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KDE Conquers Astrophysics With Kst

Posted by simoniker on Wed Apr 28, 2004 07:57 PM
from the winner-is-you dept.
GUI KDE Science
Telex4 writes "The Free Software community is constantly inundated with interesting new projects, but occasionally something crops up which is really special. Kst is just such a project. Started by Barth Netterfield, an astrophysicist, as a personal project to plot data from his experiments, it has now taken on a life of its own, being used in numerous academic projects, and finding funding from several government agencies. Intrigued by this project's success, and with a little prod from co-developer George Staikos, I interviewed Barth and George about kst, Free Software and physics."
+ -
story

Related Stories

[+] BLAST Telescope About To Launch From Antarctica 51 comments
mtruch writes "BLAST, the Balloon-borne Large Aperture Sub-millimeter Telescope, is about to be launched from McMurdo Station, Antarctica. BLAST is a 2700 kg telescope with a 2 meter primary mirror that hangs from a 1.1 million cubic meter balloon floating at an altitude of 38 km that will study the star formation history of the universe. It will float west at nearly constant latitude for about 14 days until it is (hopefully) located over McMurdo again and will be terminated and recovered. Real time position and flight track is available from the CSBF. Watch the launch live via a crappy webcam link. Three of the graduate students working on the project have photo blogs of much of the prep period, and specifically Don's blog should have launch photos soon (bandwidth to/from McMurdo is at a premium). BLAST made it on Slashdot in the past, when it launched from Sweden in June 2005, and indirectly with an interview with Prof. Barth Netterfield and George Staikos. Yes, the flight computers still run Slack, and yes, we still use kst for data viewing and analysis. There is a Discovery Science show about BLAST and high-altitude balloons, and a future documentary film being made as well."
[+] BLAST! Telescope Documentary Premieres Tuesday 10 comments
Xandu writes "A documentary film about the BLAST balloon-borne telescope is about to premiere at the Toronto Hot Docs film festival. BLAST is a submillimeter telescope that floats on a balloon 37km in the air while observing the earliest star-formation and earliest galaxies. Its two science flights have been covered on Slashdot, the first from Kiruna, Sweden and the second from McMurdo Station, Antarctica. Virtually all the software used on BLAST is open source, and the kst display program has been discussed here as well. If you live in or near Toronto, it's showing twice, Tuesday evening and Saturday afternoon. The film contrasts the science with the human element and hardships endured while working in such exotic locations. Naturally, the movie trailer is online."
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  • KDE Naming (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 28 2004, @07:57PM (#9003163)
    I suppose its slightly better than KastroPhysics.

    • Re:KDE Naming (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Shouldn't the headline read "KDE Konquers Kastrophysicists kith Kst"?
      • communism = beards * cigars^2
        you forgot vodka. the following equation will compensate:

        communism = (beards * (cigars + vodka)^(1 + 1/e))

  • Pychart (Score:5, Informative)

    by updog (608318) on Wednesday April 28 2004, @08:04PM (#9003201) Homepage
    That definitely looks cool - another nice way I've found to plot data in a Python/QT environment is with Pychart [hp.com]

    It's easy to generate png/pdf/ps plots and they look really nice.

    • Re:Pychart (Score:5, Informative)

      by bloosqr (33593) on Wednesday April 28 2004, @08:12PM (#9003259) Homepage
      If you like Python for doing plotting check out vpython [vpython.org] Its basically a very simple opengl interface glued into python. Its actually originally designed to as a "computational physics" pedagogy language (which its really pretty fantastic for actually) but since its really just python its very easy to turn it into a poor mans 3d/4d plotting program :)

      • Re:Pychart (Score:5, Informative)

        by Satai (111172) * on Wednesday April 28 2004, @08:49PM (#9003507)
        Hell, why stop there? VTK [vtk.org] and MayaVi [sf.net] are also pretty amazing visualization kits, both of which are either written in or provide python bindings. (MayaVi is built on VTK, but it provides a nice wrapper.) VTK has great isosurface locaters and some pretty awesome vector algorithms for looking at 2d and 3d data. We use it for physical applications at my work...

  • "kst"? (Score:5, Funny)

    by kst (168867) on Wednesday April 28 2004, @08:06PM (#9003216)
    For the record, I had nothing to do with this.

  • Shouldn't that be "Konquered"? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 28 2004, @08:06PM (#9003217)
    As in "konquered astrophysiks"? How else can I tell that it was written for KDE?

  • Lets not let this go to our heads (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 28 2004, @08:06PM (#9003220)
    The author used Linux/KDE because that is what he was familiar with when he developed it. Its not suprising since universities are very UNIX centric. But that doesn't necessarily mean KDE is better suited for this type of application. In my opinion, no operating system/window manager will really have any significant advantages since the bulk of the work is number crunching. It could of easily been done in Win32.

    • Not quite... (Score:5, Informative)

      by DarkMan (32280) on Wednesday April 28 2004, @08:37PM (#9003429) Journal
      I take your point - most of this application, like many, is in principle doable independant of the underlying OS.

      However, there are a few pluses on the side of Linux for this application.

      2 GB+ files. Some versions of Win32 can do them, some can't. Some can only do it with a following wind. When you're talking scientific data, such file sizes can crop up often, if not a regular feature.

      Network independance. This is less of an issue for display, but on the processing side, being able to coordinate multiple tasks, spread across many servers, from one desktop is a big win. Particualrly when it's a 'free' side effect (requires no extra programming). Four boxes are cheaper than a quad box - by quite a sizeable margin.

      Which leads us on to the scheduler - with Win2K, a background number crunch task will take longer than on Linux, and impact interactive response more. That's not off the top of my head - that's based off my Linux/KDE desktop and my office mates Win2K systems doing the same tasks (computational chemistry, so essentially big matrix sums).

      There's also library support. Not such a big one, as they can be ported, but it's more work that way. By libraries, I mean things like FFTW, LAPACK and BLAS.

      So, that's a few areas with modest wins for unix/KDE. I'll add that headless admin for Unix is simpler than for Windows, which helps with the headless cruncher boxes, and conclude that there is a reason that unix is popular in universities, as it's got a slight edge.

      Yes, it may well have been as easy to write for Win32 as KDE [0] - but in use, the linux is better for the number crunching.

      [0] I wouldn't agree to that personally, but there's a degree of personal preference in there, so that's not objective.

    • Re:Lets not let this go to our heads (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Jeremy Erwin (2054) on Wednesday April 28 2004, @08:50PM (#9003516) Journal
      Unix systems have had a historical advantage in scientific computation. Netterfield mentioned that he had first used XForms, looked at gtk+, felt queasy and decided to use KDE instead.
      As Kst is primarily a plotter of data, his choice of graphics toolkit is of some importance.
  • Why didn't the article headline read, "KDE Konquers Astrophysicists with Kst?"

    On a more serious note: This question wouldn't arise if KDE people didn't insist on prefixing EVERYTHING with "K." Of course, same goes for GNOME folks prefixing everything with "G." Why is this necessary?

    • Re:I'm sure many will ask this... (Score:5, Funny)

      by ErichTheWebGuy (745925) on Wednesday April 28 2004, @08:12PM (#9003255) Homepage
      Why is this necessary?

      It's gnecessary kuz it's kool.
    • The same could be said for a lot of Windows applications using the Win prefix and Mac OS X apps using the i prefix.

    • Re:I'm sure many will ask this... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by zapp (201236) on Wednesday April 28 2004, @08:37PM (#9003431)
      This has all been gone over before, but it isn't new to kde/gnome.

      X*, win* go back farther probably.

      I think it's both a style thing (recognizable 'gAIM, on that must be AIM for gnome'), and also it makes it easy to tell what works with what. xemacs clearly is the X version of emacs. winamp clearly doesn't work on linux or mac, and konquerer clearly doesn't work on gnome.

      • and also it makes it easy to tell what works with what. xemacs clearly is the X version of emacs.

        That's a perfect example of what is wrong with this approach. The difference between emacs and xemacs has nothing to do with X; yet everybody seems to think so. Both of them work fine under X. Xemacs just forked off ages ago because of disagreements with RMS.

    • Re:I'm sure many will ask this... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Azureflare (645778) on Wednesday April 28 2004, @08:46PM (#9003485)
      So we know easily what WM libraries a package requires without looking at the depends.

      Personally I don't like it when packages don't prepend their names with k or g if they are specifically for KDE or Gnome. It's annoying when you try to install it and it says it wants to install gnome libraries, or KDE libraries (whichever WM libraries you don't like installing, maybe both if you're limited on HD space)

      It's consistent, and it works. It may seem a bit lame sometimes, but it makes things really easy for me (And others).

      Also from an ease of use standpoint, it makes it easy to know what to expect from a package. "Oh, that has a k before it, that means I'll be seeing KDE themes on that app if I'm running XFce."

      Sure, we should probably have a unified theme so things are pretty seamless and you can't tell if something is for KDE or Gnome (or more specifically, using qt or gtk). But we're not there yet, and it would be really confusing if we didn't keep things the way they are.

      I think eventually a distro will successfully make it possible for all apps to look similar to each other in all WM, and I think it would be a good thing to do that.

  • kst (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 28 2004, @08:12PM (#9003256)
    It looks good, but I'm skeptical about its usefulness for me. ROOT [root.cern.ch] already produces damn good output and fills most of my needs. And for everything else there's gnuplot. [gnuplot.info]

    But I will look at kst. If it's as good as they say it is, I may use it instead of gnuplot.

    • ROOT? (Score:3, Informative)

      by lightray (215185)
      You know all those "Segmentation Fault" errors that ROOT gives you?

      A real tool doesn't do that.

      It's really very cute how enamored particle physicists are by C++. It's very fitting it turns every software construct into something they're familiar with, a particle! er, object. Too bad they can't ditch the FORTRAN habits.

      "You can write bad FORTRAN in any language." - my advisor

    • Re:kst (Score:3, Informative)

      by Lust (14189)
      Don't forget Octave [octave.org], a Matlab-like but free data analysis/plotting program. It can directly run most of what you've already programmed for Matlab.

  • Another one? (Score:5, Funny)

    by drsmack1 (698392) * on Wednesday April 28 2004, @08:13PM (#9003262)
    We need to stop creating all of these astrophysics programs for Linux and develop the ones we have now!
    • Wow, drsmack1, I'd like to appologize on behalf of the moderators who were clearly drinking when the modded you.

      Folks: he was making a joke... you know "another window manager?!", etc., etc....

      The moderation flag you were looking for was "funny"
    • Honestly, I don't see a whole lot [freshmeat.net] of astrophysics packages out there. Three distinct projects, and one of them's just a code translator.

      (Please correct me if I'm wrong about this, IANAA yet)

  • He'll need it... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Rick Franchuk (1324) on Wednesday April 28 2004, @08:15PM (#9003276) Journal
    ... to plot how quickly his site gets slashdotted. ;)

  • I would have thought Gnome (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 28 2004, @08:16PM (#9003283)
    I thought they were looking to find the Grand Gnunified Theory.

  • An interesting take on the GPL (Score:5, Insightful)

    by davidoff404 (764733) on Wednesday April 28 2004, @08:16PM (#9003288)
    It's interesting to see some airtime finally given to attitudes that academics have towards the GPL. In my time, I've often found that smaller research groups are more than willing to open-source their code once they're made aware that the GPL exists (you'd be surprised how many mid-career academics are unaware of its existence).

    On the flipside, I've seen many instances of arguments between research students and faculty about open-sourcing code. This is especially prevalent in areas like nanotech research, condensed matter, and opto/spin-electronics research groups. It seems to be a worrying trend that many students who are just beginning their postgrad studies are forced to sign NDAs before being allowed to code for their research group. Sometimes I think myself lucky that all I need is chalk and a blackboard...
    • For the uninformed ones like me, why exactly are you required to sign an NDA? Isn't science based on sharing information? What am I missing here? How can a researcher be told how to run their research? I don't understand where that power comes from.
      • Can't do research without money (for the most part). Can't get published unless you have credibility. Can't have credibility unless you have peer review. Can't have peer review unless you have peers. Can't have peers unless you're at a University from which you get funded.
      • For the uninformed ones like me, why exactly are you required to sign an NDA?

        As just a single example, recently I spoke to the head of a research group about his policy on these matters. In this person's group, they deal primarily with the properties of subwavelength gold gratings. Now, this is rather a hot topic in optoelectronics at the moment and the techniques used to fabricate these gratings tend to be quite closely guarded secrets. Unsurprisingly, almost the entire process of fabrication is auto

          • Openness in academia (Score:4, Informative)

            by baxissimo (135512) on Wednesday April 28 2004, @11:11PM (#9004210)
            People share their ideas and publish, because if they don't they don't get tenure or graduate or whatever. But there's often a big development investment involved in going from some paper published in a journal to working code. The published paper may give you the major differences between what they've done and the previous work, but most any important achievement builds on a bunch of prior work which is, say, contained in 5 other papers, which in turn were each based on 5 other papers each, and tracking all that down and getting it and translated into code can take a long time.

            So say I'm the guy who published the paper -- while you're spending all your time re-implementing my previous method, I've already gone on and developed another few enhancements or a whole new method, and gotten another paper or two out of it, while you're still trying to recreate what I did last year.

            So basically, just because the ideas in academia are basically open, that doesn't mean the implementations are. In fact, I've heard some math guys voice the opinion that releasing your source code is just a waste. It takes a significant time investment on your part to get it all packaged up, perhaps cleaning up the code some, and then to answer questions people have about it etc. And when it comes time for tenure review, they don't ask you how much source code you released. No, all that matters is how many journals you published in. So while you were busy cleaning up your source code for release, fixing non-critical bugs and adding non-essential features, you could have been working on the next publication instead.

            Of course a lot of researchers do go all the way with openness and release source. But I've seen plenty of both strategies.

            Another part of the equation is that Universities these days all want a piece of the action on anything invented within their walls. So they want you file for patents and such, and try to find people that will license those patents. And naturally a big cut of the licensing fees go to the Universtity. And then there's folks who dream of starting their own multi-million dollar spin-off technology company, so they don't want to let too many details about what they're doing to leak out until they've got all the patents lined up.

            • In fact, I've heard some math guys voice the opinion that releasing your source code is just a waste. It takes a significant time investment on your part to get it all packaged up, perhaps cleaning up the code some, and then to answer questions people have about it etc. And when it comes time for tenure review, they don't ask you how much source code you released.

              This makes absolute sense, if the goal in academia is the same as it is in corporate life: to make the most money and to be at the top of the f

          • How is this piffling little thing called science going to get done? It doesn't work too well when scientists can't disseminate their ideas.

            I think it depends on which areas of science you're looking at. Nano- and Microelectronics groups in universities tend to lease their IP rights to outside industry, or work alongside industry, once they've developed a useful process. As a result, they often tend to be more guarded about releasing code or details about fabrication techniques. The pressure to publish
  • Anyone else not able to read the instructions because its MIME type is text/html?

  • Python Announces Fork... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Eberlin (570874) on Wednesday April 28 2004, @08:22PM (#9003322) Homepage
    Pst (pronounced pissed...or post, depending on who you ask) is a Python fork of the now-popular kst program. Instead of astrophysics, it endeavors to plot a graph of aggression among IT employees.

    Finding absolutely no funding from anyone, including government agencies, the project has taken a life of its own among overworked volunteer developers. These Pst programmers work dilligently on the code while concurrently providing enough test data to plot.

    Due to its popularity, a port using Microsoft Foundation Classes is in the works. Rumor has it that it will be called MFT (pronounced miffed). A C port is also being made -- and their sourceforge project is located at ifuckinhateusers.sourceforge.net

  • Ever since Igor (Score:4, Informative)

    by PaSTE (88128) <paste@nOSPaM.mps.ohio-state.edu> on Wednesday April 28 2004, @08:23PM (#9003327) Homepage
    I used <a href="https://www.wavemetrics.com">Igor</a&g t; as an undergrad for most of my data plotting and graphing (physics), but the interface was not intuitive and without knowing the command-line language, navigating the menus took a very long time, even when you knew what you were looking for. Also, the price ($400 for the latest version) kept me away from using it off campus. Now I tend to stick to <a href="http://root.cern.ch/">ROOT</a> simply because its Cint interpreter is ideal for handling the massive (10^6 n-tuples) amount of data I look over, and because it's free. However, making advanced graphs and plots with ROOT requires a whomping manual and a fairly good grasp of C, as there are virtually no point-and-click features to it. I'm really glad another open-source data manipulation program is in the works, and that it can do the things ROOT can as easliy as Igor can without the emense price restrictions.

  • Grace (aka Ace/gr) (Score:4, Informative)

    by nsushkin (222407) on Wednesday April 28 2004, @08:24PM (#9003345)
    Why reinvent the wheel, what was wrong with using Grace [weizmann.ac.il].

    While I agree that the Motif app looks a little outdated, the app is free as in GPL and is really powerful in terms of features. For example, it allows scripting.

    • I like the scripting in Grace, but it had quite a learning curve. I found that the python bindings [sourceforge.net] were useful. For scripted plots, supermongo [princeton.edu] (not free) is popular, but I think Grace is prettier.
    • I'm one of the grad students that uses kst every day for analyzing data for the Boomerang experiment.

      Try using Grace to plot 1e6 data samples from 16 different sources in real time as it is acquired. Grace has some nice math features, but I believe that within the next year most of these will be surpassed by the features of kst.

      Sometimes it's easier to build a new house that renovate an old one ;-)

  • Where the name comes from (Score:5, Informative)

    by greppling (601175) on Wednesday April 28 2004, @08:48PM (#9003501)
    From the tutorial [utoronto.ca]:

    Q: What does kst stand for?

    A: The 'k' in kst stands for the same thing as the K in KDE. (ie, the letter after J and before L). The 's' and the 't' have a similar explanation.

  • Gretl (Score:3, Informative)

    by Knights who say 'INT (708612) on Wednesday April 28 2004, @09:20PM (#9003674) Journal
    Another piece of software that became quite a hit in academia is Gretl, the GNU Econometrics, Time-series and regression library.

    It's a perfect clone of eViews, and it's free as in "just grab it"

  • Gnuplot? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bsd4me (759597) on Wednesday April 28 2004, @10:26PM (#9004036)

    Can anyone comment on this compared with Gnuplot?

    LaTeX and Gnuplot got me through college without having to pay for laser printing papers (the laser printers on the unix machines were free, but the ones on the PCs and Macs were a nickel a page.).

    • Re:Funding (Score:4, Interesting)

      by updog (608318) on Wednesday April 28 2004, @08:53PM (#9003538) Homepage
      You may be trolling, but that is an interesting question - there are definitely arguments for releasing it as BSD licensed. I don't agree at all with the moderators for modding the comment as Flamebait.

      Here's one reason to make it GPL - it makes financial sense. Since they have invested money and time into this project, they should strive to maximize their potential return.

      By making it GPL, their initial investment can be improved upon by anyone, and the Kst project can reap the benifits.

    • Re:Funding (Score:4, Insightful)

      by PitaBred (632671) <slashdot@@@pitabred...dyndns...org> on Thursday April 29 2004, @12:47AM (#9004569) Homepage
      How about because they chose Qt as the toolkit because it makes development easier, and Qt is GPL licensed, so derivatives have to be?
      Dumbass.

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