Adm Version 0.2 Release notes
1. Overview:
In this release many new widgets are included and old existing widgets are
improved compared with previous release 0.1. Currently there are 5 control
widgets, 9 monitor widgets, 4 utility widgets and many help classes in the
ADM package.
2. New and changes:
- New widgets, CBits, CButton, CChoice, CList and CStripChart are
added to the package.
- Several BeanInfo classes are provided to customize the property
editor interface used in the visual development tool.
- The format property is added to the CLabel and CTextField widgets.
The user can choose one of the standard data display formats using
the static format option constants defined in the CConstants class.
Or the C printf conventions may be used to format the number display
through the setFormat (String) method.
- The CApplet class has been improved so it's behavior is correct
when the user reloads or revisits the applet page. The ability to
obtain the port number through an HTML tag parameter if it is defined
was also been added to the class.
- Three set methods are added in CAdaptor class. Now this invisible
bean can monitor and control the cdev device property.
- The value display format in all widget labels will switch between
the floating point and scientific notation depending on the display
value.
3. Limitations:
- In this release, the beans rely on the control system to provide
correct display range if the RANGE_FROM_PROPERTY style is selected.
The user should set range style to RANGE_STATIC or RANGE_AUTO if the
display high and display low have not been set properly.
- The custom property editor for CStripChart bean is not provided in
this release. This bean can not been used in visual IDE in this release.
- The RANGE_AUTO range style option for CStripChart is not been fully
implemented. The old plot will erased when the new data is out of
the range.
- This package is still in a early development stage, the beans have
not been tested in various abnormal situation. Please report the
problems and bugs to cdev@jlab.org.
4. New features planned for future releases:
The following features will be gradually added to
the adm package in future releases:
- Provide more documentation and a tutorial.
- Improve the limitations mentioned above.
- Better handle the situation when the size of the widget is too small.
- Use the correct format to display the value on the limit area.
- Improve the error handling so an unconnected monitor will have an
obvious and useful graphical presentation.
- Implement smart state monitor (elaborate).
- Automatically generate pretty axes (e.g. Multiples of ten).
- Add more control and monitor widgets, such as, graph, toggle button
and shell command button.
- Add some introspectic widgets to obtain device name and property
names from the control system that can help the user to create the
applications.
For any comments and suggestion on the CDEV widgets,
please send to cdev@jlab.org.
5. Live demo:
The cdev web site now has an
adm widgets live demo. To run these demos the Netscape Communicator 4.x
or Internet Explorer 4 and later is required, and java MUST be enabled.
The source codes of these demo programs are also available for download
on this web site.
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