The User Interface page has moved to http://www-glast.slac.stanford.edu/ScienceTools/userInterface

However, this is a convenient place for musings.

Last Update by T. Burnett: 03/16/2004 09:08 -0800

Defining the Science Tools Execution Web (STEW): A modest proposal

User Requirements

• all tools can be executed from the command line, from any folder, by typing a simple lowercase name, as "likelihood".
• A special application prints a list of available tools
• Each tool gives help, similar to ftools (I think)
• A list of all tools is available in an environment variable to support a GUI menu; each tool may provide additional pythons support

Developer requirements

• The STEW can be defined by CMT
• It is consistent with the install area
• A script is automatically (or easily) generated that will substitute for CMT

Implementation

• Each package that builds a tool includes a "setup_script xxx" command in its requirements file. This invokes a script (xxx.bat, xxx.csh, xxx.sh versions needed) that has lines like
      doskey likelihood=%LIKELIHOODROOT%\%BINDIR%\LikelihoodApp.exe $*

for dos, or
    alias likelihood='$LIKELIHOODROOT/$BINDIR/LikelihoodApp.exe'
for linux.

• Each application also adds the fully qualified path to tool executables to an environment variable STEW_PATH, for example
  
  path_append STEW_PATH "$LIKELIHOODROOT/$BINDIR/LikelihoodApp.exe" \
          WIN32 "%LIKELIHOODROOT%\%BINDIR%\LikelihoodApp.exe"
   
• A new package (not ScienceTools) uses the subset of tool-defining packages that we want to distribute, or an individual user/developer wants to have available for testing or science.
• This package contains a python script similar to likeGui that provides a menu of the available tools, and an executable or script to provide the list.