Re: Little activity - ENTIRELY HYPOTHETICAL?

> From: "Matt Shaver" <mshaver@...>
>Subject: Re: Little activity ?

How would we get a look at Ron's stuff, if we want to help. I've been
looking for ways to backplot from the rs274ngc g code.

Got the tcl stuff from daveland, thanks.

<snip>

>WARNING - THE FOLLOWING IS ENTIRELY HYPOTHETICAL!!!
>
>Ron Ginger has written a really nice little CNC/CAM program (I mean it really
>is nice, that's not the hypothetical part). It's not completely finished, but
>there's a lot there including some really nice graphical toolpath displays
>and the ability to generate CNC code for a MillPower system and perhaps G
>codes without much more work. He has written a few posts describing his
>efforts and soliciting advice on what direction to take in his development.
>He has indicated that he might turn it into a commercial product when it
>achieves its final form, but the full scope of the program's functionality
>hasn't yet been specified (that's the nature of the advice I believe he was
>seeking).
>Suppose we could come up with enough incentive (probably in the form of
>money) to compensate the author for his work so far, and also to continue the
>development enough to get the program "up on its feet" in a form that's
>useful to those who provide the incentive. From my own standpoint there are a
>few drawbacks to this program, but they are probably not insurmountable.
>First, due to my interest in the EMC software, I'm not really concerned with
>the CNC part of the program except to the extent that algorithms or
>techniques in the code could be folded into the EMC code in order to improve
>it. Second, it needs to be translated to a multiplatform environment,
>probably Tcl/Tk (not Java, been there, done that, too slow). This would allow
>it to be combined with Dave's Tcl/Tk gui for the EMC at:
>
>http://users.nni.com/daveland/metal.htm
>
>and also the Tcl/Tk stuff Fred Proctor's been working on lately. This would
>give the EMC the "conversational programming" feature it needs as well as
>allow folks to program offline on Linux or Windows if they prefer to sit in
>the office. It might also be possible to pull in other resources such as the
>G code generating routines from Jon Elson, and code from the GnuCAD project.
>I don't know enough about software to be able to judge whether merging these
>projects and converting to Tcl/Tk is more or less economical than starting
>from scratch, but I think you can get an idea of what I have in mind. I know
>there are huge holes in what I've proposed, such as how to coordinate the
>efforts of multiple developers whose locations aren't the same, or who gets
>to approve of the spec, etc. I present this as an example of how a worthwhile
>goal might be attained. Well, it's 3:15am and I have veered WAY off the topic
>of "Little Activity" so I'll stop here.