[AG-TECH] AGTk Development: Can a Shared Application Run on a PC without a Venue Client?

Justin Binns binns at mcs.anl.gov
Wed Jun 4 11:11:31 CDT 2003


Allan,
	In my experience in coding the VenueVNC "shared application", I
looked at similar problems (when integrating the tiled display).  The
simple answer to your question is that the Venue Client is not necessary
for the shared application to run, though an AGTk installation is, of
course, required.  The way I did it with the Tiled Display with VenueVNC
was to have a separate mechanism for interacting with the Tiled Display (a
set of Python/XMLRPC applications/daemons that allowed operations similar
to the VNCWall stuff from NCSA), and a separate client that knew how to 
make use of the TD stuff to launch my client code remotely (on the Tiled 
Display nodes) instead of locally.  Does that help?

Justin

On Wed, 4 Jun 2003, Allan Spale wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> In my efforts to try to further understand developing AG add-ons using the
> AGTk, I was wondering if it is possible to run a shared application on a
> PC in the group/cluster of PCs that encompass the AG node.  For instance,
> I am trying to integrate a 3-D model viewer application into AG 2 as a
> shared application.  After chatting with Tom Uram on the MUD (thanks, Tom)
> about all my questions about the difference between an AG service and
> shared application, it seemed like writing a shared application was the
> way to go.
> 
> However, there are some wrinkles in this seemingly simple application. 
> First, the shared app requires access to a file in the venue (provided by
> specifying URLs to the actual location of the files) that consist of the
> model being viewed or a set of files for viewing a series of models at one
> time and a configuration file.  This is not a problem.  When I would
> choose the file from the venue, it would have a MIME type associated with
> the viewer application (the MIME type would be registered during the
> installation of the viewer) on the PC running the venue client.  If there
> is a need to share the same view of the model, it is provided through
> using an event server created specifically for this 3-D model viewer (so I
> am not using an event channel for the shared application, which seems
> conterintutitive...it is a shared application, but the AGTk is not used to
> announce events to the viewer application).
> 
> So, it seemed like I understood what I wanted to do until I realized
> something...the 3-D model viewer application needs to run on another PC,
> which would not run a venue client.  This leads to my question: can a
> shared application running on a PC with a venue client launch the
> application being shared on a PC where the venue client is not running?
> This other PC, where the 3-D model viewer must run, is connected to a
> passive stereo display (GeoWall).  Now, does this new requirement
> prohibit me from integrating this viewer as a shared application and
> necessitate that it is now a service?  Or, is it still a shared
> application where the user would install the viewer executable (being
> shared) on the PC connected to the passive stereo system and somehow the
> shared program running on the PC with the venue client would know to
> launch that application on the other PC through some programmatic means? 
> 
> Any help/advice would be appreciated.
> 
> 
> Allan
> EVL at UIC
> Research Assistant
> 
> 
> 




More information about the ag-tech mailing list