Article View: comp.soft-sys.khoros
Article #1064FAQ
From: Danielle Argiro
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 16:51
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 16:51
1473 lines
69962 bytes
69962 bytes
Hi there,
Here is the latest Khoros FAQ. The version on pprg.eece.unm.edu
(anon. ftp - /pub/khoros/release/khoros-FAQ) has also been updated.
Please note that there are 3 new Q & A's on the subject of 24-bit
displays.
enjoy,
~ danielle
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~ Danielle Argiro - danielle@chama.eece.unm.edu ~
~ Software Design & Development, The Khoros Group ~
~ Room 110, EECE Building, UNM; Albq, NM 87131 ~
~ ~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT KHOROS
last updated:
Jan 8, '93 -- added 3 new Q & A's
concerning 24-bit, new
Q29 - Q31.
( Please Read! Please Redistribute! )
( Also - Please See the Khoros FAQ for Compiling )
Contents: Questions 1 - 51
* Introductory Khoros
* Mailing List, News Group, User Support, Etc
* General Khoros
* Manuals, Documentation, Man Pages
* 24 Bit Displays
* Problems With Displaying Images
* Problems with SGI
* Annotations, Editimage, Xprism2/3, Animate
* Problems with Graphical User Interface
* and more
------- Introductory Khoros (obtaining Khoros, patches) -----
Q1. What is the Khoros System?
Q2. How do I obtain the Khoros system?
What is the most recent version of Khoros?
Q3. What is a "Patch"? What does "Patch Level" mean?
Q4. How can I find out what patch level our Khoros system is at?
Q5. How do I get the latest patch to Khoros?
Q6. Do I want the most recent patch? What changes have been made
in the patches to Khoros?
Q7. What if I don't have access to the net / don't have the
ftp program / don't want to bother with ftp / but still want Khoros?
------- Mailing list, News Group, User Support, Etc -----
Q8. I want to get on / off the khoros mailing list,
I want to get on / off the digestified mailing list.
Q9. Is there a network news group that I can read which talks about Khoros?
Is there a mail archive of the news group that I can get?
Q10. I have a question to ask.
Q11. I have a bug to report.
Q12. I have a desired enhancement I would like you to know about.
Q13. Is there a book on Khoros that I can get?
Q14. What support is provided for Khoros by the Khoros group at UNM?
What if I need additional support?
------- General Khoros -----
Q15. What is the Khoros Consortium? What are the benefits of joining
the Consortium? How much does it cost?
Q16. What machines does Khoros currently run on?
Q17. Does Khoros work with shared libraries?
Q18. Can you use C++ with Khoros? How?
Q19. What file formats are supported by Khoros? If Khoros doesn't support
my file format, is there any way to get my data into the Khoros system?
Q20. I have some GIF images that I would like to use with Khoros. Is
there a GIF to VIFF converter?
Q21. I would like to remove all of Khoros that is not needed to
actually run it, in order to free up disk space. What can
be removed without compromising the integrity of the runtime
operation of Khoros?
Q22. Is it possible to get only a subset of Khoros? I realize that
Khoros has a core of utility routines that must be obtained, but
I was hoping that one could pick and choose the routines one wanted
on an as-needed basis.
------- Manuals, Documentation, Man Pages --------------
Q23. Can I buy the manuals separately?
Q24. How do I print the documentation?
Q25. I want to read the Khoros man pages, but vman doesn't seem to work.
What's the problem?
Q26. I can not regenerate the Khoros manual on a Sun Workstation
because soelim for .so lines in the roff files, limits the
file length to 64 characters.
------- 24 bit displays --------------
Q27. Does Khoros work with 24-bit displays? Can I expect any particular
problems when I run Khoros applications on my 24-bit display?
Q28. Is there a way to load a 24-bit image, display it on an 8-bit display
(using 3-3-2, or 7 levels each of rgb), and allow LUT manipulations,
histograms, etc, to be done on the original values?
Q29. When running warpimage on a 24-bit display, it fails and gives me
this X Protocol error:
X Error of failed request: BadMatch (invalid parameter attributes)
Major opcode of failed request: 72 (X_PutImage)
Minor opcode of failed request: 0
Resource id in failed request: 0x3800060
Serial number of failed request: 1783
Current serial number in output stream: 1810
Major X error encountered for display ':0.0'! Unable to recover.
Q30. When running editimage and using the zoom, ROI, or annotations options
on a 24-bit display, it fails and gives me this X Protocol error:
X Error of failed request: BadMatch (invalid parameter attributes)
Major opcode of failed request: 72 (X_PutImage)
Minor opcode of failed request: 0
Resource id in failed request: 0x4000041
Serial number of failed request: 6750
Current serial number in output stream: 6751
Major X error encountered for display ':0.0'! unable to recover.
Q31. I cannot seem to view my 24-bit image properly with editimage on
my SGI 24-bit display. Editimage insists on compressing my image
to 8-bit PsuedoColor, but I don't want that.
------- Problems with Displaying Images --------------
Q32. I'm on a SUN architecture, using OpenWindows. When I display images,
they come up with colored speckles in them, or strangely colored in
some way. This condition rights itself when I move the cursor into
the image, but then the colors in my user interface get messed up -
sometimes I can't see anything but the image. Is this a bug in Khoros?
Q33. When I display an image that has a large number of colors in it
the colors will not be displayed correctly unless
I move my mouse into the image; then, all my other windows lose
their colors. How can I get rid of this "techno-flash" phenomenon?
NOTE: there is a difference between this problem and the one mentioned
in Q32. In Q32, the graphical user interface is lost; here, the
graphical user interface is preserved, but colors in other windows
are lost.
------- Problems with SGI --------------
Q34. The Khoros display programs are not working on SGI machines. The
symptom is that when displaying images a title bar will appear, but
no window -- just an hole where the image should be.
Q35. On our SGI (NCD terminal with an SGI server), when the Khoros
applications come up, they have extremely large graphical user
interfaces. The user interface is so large, it doesn't even fit
on the screen! What can I do?
------- Annotations, Editimage, Xprism2/3, Animate --------------
Q36. I have a problem with the annotations capability in editimage (xprism).
When I move the image (plot), the annotations don't move accordingly.
It seems that they are tied to the device coordinates of the screen,
rather than the pixels in the image (world coordinates of the plot)
as they should be.
Q37. I am trying to load 3D data into xprism3 from an ASCII file.
When I try to plot the data, a pop-up window states that there
is 1 row and (total # data points) columns, and asks for the correct
number of rows. What is going on?
Q38. What does the "*" mean after a pixel value at the bottom of
the editimage window?
Q39. I am running animate on a DecStation 5000/200. Animate is so slow that
it is unusable. Occasionally, it even seems to lock up the display.
What is the problem?
Q40. When plotting raw ASCII data specified in XYZ format, does the data
have to be rectangular, or can I provide irregular data? Does each
row have to have the same number of elements? Is there anyway to plot
3D data that has a varied number of points per row?
------- Problems with Graphical User Interface --------------
Q41. I have a version of Khoros installed on a DecStation running the
dxwm window manager (DecWindows). I have problems with running
Khoros programs -- some of the buttons do not work at all, while
others sometimes lock the program, or otherwise do not act properly.
What's wrong?
Q42. I'm using khoros on a monochrome monitor. I have connected up some glyphs
in the cantata workspace, but the connections don't appear on the screen,
even though the workspace executes correctly.
------- Writing New Programs in Khoros --------------
Q43. I have finished writing my new program under Khoros, and now
I would like to install it into a toolbox, and integrate it
into the cantata visual language. How do I go about doing this?
Q44. Is there a tutorial describing how to create and install an xvroutine?
Q45. Can user-written routines be installed under existing buttons on
the Cantata workspace? For example, if I have written a new
signal processing routine, can I fix things so that it appears
on the menu under the Signal Processing button, or do I have to
install it in a new toolbox?
------- Miscellaneous --------------
Q46. Where did you get the name "Khoros"? Is it an acronym?
Q47. I would like to do 3D object modelling, with multiple light sources,
animation, and so on. Does Khoros do this?
Q48. I heard about the audio cantata demo, and would like to hear it.
How do I go about this?
Q49. Is there a way to convert VIFF images with 3 color bands (rgb) to
images with only one band and a colormap? What about vice versa?
Q50. We are trying to run cantata on an NCD Xterminal as the display,
and the program fails, exiting with the following error:
X Error: BadAlloc
Request Major code 65 ()
Request Minor code 0
ResourceID 0x2400085
Error Serial #1576
Current Serial #1582
Major X error encountered for display ':0'! Unable to recover.
Q51. When I try to use my double or double complex viff image that came from
another kind of machine, the program always gives an error. What gives?
==============================================================================
============= Introductory Khoros (obtaining Khoros, patches) ================
Q1. What is the Khoros system?
A1. Khoros is an integrated software development environment for
information processing and visualization, based on X11R4. Khoros
components include a visual programming language, code generators
for extending the visual language and adding new application packages
to the system, an interactive user interface editor, an interactive
image display package, an extensive library of image processing,
numerical analysis and signal processing routines, and 2D/3D
plotting packages.
* X Windows Applications:
Animate - Interactive Image Sequence Display Tool
Cantata - Extensible Visual Programming Language
Concert - A system for distributed X user interfaces (groupware)
Editimage - Interactive Image Display & Manipulation Program
Xprism2 and Xprism3 - Comprehensive 2D and 3D Plotting Packages
Viewimage - A basic interactive program for surface rendering
Warpimage - An interactive program for registering and warping images
* Data Processing Algorithms:
Khoros contains over 260 programs, in the following
categories: arithmetic, classification, color conversion,
data conversion, file format conversion, feature extraction,
frequency filtering, matrix algebra (LINPACK and EISPACK),
spatial filtering, morphology filtering, geometric manipulation,
histogram manipulation, statistics, signal generation,
linear operations, segmentation, spectral estimation, sub-
region, and transforms. Khoros supports the following file
formats: TIFF, pbm, BIG, DEM, DLG, ELAS, FITS, MATLAB, Sun
raster, TGA, and xbm.
* User Interface Tools
Preview - Graphical User Interface Display Tool
Composer - Interactive Graphical User Interface Editor
Conductor - Code Generation Tool for a Graphical User Interface
Ghostwriter - Code Generation Tool for a Command Line User Interface
Source Configuration & Management - Tools to install and maintain a
distributed source tree.
For complete details, please read the "announce.ftp" and "khoros.ftp"
documents that are available in the khoros release/ directory.
These documents can be obtained via anonymous ftp from any official
Khoros ftp site (see Q2).
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Q2. How do I obtain the Khoros system?
What is the most recent version of Khoros?
A2. ---- anonymous ftp ----
The most recent version of Khoros, Khoros 1.0 Patch 5, can be
obtained free of charge via anonymous FTP.
Our official FTP site from which you can get
the Khoros system is listed below.
USA: ftp pprg.eece.unm.edu (129.24.24.10)
(University of Login: anonymous (or ftp)
New Mexico) Password: user_name@machine
cd /pub/khoros
In all cases, we recommend that you first obtain the "install.ftp",
"install.ms", or "install.ps" installation document found in the
release/ directory, and read it before attempting to obtain the
Khoros system. The Khoros system is large, and fewer mistakes will
be made if the proper documentation is read beforehand.
---- USA tape orders ----
If you are not on the network, or do not want to use ftp for some
reason, you may order a tape of Khoros and printed manuals for a
fee of $250 from:
The Khoros Group
Room 110 EECE Dept.
University of New Mexico,
Albuquerque, NM 87131
email: khoros-request@chama.eece.unm.edu
Please mail khoros-request@chama.eece.unm.edu to obtain the order
form that must be filled out to place your order.
---- Europe tape orders ----
In Europe, you may order a tape from:
Pascal ADAM
DTA / LETI / DEIN / SIR
CEN SACLAY
91191 Gif / Yvette Cedex FRANCE
tel: 33 1 69 08 82 91
fax: 33 1 69 08 83 95
email: padam@fauvette.saclay.cea.fr
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Q3. What is a "Patch"? What does "Patch Level" mean?
A3. Periodically, we release "patches" to the Khoros system. In general,
a "patch" to a program means that the author made one or more bug fixes
to the program. These bug fixes are then made available to users of the
program in the form of context diff files, which are applied to the
original program with the public domain "patch" program in order to
bring it up to date. In general, patches are small, fixing a few
reported bugs and nothing more; they are released frequently following
the release of a software package, as the author(s) endeavor to make
the original program solid and reliable before moving on work on the
next version of the program.
When used with respect to the Khoros system, however, the term "Patch"
is used rather loosely. "Patches" to the Khoros system would more
suitably be termed "minor releases". They are made available to users
in the form of large tar files, and the use of the "patch" program used
on context diff files was abandoned after the first try, as it was
simply not sufficient to address the number of changes that were
included. Patches to the Khoros system are large, fixing dozens of
bugs and introducing major enhancements to the Khoros system; they
are released infrequently, often with 2-3 months elapsing between
patches, as the authors attempt to make new capabilities available
to users.
In any case, "Patch Level" refers to the number of patches that
have been applied to the software at a certain site; for example,
if three patches have been acquired and applied to the software, that
software would be said to be "at Patch Level 3". In addition to
making patches available to users who already have the Khoros system,
we also apply the same patches to the Khoros system which is available
via public ftp. Thus, if you acquired the Khoros system after Patch 3
was released, your software would still be said to be "at Patch Level 3",
regardless of the fact that you had never actually applied any patches.
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Q4. How can I find out what patch level our Khoros system is at?
A4. If you do not know what patch level your version of Khoros is at,
look in $KHOROS_HOME/src for a file called "PatchLevel". The one-line
contents of this file will tell you what patch level the system is at.
If the file does not exist, you probably have the original
Khoros 1.0 with no patches applied, although some sites may still
have the Beta version of Khoros. The Khoros Manuals will indicate
if you still have Khoros Beta.
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Q5. How do I get the latest patch to Khoros?
A5. If you are acquiring the Khoros system for the first time, see Q2.
The distributed version of Khoros on pprg.eece.unm.edu always has
the most recent patch incorporated. If you have an existing version
of Khoros, do an anonymous ftp to pprg.eece.unm.edu (129.24.24.10);
the most recent patch is in /pub/khoros/patch/patchN, where patchN
is the most recent patch. Follow the instructions in the README found
in that directory for installing the patch. ONLY install patchN onto
a Khoros system which is currently at Patch Level N-1. If your version
of Khoros is at Patch Level N-2 or earlier, re-acquire the entire
system from scratch as explained in Q2.
IMPORTANT: You must ALWAYS have the same release of "system" to go
with either a release of "source" or a release of "binaries".
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Q6. Do I want the most recent patch? What changes have been made
in the patches to Khoros?
A6. Of course you will want the most recent patch if you want to stay
up to date with what we are doing with the Khoros system. The changes
that have been made in each patch are too extensive to list here;
however, a complete list of changes that were made during Patch N can
be obtained by ftp'ing to pprg.eece.unm.edu (129.24.24.10), and getting
/pub/khoros/patch/patchN/README.
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Q7. What if I don't have access to the net / don't have the
ftp program / don't want to bother with ftp?
A7. If you don't want to ftp the system yourself, you may
get a tape and printed documentation from UNM. It will cost
$250 if you are in the United States or Canada, $350 internationally.
MAIL ORDERS:
First, get an order form. You may ftp to of the sites listed
above and get the announce.ftp document (which contains the order
form), or mail khoros-request@chama.eece.unm.edu and request an order
form. Fill out the order form and send it to the
address listed on it with a check or purchase order for
$250 made out the University of New Mexico.
FAX ORDERS:
You can FAX orders to UNM at 505-277-1439
CREDIT CARD ORDERS:
You can use your credit card to order Khoros, provided that you
specify all the necessary information (name, credit card number,
expiration data, daytime phone number) on your order form.
We do not accept American Express.
ORDER INFORMATION:
email khoros-request@chama.eece.unm.edu
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============= Mailing list, News Group, User Support, Etc =====================
Q8. I want to get on / off the khoros mailing list,
I want to get on / off the digestified mailing list.
A8. PLEASE don't mail these requests to khoros@chama.eece.unm.edu!
Over 1000 people who don't care will be getting your request.
Mail to khoros-request@chama.eece.unm.edu, and we will process
your request as soon as we can.
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Q9. Is there a network news group that I can read which talks
about Khoros? Is there a mail archive of the news group
that I can get?
A9. Yes. We have our own news group, comp.soft-sys.khoros.
Note that all messages to the mailing list are cross-posted to the
news group and vice versa; thus, you may want to be on the mailing
list or read the news group, but it is not necessary to do both.
We do have a mail archive, but it is unfortunately not updated
automatically; at this time, it is only updated when patches are
released. However, on the philosophy that something is better than
nothing, you can do an anonymous ftp to pprg.eece.unm.edu (129.24.24.10)
and get the files found in /pub/khoros/mail_archive.
For researching previously-posted mail to comp.soft-sys.khoros,
you can also make use of the WAIS server for Khoros mail, provided
by Mathew Yeates of the Image Analysis Systems Group, JPL.
WAIS - The Wide Area Information Servers system, is a set of products
supplied by different vendors to help end-users find and retrieve
information over networks. It can be obtained from think.com.
The server is running at henry.jpl.nasa.gov on port 1025 and the
database name is khorosmail. As an example:
% waissearch -p 1025 -h henry.jpl.nasa.gov -d khorosmail ansi
This gives a list of mail containing the keyword "ansi". Next, you may
choose which mail to read (xwais is a better interface).
Please direct any questions about WAIS to alt.wais, not
comp.soft-sys.khoros.
This is a temporary service provided for members of the Khoros
community by Mathew Yeates, and may go away at any time, depending
on any adverse effects that it may have on his machine. Thanks go
to Mathew (mathew@elroy.jpl.nasa.gov) for providing this service.
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Q10. I have a question to ask.
A10. If you have a question, mail to our mailing list:
khoros@chama.eece.unm.edu. When mailing questions, please follow
the proper mail etiquette by including enough information for us
to understand your situation. Indicate what machine architecture
and operating system you are using. Include complete details so as
to exactly describe your problem. Do not mail long files to the
mailing list, such as make.World files, or saved cantata workspaces.
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Q11. I have a bug to report.
A11. If you have a bug report, mail to khoros-bugs@bullwinkle.eece.unm.edu.
Please use the Bug Report form found in $KHOROS_HOME/repos/BugReport.
It is very difficult for us to trace bugs when we don't have enough
background information. Also, it will help if you first read
$KHOROS_HOME/repos/BugList, which lists currently known bugs in Khoros.
We rarely respond to reports mailed to khoros-bugs; however, we do
log them in our list of bugs to be dealt with. In the future, we hope
to implement an automatic reply so that you know your mail was received.
Please *DO* send bug reports on any documentation errors you may find,
no matter how "nit-picky" they may seem! We don't have a professional
proof reader, so any reports you make are *truly* appreciated!
Please *don't* send questions to khoros-bugs -- they probably will not
be answered, as this account is for logging of bugs & desired
enhancements only.
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Q12. I have a desired enhancement that I would like you to know about.
A12. If you would like to request an enhancement to a program,
mail to khoros-bugs@bullwinkle.eece.unm.edu. You don't need to use
the Bug Report form, but please be clear and give enough information
so that we will exactly what the enhancement is. We cannot promise
that desired enhancements will be implemented.
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Q13. Is there a book on Khoros that I can get?
A13. Not at this time, but there is a book scheduled to begin development
this year by Carla Williams, PhD. An outline of the book has been
decided on; it will include writings from a number of authors,
and will address the solution of various scientific problems using
the Khoros system.
We do recommend "AN INTRODUCTORY GUIDE TO SCIENTIFIC VISUALIZATION",
by R. A. Earnshaw (University of Leeds) and and N. Wiseman (Natural
Environment Research Council), published by Springer-Verlag, 157 pp,
which was published in July 1992. It has a low price and popular
presentation style, and it does include information on Khoros in
Chapter 8, section 8.1. A summary of this book appears below:
This volume is intended for readers new to the field of scientific
visualization, and who require a quick and easy-to-read summary of what
the field is and what it can do. Written in a popular journalistic
style with many illustrations, it will enable readers to appreciate
the benefits of scientific visualization and how current tools can be
exploited in many application areas. This volume is indispensable
for scientists and research workers who have never used computer
graphics or other visual tools before, and who wish to find out the
benefits and advantages of the new approaches. This guide is concerned
with answering the following questions -
o What is Scientific Visualization?
o What can it do?
o What do the technical terms and jargon really mean?
o What products are currently available?
o What kind of hardware do I need?
o What are the costs?
o What do I get?
o Where do I go next to find out more, or explore current
possibilities?
o What are the prospects for the future?
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Q14. What support is provided for Khoros by the Khoros group at UNM?
What if I need additional support?
A14. The best we can do here at UNM is to try to answer your mail to
khoros@chama.eece.unm.edu, and to post to our new news group,
comp.soft-sys.khoros -- a big job in itself for our small group.
We have decided that the best way to provide additional support
is via the Consortium. Hopefully, in the future, one or more of
the Consortium members will take the initiative to provide Khoros
support.
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========================== General Khoros ====================================
Q15. What is the Khoros Consortium? What are the benefits of joining
the Consortium? How much does it cost?
Q15. The Khoros Consortium will oversee the distribution of the
Khoros software and the continued research and development
of the Khoros project. There are two levels of membership
in the Consortium: a Supporting Member at $50,000/year, and an
Affiliate Member at $5000/year. Affiliate Members have the right
to redistribute the Khoros system and early access to enhancements
and updates; Supporting Members have the right of redistribution and
early access to updates; they also participate on an advisory group
as well as participate in staff exchange, and training sessions.
For more information about joining the Consortium, send email
to: consort@chama.eece.unm.edu
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Q16. What machines does Khoros currently run on?
A16. Please see the Khoros FAQ for Compiling, Q1.
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Q17. Does Khoros work with shared libraries?
A17. Please see the Khoros FAQ for Compiling, Q9.
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Q18. Can you use C++ with Khoros? How?
A18. Klamer Schutte, of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at the
University of Twente, The Netherlands, (klamer@mi.el.utwente.nl,
SMTP: klamer@utelmi01.el.utwente.nl) provides the following answer:
I am doing this now on a regular basis with Sun C++ 2.1. I use composer
& ghostwriter to generate a main() with command line handling. The C++
function does the real thing.
One problem: Sun C++ 2.1 needs a C++ main, not a C main. So I have a
#define main my_main
as a #define in the ghostwriter-generated C main.
Also, I have a simple wrapper
in C++ for the main function:
extern "C" my_main(int argc, char *argv[]);
main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
return my_main(argc,argv);
}
The library function also needs the extern "C" directive.
Recently, I tried the same method with g++ 2.{1,2} and
it worked similarly.
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Q19. What file formats are supported by Khoros? If Khoros doesn't support
my file format, is there any way to get my data into the Khoros system?
A19. Khoros supports Sun Raster, Terra-Mar BIG, TGA, DEM, DLG, FITS, PBM,
and ELAS images; there are routines to convert each of these file
formats to the VIFF format used by Khoros. In addition, there are
also routines to convert ascii data and raw data to the VIFF format.
If your file format is not one of these, you can still import the
image data to Khoros provided you can display the image. Once any
image is displayed on an X11 screen, the "getimage" program can be
used to store it as a VIFF image.
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Q20. I have some GIF images that I would like to use with Khoros. Is
there a GIF to VIFF converter?
A20. Currently, we do not have a gif2viff program, although we may put
one out in the future. For the time being, you can convert your
GIF image to PBM (Portable Bit Map) and then use the
khoros routine 'pbm2viff' to get it from PBM into VIFF format.
To convert your GIF image to PBM, the pbmplus package is very useful.
The pbmplus package is a public domain package that can obtained via
anonymous ftp on pprg.eece.unm.edu or export.lcs.mit.edu in the file
'pub/pbmplus.tar.Z'.
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Q21. I would like to remove all of Khoros that is not needed to
actually run it, in order to free up disk space. What can
be removed without compromising the integrity of the runtime
operation of Khoros?
A21. The minimum set of directories that you need to run Khoros are:
bin - of course for executables
repos - user interface files
dotfiles- dotfiles for khoros environment
You may also want to keep:
doc - on line help
man - man pages used by vman
manual - printed manual
You do not need the following for only a "runable" khoros:
src - needed for compiling
lib - needed for compiling
include - needed for compiling
data - examples
release - documentation
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Q22. Is it possible to get only a subset of Khoros? I realize that
Khoros has a core of utility routines that must be obtained, but
I was hoping that one could pick and choose the routines one wanted
on an as-needed basis.
A22. No, sorry. At this time, you must get the ENTIRE distribution to
begin with. After you have the system, you may selectively delete
programs that you are not interested in. We do recommend that you
be very careful when deleting libraries, as deleting a library that
existing routines link against may be fatal. Making the distribution
of Khoros more modular has high priority for Khoros 2.0; we understand
that it would be much more convenient to be able to acquire only those
programs in which one is interested.
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================ Manuals, Documentation, Man Pages =============================
Q23. Can I buy the manuals separately?
A23. Yes. For a cost of $100 / set, you can order printed manuals from
us here at UNM. See A7 for details.
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Q24. How do I print the documentation?
Q24. Use the "prnmanual" program. It is an interactive program
which will take you through a series of prompts in order to
print the desired portion of the manual.
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Q25. I want to read the Khoros man pages, but vman doesn't seem to work.
What's the problem?
A25. Be sure that you have run the "customize" program before attempting
to use "vman". The "customize" program sets paths correctly so
that "vman" knows where to go to find man pages.
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Q26. I can not regenerate the Khoros manual on a Sun Workstation
because soelim for .so lines in the roff files, limits the
file length to 64 characters.
A26. This is a bug and has been reported to Sun, but not expected
to be fixed until the release after 4.1.2 (maybe). We are
distributing a public domain version of the soelim program.
If you think or know that your OS has this problem, then make
sure you have the "SoeLim" symbol set to YES in your sun.cf file.
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================== 24 Bit Displays ===========================================
Q27. Does Khoros work with 24-bit displays? Can I expect any particular
problems when I run Khoros applications on my 24-bit display?
A27. Yes, Khoros works with 24-bit displays. However, there are some
complications with 24-bit displays; please see the following questions
and answers for details.
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Q28. Is there a way to load a 24-bit image, display it on an 8-bit display
(using 3-3-2, or 7 levels each of rgb), and allow LUT manipulations,
histograms, etc, to be done on the original values?
A28. Allowing such manipulations to be done on the original values of 24-bit
images would have many advantages. We would like to do this in the
future, as well as allow the manipulation of integer and short images.
As time permits, we will be adding these kind of capabilities in the
near and long term. Our goal is to provide a merged display and
graphics library that is flexible and is easy for the user to build
new applications, and that handles this situation (among others)
automatically.
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Q29. When running warpimage on a 24-bit display, it fails and gives me
this X Protocol error:
X Error of failed request: BadMatch (invalid parameter attributes)
Major opcode of failed request: 72 (X_PutImage)
Minor opcode of failed request: 0
Resource id in failed request: 0x3800060
Serial number of failed request: 1783
Current serial number in output stream: 1810
Major X error encountered for display ':0.0'! Unable to recover.
A29. Unfortunately, warpimage was never converted to work on a 24-bit
display. You will have to use it exclusively on an 8-bit display.
If you do not need interactive warping (ie, you already know your
source and destination coordinates, or your warping coefficients),
you can use the non-interactive "vwarp" program.
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Q30. When running editimage and using the zoom, or ROI, or annotations
options on a 24-bit display, it fails and gives me this X Protocol
error:
X Error of failed request: BadMatch (invalid parameter attributes)
Major opcode of failed request: 72 (X_PutImage)
Minor opcode of failed request: 0
Resource id in failed request: 0x4000041
Serial number of failed request: 6750
Current serial number in output stream: 6751
Major X error encountered for display ':0.0'! unable to recover.
A30. The most likely problem is a conflict in the visuals that are being
used (for more info on how X describes color support with visuals,
please see Volume 1 of O'Reilly: the XLib Programming Manual by Adrian
Nye, section 7.2.4 and 7.2.5). Editimage has an internal conflict
(a design flaw, if you will) in that it uses the default visual of
the X Display (often 8-bit PseudoColor) for its zoom, ROI, and
annotations operations; however, the xvdisplay library (used by
editimage to create the image) will attempt to create the image widget
in such a way as to use the greatest depth visual that is available on
your X Display. On 24-bit displays, the greatest depth visual will
usually be the 24-bit DirectColor visual. Thus, when editimage
attempts to use an operation using the PsuedoColor visual on an image
created with a DirectColor visual, an X Protocol error results since
the X resources being used are of differing visual types and depths,
and X does not tolerate this.
A similar problem can result if the default is the TrueColor visual;
since this visual is Read-Only, editimage cannot work
To verify that this is really the problem, do % xdpyinfo on the 24-bit
display. On about the 39th line of output, it will tell you the default
visual id, and follow that with descriptions of each visual that is
available. Find the description of the visual that matches the id
given (it is usually the first one) and see if it says,
"class: PsuedoColor" and "depth: 8 planes".
After having verified that this is the problem, the situation can
be remedied in one of two ways:
1) Use an 8-bit display instead of a 24-bit display.
2) Run your X Server using the 24-bit DirectColor visual as the
default visual. The procedure for this will vary according to
computer and X Windows installation. Some examples:
* if xdm is being used, you must change the "Xservers"
configuration file to specify -class DirectColor -dd 24
* if you are running xinit and not xdm, you can execute,
% xinit -- -cc DirectColor.
In the case of xdm, you might have to ask your system manager
to change the configuration file for you, as it may require root
permission. For more information on your X server, execute,
% man X or % man Xserver.
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Q31. I cannot seem to view my 24-bit image properly with editimage on
my SGI 24-bit display. Editimage insists on compressing my image
to 8-bit PsuedoColor, but I don't want that.
A31. The X Server provided by SGI does not support the 24-bit Read/Write
Direct Color visual. The only 24-bit visual offered is the Read-Only
TrueColor visual, which is not sufficient for editimage since
editimage needs to modify the colormap for its LUT and PseudoColor
options. Because of this, editimage compresses the 24-bit image to
an 8-bit image in which it can use the PsuedoColor Read/Write visual
to modify the colormap of the image.
You may view your 24-bit (rgb) image on an SGI by using the simpler
"putimage" program, which does not need to modify the image's colormap.
================== Problems With Displaying Images =========================
Q32. I'm on a SUN architecture, using OpenWindows 2.0. When I display images,
they come up with colored speckles in them, or strangely colored in
some way. This condition rights itself when I move the cursor into
the image, but then the colors in my user interface get messed up -
sometimes I can't see anything but the image. Is this a bug in Khoros?
A32. No, it is a result of us having to work around a bug in the X server
which will cause the server to dump when any display routine attempts
to create a private colormap. We managed to work around the bug,
but at the cost of user interface colors no longer being defined as
the original colors. This implies that with any display routine, your
user interface colors will be undefined if the programs cannot use
the default colormap; in this case, your user interface colors may
disappear, may be arbitrarily defined, or may have their colors
re-defined according to the current colormap. The best you can do
is try to limit the colors used in your image, thus leaving more
color cells "left over" for the user interface to use.
Note that this bug has been fixed in OpenWindows 3.0.
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Q33. When I display an image that has a large number of colors in it
the colors will not be displayed correctly unless
I move my mouse into the image; then, all my other windows lose
their colors. How can I get rid of this "techno-flash" phenomenon?
NOTE: there is a difference between this problem and the one mentioned
in Q32. In Q32, the graphical user interface is lost; here, the
graphical user interface is preserved, but colors in other windows
are lost.
A33. The number of colors that may be displayed nicely is X server
dependent -- it also depends on the number of colors currently
used by other windows on your display.
For color rgb (3-band) images, use the vgamut program to reduce the
number of colors, using the [-n] option to specify the number of
colors you want in the compressed image.
For psuedocolor images, you first must use the vmapdata program to
convert the image into a temporary 3-band rgb image; use this
temporary image as input to vgamut, as described above.
For grey scale images with no map, you may want to use
v1bgamut (one-band gamut) to reduce the number of colors.
Another method is to use vconvert to convert the image to type
BYTE, scale by 0.5, and multiply by 2.0, thus quantizing the grey
levels to 7 bits (even values 0-254).
There are a very large number of ways that images can
be modified to use a reduced number of pixels; explanations of
other methods are omitted here. To begin with, the user should see
man pages on vgamut, v1bgamut, vmapdata, vconvert, and vmsquish.
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================ Problems With SGI ==========================================
Q34. The Khoros display programs are not working on SGI machines. The
symptom is that when displaying images a title bar will appear, but
no window -- just an hole where the image should be.
A34. We have found what appears to be a bug with SGI's Xsgi server.
The bug is with the shape window extension and seems to only appear
on machines that are running either the 3.3.1 or 3.3.2 maintenance
update. It does work however with the original 3.3 distribution.
To identify what version of the Xsgi server is installed on your
machine, run the following command:
% /usr/sbin/versions long | grep Xsgi
If "versions" returns the string below then all should be well:
f 39751 1569 eoe2.sw.X11 usr/bin/X11/Xsgi
If "versions" returns either of these two strings then the display
routines will not work:
f 34353 1569 maint1.eoe2_sw.X11 usr/bin/X11/Xsgi
f 34353 1569 maint2.eoe2_sw.X11 usr/bin/X11/Xsgi
In the 4.0 version of the operating system, this the bug is fixed.
Patch 1 of Khoros fixed the problem by totally disabling the shape
option for SGI servers.
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Q35. On our SGI (NCD terminal with an SGI server), when the Khoros
applications come up, they have extremely large graphical user
interfaces. The user interface is so large, it doesn't even fit
on the screen! What can I do?
A35. A bug in the SGI 3.3.x X Server prevents default fonts being
read from the .Xdefaults file by the xvforms library, causing
Khoros applications to come up with unpredictable fonts. To find
out which fonts are available on your display, use:
% xlsfonts
Then, use your favorite font with the [-fn] option that is provided
with all Khoros applications that have a graphical user interface.
We recommend the "fixed" font, if it is available. For example,
% editimage -fn fixed
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================= Annotations, Editimage, Xprism2/3, Animate ==================
Q36. I have a problem with the annotations capability in editimage (xprism).
When I move the image (plot), the annotations don't move accordingly.
It seems that they are tied to the device coordinates of the screen,
rather than the pixels in the image (world coordinates of the plot)
as they should be.
A36. This is true. You are noticing a design limitation in the annotations
implementation. Annotations were originally created to work on device
coordinates, with future plans to upgrade them to work on the pixels
in the image / world coordinates of the plot. Unfortunately, we still
have not added this capability. We hope to rectify this for
Khoros 2.0.
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Q37. I am trying to load 3D data into xprism3 from an ASCII file.
When I try to plot the data, a pop-up window states that there
is 1 row and (total # data points) columns, and asks for the correct
number of rows. What is going on?
Q37. When you input data points into xprism3, there is nothing in the data
to indicate how many rows and columns are included in the data.
While row & column information is not needed to do a scatter
plot, for instance, it is required in order to draw a mesh plot, a
surface plot, and others.
Suppose you have 200 data points. Xprism3 does not know
whether you want 1 long row of 200 points, or 2 rows of 100 points
each, or 5 rows of 40 points, etc: so, you have to *tell* it what
you mean. If you are providing the data file as input from the
command line, you would specify the number of rows with the [-rows]
option, as in the following data file containing 5 rows of 38
points (columns) each:
% xprism3 -i11 data2.pts -rows11 5
If you input the data file from the "Input File" pane of the "Plot"
subform, you will be prompted by a pop-up window noting that the
default is to have 1 row of 200 columns (one long row with 200 points
in it). If you really wanted 5 rows of 40 points (columns) each, you
would correct xprism3 by substituting a 5 for the 1 in the pop-up
window. From that point on, the default action would be for xprism3
to assume that all subsequent sets of data points all have 5 rows;
the number of points in each row (the number of columns) is computed
as the total number of points divided by the number of rows specified.
If you then enter a set of data points that has, say, 2 rows, you will
have to correct xprism3 again by entering "2" in the pop-up window.
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Q38. What does the "*" mean after a pixel value at the bottom of
the editimage window?
A38. This is an indication of whether the pixel was _actually_ allocated.
If a "*" is displayed, this means that the pixel being displayed has
really been mapped to its closest available neighbor. On an 8-plane
display, an application can only have up to 256 colors; this means that
the application and the image must share these colors. So, if you
display a byte image with 254 colors, you will only have 2 colors left
for the user interface colors and special application displays. For
editimage, special colors like red, green, blue, white, black, yellow,
cyan, magenta, and gray are used with the application display
components such as LUT and PSEUDO. But, you have only 2 colors left --
what should be done? What editimage does to deal with this problem
is to allocate all the special colors and user interface colors first,
to ensure that the user interface will not be corrupted; image colors
are allocated next. When the image needs more colors than are
available, the xvdisplay library will find the closest available colors
from the previously allocated pixels; thus, a particular pixel being
displayed on the screen may actually represent 2 or more actual pixel
values from the image data. Thus, when you move the mouse around the
image, these special pixels have a "*" displayed to indicate this
situation where it occurs.
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Q39. I am running animate on a DecStation 5000/200 PX or PXG. Animate is
so slow that it is unusable. Occasionally, it even seems to lock up
the display. What is the problem?
A39. There is only limited pixmap hardware memory available on the PX and
PXG. The default action of animate is to use a pixmap Use animate
with the [-pixmap false] option.
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Q40. When plotting raw ASCII data specified in XYZ format, does the data
have to be rectangular? Does each row have to have the same
number of elements? Is there anyway to plot 3D data that has a
varied number of points per row?
A40. Currently, xprism3 does allow you to have unevenly spaced
points, but the number of points in each row must be the same in order
to do a mesh, colormesh, surface, horizon, contour 2D or 3D plot. You
can do a 3D scatter plot with a varying number of points in each row:
simply tell xprism3 that you have 1 long row of (total number) points.
To get an accurate plot in this situation, however, you are limited
to scatter plots.
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================== Problems with Graphical User Interface ==================
Q41. I have a version of Khoros installed on a DecStation running the
dxwm window manager (DecWindows). I have problems with running
Khoros interactive programs such as cantata, xprism2/3, etc --
some of the buttons do not work at all, while others sometimes lock
the program, or otherwise do not act properly. What's wrong?
A41. Khoros does not behave well at all under dxwm (DecWindows).
What usually happens is that the application in question needs
to pop up a warning message, error message, or other pop-up window;
but dxwm does not map the pop-up message for some reason.
So the application sits there and waits for you to acknowledge an
error message that never came up -- thus giving the impression that
nothing is happening. Since we can't provide you with advice on how
to fix the problem, we recommend obtaining a copy of either twm
(Tab Window Manager) or mwm (Motif Window Manager) and using that
instead of dxwm. DEC is phasing out dxwm and migrating to mwm.
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Q42. I'm using khoros on a monochrome monitor. I have connected up some
glyphs in the cantata workspace, but the connections don't appear
on the screen, even though the workspace executes correctly.
A42. You need to set up your X resources so that the connections and
workspace background appear different. Cantata defaults to using X
resources that are appropriate for color screens, and which may be
inappropriate for monochrome monitors. The file
$KHOROS_HOME/dotfiles/Xdefaults.monochrome
contains the appropriate resources. Include this file (or as many
lines of the cantata.???? as you want) in your .Xdefaults file, and
reload the X resource database (xrdb -merge ~/.Xdefaults). This
should solve the problem.
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================== Writing New Programs Under Khoros ========================
Q43. I have finished writing my new program under Khoros, and now
I would like to install it into a toolbox, and integrate it
into the cantata visual language. How do I go about doing this?
A43. First of all, you must create and install your toolbox.
At the end of Chapter 1 ("Writing Programs") of Volume II of
the Khoros Manuals ("The Khoros Programmer's Manual") is a
section on "The Use of Toolboxes"; this is required reading
for those who wish to learn to use toolboxes. Also, there
is an application called "kraftsman" that will help you
create and manage your toolbox. Consult Volume II, Chapter 11
of the Khoros Manual for more information.
Next, you will want to modify the cantata UIS form in your toolbox
to include your new program(s). This also covered in Chapter 1
("Writing Programs") of the Khoros Programmer's Manual, in the
section entitled, "INTEGRATING THE NEW PROGRAM INTO CANTATA".
Finally, you will want to make use of your new, modified cantata UIS
form instead of the original. using:
% cantata -restore {toolbox name}/repos/cantata/cantata.form
or by specifying this alternative cantata.form file in your
.Xdefaults file, as in:
cantata.Form: {toolbox name}/repos/cantata/cantata.form
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Q44. Is there a tutorial describing how to create and install an xvroutine?
A44. Yes, the tutorial was created and provided by Carla Williams
(carla@chama.eece.unm.edu). Here is what she has to say:
"For your edification and entertainment I have created a 'cook-book'
style tutorial that will take you through the steps required to
create a new vroutine (based on an existing one), test it in cantata,
install in a toolbox, and access via the main cantata menu.
It is a supplement to Volume II the Khoros Programmer's Manual.
The tutorial is available for ftp in the contrib directory on pprg:
ftp to pprg.eece.unm.edu
cd to /pub/khoros/contrib
You will find the two files:
README.vroutine_tutorial
vroutine_tutorial
If you decide to try it out, please give me feed-back (both positive
and negative!) as I plan to use it as part of a training course on
using Khoros.
Enjoy!
Carla Williams
carla@chama.eece.unm.edu
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Q45. Can user-written routines be installed under existing buttons on
the Cantata workspace? For example, if I have written a new
signal processing routine, can I fix things so that it appears
on the menu under the Signal Processing button, or do I have to
install it in a new toolbox?
A45. Brad Castalia, of the University of Arizona
(castalia@gaea.lpl.arizona.ed) provides the following answer:
While individual routines can be added to the Khoros base structure
(e.g. new library functions and/or libraries, new executables,
and new forms), this is probably not advisable except in
extraordinary situations as the resulting upgrades will be a
management nightmare. Thus using the toolbox mechanism should
be used whenever possible. the following procedure offers a
general outline of how to add general access toolboxes into the
cantata environment:
After building and testing the new software to the point of
satisfaction (or obtaining a user-contributed toolbox), the new
software is installed as a general access toolbox in a
subdirectory of the $KHOROS_HOME/toolboxes directory (this
location is not necessary, it's just convenient for management
purposes). Be sure that you do NOT name the subdirectory the
same name (regardless of case) as the name of the toolbox (due
to an unfortunate bug in the software management tools)! If the
toolbox is user-contributed, you will at least need to be sure
the KHOROS_USER and LOCAL_SRC_TOP variables are correctly set
in the repos/config/src_conf/<toolbox>_mf file. Checking
pathname references in UIS files is a good idea too.
Update the $KHOROS_HOME/repos/cantata/cantata.form file (you
should probably work on a copy). About a third of the way into
the file you will encounter the groups of -D/-u lines that
define the main toolbox collection buttons that appear across
the top of the cantata workspace. Pick the collection where
you would like the toolbox to appear (e.g. SIGNAL PROCESSING)
and add a duplicate of one of the -u lines at the point in the
list where your new toolbox should be listed (e.g. duplicate
the line containing 'Spectral Estim.' if you want to add your
toolbox to the end of the list). Change the descriptive name
(inside single quotes) to an appropriate descriptive name for
your toolbox (this need not be identical to the toolbox name
itself). NOTE THE POSITION OF THIS NEW -u LINE IN THE LIST.
Proceed down to the last third of the cantata.form file to
where the long list of -k lines is located. Duplicate the -k
line corresponding to the -u line you duplicated above (you
MUST get the order right %-(, count the lines to be sure). To
make this easier, add comment lines (beginning with a #
character), containing the same toolbox collection names on the
-D lines from above, to delineate the -k lines into
recognizable groups. Change the -k line to reference your
toolbox .sub UIS file. For example, to add a toolbox called
FILMWRITER to the end of the OUTPUT collection list, after the
line
-k KHOROS_HOME/repos/cantata/subforms/output_dither/dither.sub
add
-k $FILMWRITER/repos/cantata/subforms/filmwriter.sub
Notice the reference to the toolbox name variable in the
pathname.
Update the $KHOROS_HOME/repos/Toolboxes file. This may already
have been done for you if you used kinstall. It should have a
line beginning with your toolbox name (e.g. FILMWRITER in the
example above), with other descriptive fields following (follow
the model of the other lines in the file). Be sure the second
field (after the colon following the toolbox name) contains the
path to the directory where the new toolbox is located.
Add links in $KHOROS_HOME/bin that point to the executable
files in the new toolbox (usually in the bin subdirectory of
the toolbox directory structure).
Run cantata to check out the new installation.
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====================== Miscellaneous =======================================
Q46. Where did you get the name "Khoros"? Is it an acronym?
A46. Khoros is not an acronym; rather, it is the greek word for
"chorus". A definition of a "chorus" is: a company of
singers or dancers who sing or dance in concert.
We chose the name "Khoros" because we felt that it was symbolic
of our objectives for our software system. The "singers or dancers"
are the many programs in the Khoros system; our objective is to
provide a group of programs that will, when used in concert,
provide a harmonious environment for the the user.
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Q47. I would like to do 3D object modelling, with multiple light sources,
animation, and so on. Does Khoros do this?
A47. No, sorry. At this time, Khoros is geared more towards imaging than
volume modelling or rendering. We suggest you try AVS or Explorer for
this types of work. Both packages provide excellent object modelling
and rendering.
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Q48. I heard about the audio cantata demo, and would like to hear it.
How do I go about this?
A48. First of all, you have to be on a SparcStation (SUN4), and
you must have the raw2audio program installed. raw2audio is a
program distributed by SUN; it is not part of Khoros.
Go to /usr/demo/SOUND, and compile the code that is there using
the Makefile provided. Note that in this directory is the file
raw2audio.c -- when you compile this directory, you will get the
raw2audio* executable. Then you may use the dsp.Z workspace with
cantata to hear the demo.
Note that if /usr/demo/SOUND does not exist on your SUN system, you
must install it -- it should be available on the SUN OS 4.1.1
distribution tape.
The cantata workspace to run the sound demo file is available
anonymous ftp from pprg.eece.unm.edu (129.24.24.10) in the
directory /pub/khoros/misc/workspaces; it is called dsp.Z. Be sure you
have bin set (ftp> bin) before acquiring the compressed workspace.
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Q49. Is there a way to convert VIFF images with 3 color bands (rgb) to
images with only one band and a colormap? What about vice versa?
A49. To convert VIFF images with 3 color bands (rgb) to images with only
one band and a colormap, use the vgamut program, using the [-n] option
to specify the number of colors you want in the compressed image.
Many of the Khoros routines will require that you use vgamut on your
3-band image before using them.
To convert a single-band VIFF image with a colormap (a pseudocolor
image) to an RGB image, you can use vmapdata to map the image data
through the maps, which will result in an RGB image. However, the
colors will still be quantified to 256 values as they were in the
psuedocolor image (your " VIFF-with-colormap") -- therefore, the
resulting will not look the same as the original image did (assuming
the "original" image was an RGB image, and that is where the
psuedocolor image originated from). You cannot go back to the full,
original RGB information given only a psuedocolor image. After using
vmapdata (which creates a single image), if you want 3 separate images,
you can then use vbandspt3 to extract the 3 bands from the image and
create 3 new images, each containing one of the R, G, and B bands.
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Q50. We are trying to run cantata on an NCD Xterminal as the display,
and the program fails, exiting with the following error:
X Error: BadAlloc
Request Major code 65 ()
Request Minor code 0
ResourceID 0x2400085
Error Serial #1576
Current Serial #1582
Major X error encountered for display ':0'! Unable to recover.
A50. You are probably running out of memory. One solution is, of course,
to inquire and install more memory. However, you are especially likely
to run out of memory if you have Backing Store and/or Save Unders on.
If you look at the system setup you can see how much remaining memory
remains before starting cantata or displaying images. You should be
able to set whether you want backing store "on demand", "always", or
"off". You may want to try setting it to "on demand" or "off".
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Q51. When I try to use my double or double complex viff image that came from
another kind of machine, the program always gives an error. What gives?
A51. The support for double and double complex machine format translation
is not complete. Unlike all other data types, which will be
transparently converted to the current architecture when loaded,
reading double precision data that was generated by another
architecture will cause an error in the translation code. Presently,
no translation code for double precision exists.
Technical Details
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Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!sparky!uunet!gatech!destroyer!fmsrl7!lynx.unm.edu!pprg.unm.edu!daemon From: danielle@chama.eece.unm.edu (Danielle Argiro) Newsgroups: comp.soft-sys.khoros Subject: FAQ Message-ID: <42540@pprg.eece.unm.edu.pprg.unm.edu> Date: 11 Jan 93 16:51:48 GMT Sender: daemon@pprg.unm.edu Lines: 1475