (method execution) control on ZGlass (per object) and ZQueen (for whole object-space) level. Access control would naturally be implemented in ZQueen::BlessMIR(): MIRs which do not comply with queen/glass access permissions will be denied.

Base glasses:

• Generalize container classes, make them bullet-proof against massive additions/removals of elements.

GUI:

• Drag & drop support. DONE
• Generalization of locators (references to GUI objects that can hold lens representation).
• Generalization of context menu; extensibility with libset GUI classes.
• Add interface for saving/loading object graphs.
• Improve usability.
• Improve interface and functionality of user-to-user communication system.

Rendering: ALMOST DONE

• Optimize rendering classes; use display lists.
• Triangulation infrastructure: extend base classes for holding vertex data. Use a dedicated thread (decoupled from rendering) for triangulation.
• Improve GL rendering classes PupilInfo and Pupil. Allow attachment of Camera to a specified object. Allow direct (and intuitive) manipulation of object state (translations and rotations). Implement customizable key-bindings that generate MIRs for current object. Generalize code so that custom viewers can easily be programmed.