[chimera-dev] Multi-touch and Chimera

[Tom Goddard]

Greg suggest a direct call from C/C++ to queue an event.

    Tom

Greg Couch wrote:
> Tom,
>
> You need to link with tcl (actually tcl stubs) and use the 
> Tcl_ThreadQueueEvent function.
>
>     - Greg
>
> On Tue, 8 Apr 2008, Tom Goddard wrote:
>
>> From: Tom Goddard <goddard at cgl.ucsf.edu>
>> Sender: chimera-dev-bounces at cgl.ucsf.edu
>> To: Gergely Nagy <gergelynagy76 at gmail.com>
>> Cc: chimera-dev at cgl.ucsf.edu
>> Date: Tue, 08 Apr 2008 12:39:58 -0700
>> Subject: Re: [chimera-dev] Multi-touch and Chimera
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>>
>> Hi Greg,
>>
>>  Chimera is written in Python and C++.  The C++ is used for OpenGL
>> rendering and for optimizing calculations.  The event loop and user
>> interface is all in Python.  The touch events and the actions they
>> trigger should definitely be in Python.  It looks very reasonable to use
>> Boost Python to wrap the C++ touchlib library or parts of it to make it
>> accessible to Python.
>>
>>    http://wiki.python.org/moin/boost.python/GettingStarted
>>
>>    http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_35_0/libs/python/doc/index.html
>>
>> We use an in-house wrapping program (WrapPy).  Wrapping C/C++ for Python
>> is often done with package called SWIG.
>>
>>  We use the Tcl/Tk event loop using the Python/Tk interface module
>> called Tkinter.  You can put custom Tk event types such as touch events
>> in the event queue but I haven't figured out a way to do it.  The
>> trouble is that you typically will get an event from a callback in C/C++
>> code.  I recently tried passing such an event (for a Space Navigator
>> 6-dof input device) to a Python routine.  It resulted in crashes because
>> Tkinter is designed so that only it can call Python code.  It has some
>> complicated thread locking code that releases a Python lock and my event
>> handler called into Python without having that Python lock, tried to do
>> some Tk call and crashed.  Probably the Python lock can be acquired in
>> the C/C++ callback, but then if that Python code does Tk calls to add an
>> event there may be additional problems with Tkinter's Tk lock which is
>> inaccessible.  So some work is needed to figure out how to get the C/C++
>> callback events into the Tk event loop.  Once that is solved everything
>> can be done in Python with event handlers processing those Tk events to
>> cause any desired Chimera actions.
>>
>>    Tom