[Getfem-users] Building GUI for GetFEM (or about getfem::model)

[Roman Putanowicz]

Dear All,

Recently I have started thinking about GUI components for GetFEM.
The aim of this GUI would be easier management of models, bricks,
etc. For instance I imagine a widget where I could see all bricks
added to a model and all variables associated with particular bricks
(sort of a tree view).

I think that a central point of access to GetFEM data should be 
getfem::model class. Given a reference to getfem::model object I should
be able to build graphical (GUI) representation of the model as well
as perform all sort of operations on it (like adding bricks, variables,
querying state, etc).

Unfortunately getfem::model class shows some deficiencies from the
above point of view. For instance I haven't found an easy way of 
querying how many bricks are added to a model (and I should know this
if I want correctly use a brick index). 
This is easy to fix but there are other things related for instance
to model variables and their properties (scalar or not, FEM based or
not, etc.).

Looking at the implementation of getfem::model one can see that most of
the information needed to conveniently build GUI for GetFEM based models
is stored in private structures: var_description and brick_description.
Unfortunately both are private ( I have found public declaration like
   typedef var_description *pvariable;
but no way to get to var_description data).
The two main data members of interest 'variables' and 'bricks' are private.

Now I have a couple of general questions:
1) Has anyone attempted to build widgets for managing models bricks, etc.?
   If yes what was your approach?
2) What is better strategy for designing GetFEM model query interface:
   a) add to getfem::model methods to extract atomic information about 
      bricks and variables
   b) expose references to var_description and brick_description objects
      (after turning the structures into classes and providing read
       only interface to their data) ?

With kind regards,

Roman
-- 
Roman Putanowicz, PhD  < address@hidden  >
Institute for Computational Civil Engng (L-5)
Dept. of Civil Engng, Cracow Univ. of Technology
www.l5.pk.edu.pl, tel. +48 12 628 2569, fax 2034