KDE Conquers Astrophysics With Kst 195
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."
KDE Naming (Score:5, Funny)
Re:KDE Naming (Score:3, Funny)
Speaking of names... (Score:2)
Re:KDE Naming (Score:3, Funny)
you forgot vodka. the following equation will compensate:
communism = (beards * (cigars + vodka)^(1 + 1/e))
Re:KDE Naming (Score:2)
Pychart (Score:5, Informative)
It's easy to generate png/pdf/ps plots and they look really nice.
Re:Pychart (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Pychart (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Pychart (Score:2)
I generally used the Python myself - and the python API is very nicely done - a pleasure to use, and a great way to do complex 3D data visualisation.
Jedidiah.
Not to mention (Score:2)
Welcome to the brilliance of OSS marketing.
OT: Re:Pychart (Score:2)
"kst"? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:"kst"? (Score:2)
Shouldn't that be "Konquered"? (Score:3, Funny)
Lets not let this go to our heads (Score:4, Interesting)
Not quite... (Score:5, Informative)
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:Not quite... (Score:2)
Much like Unix and Linux.
Of course the really big difference is that NT has supported these large files from the very beginning (1993), much earlier than most Unixes and close to a decade before Linux.
Re:Who the heck mods this as "Informative"? (Score:2)
Windows is not slower at number crunching but I don't know where you got the information that it was "faster at everything else".
Re:Who the heck mods this as "Informative"? (Score:2)
Re:Who the heck mods this as "Informative"? (Score:2)
His comment on network idependence had more to do with spliting tasks across machines than RDP or running xwindows across the network. It is is much easier to port code to run on really powerful iron like Power4 or Sparc based servers than windows
Re:Lets not let this go to our heads (Score:5, Interesting)
As Kst is primarily a plotter of data, his choice of graphics toolkit is of some importance.
Re:Lets not let this go to our heads (Score:2)
The point is that Linux comes with a compiler&tools which enables everybody to join the project, which is often a prerequesite for a free-of-charge project to become really good.
So on the Win32 platform, this project would have remained a one-man-project, it would have never been made better by others and after a couple of years (when this one man would have moved on to something else or a replacement would appear or whatever) it would rot away and finally disapear.
I'm sure many will ask this... (Score:5, Interesting)
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)
It's gnecessary kuz it's kool.
Re:I'm sure many will ask this... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I'm sure many will ask this... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:I'm sure many will ask this... (Score:2)
Re:I'm sure many will ask this... (Score:3, Insightful)
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:2)
Re:I'm sure many will ask this... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:I'm sure many will ask this... (Score:2)
It does sound annoying to try to install an app only discover that it has dependencies you didn't know about. There are two obvious solutions to this:
Re:I'm sure many will ask this... (Score:2)
Jesus wept.
I never thought I'd hear a rationalization for using Hungarian notation to name applications.
Re:I'm sure many will ask this... (Score:2)
Never mind that it destroys the ability to quickly picks apps from a list, such as the KDE menu. You get listings like:
Re:I'm sure many will ask this... (Score:2)
Re:I'm sure many will ask this... (Score:2)
When was the last time you use Microsoft Internet Explorer in a sentance, most people just call it "the browser" or "explorer".
When I talk about reading mail, I seldom refer to the application I use, I rather say "I'm plowing through last nights mail" than saying "I'm deep inside the bowls of mutt trying to work this new magic macro".
GiMP is already mainst
Re:I'm sure many will ask this... (Score:2)
Re:I'm sure many will ask this... (Score:2, Funny)
You try to deflate the argument about every gnome package starts a G and your sig says:
"gnaughty [sourceforge.net] - easy free porn"
Maybe not every program, but at least the one you promote! LOLOLOL
Re:I'm sure many will ask this... (Score:2)
Re:I'm sure many will ask this... (Score:2)
Tradition.
The C language doesn't have namespaces so you ran the risk of two (or more) libraries having the same name for a symbol. Of course, this would stop you from linking against both libraries. To avoid these so-called "conflicts" the library designers would prefix all their symbols with a sho
Necessary? (Score:2)
kst (Score:5, Informative)
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)
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:2, Informative)
Re:kst (Score:3, Informative)
Re:kst (Score:2)
Re:kst (Score:1, Funny)
Another one? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Another one? (Score:3)
Folks: he was making a joke... you know "another window manager?!", etc., etc....
The moderation flag you were looking for was "funny"
Re:Another one? (Score:2)
(Please correct me if I'm wrong about this, IANAA yet)
Re:Another one? (Score:2)
He'll need it... (Score:4, Funny)
I would have thought Gnome (Score:4, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:An interesting take on the GPL (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:An interesting take on the GPL (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:An interesting take on the GPL (Score:2)
Re:An interesting take on the GPL (Score:3, Informative)
Re:An interesting take on the GPL (Score:2)
Answer my question full heartedly please.
Re:An interesting take on the GPL (Score:3, Informative)
Re:An interesting take on the GPL (Score:2)
Isn't it a little screwy? Isn't the whole point of U. is to resist the political and monetary pressure so as to create a haven for research where thinkers are allowed and even encouraged to be free?
See, this goes back to recent posts I made. It looks to me like U.'s are going down the toylet. I'm always open for suggestions, information and other input (brick on the head, cluestick, etc.). So I a
Re:An interesting take on the GPL (Score:2)
Thanks for setting me straight. So, it looks like there is very little idealism left at the U. It seems like a mercenery camp in a sense, or like a RnD arm of a corp, like Bell Labs, Xerox PARC, etc.
This again goes back to what I was saying. We need to dump the U.s, meaning, let them become what they truly are. Let the U.s IPO and enter the free market the same
Re:An interesting take on the GPL (Score:2)
One summer I worked at a lab that had contrcts with about 3 biotech companies to test and develop new drugs. Most of the time I had no idea what the other people in the lab worked on. Protocols were kept secret, some people never presented their data and sometimes I had no idea what I was working on.
F
Re:interesting take on GPL, and NDAs (Score:2)
Well, besides the pressure for NDAs from commercial sponsors, Barth Netterfield in the interview mentioned some completely research-based pressures. He mentioned how some researchers feel themselves to be in competition with other researchers. This can give rise to fears such as losing publication/discovery credit, and losing priority of publication, e.g. because somebody else gets in first using tools/information acquired from their scientific competit
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:An interesting take on the GPL (Score:2)
That's all well and good. So it seems academia is to be just another part of the corporate world. I'm just wondering about one sm
Openness in academia (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:Openness in academia (Score:3, Insightful)
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
Re:Openness in academia (Score:2)
Perhaps they should.
Tenure review is meant to assess an acedemic's contribution. Why not include the amount of quality code published in that assessment?
Putting it another way: why do we not publish code as well as explanations in the journals? Why isn't source code peer reviewed as part of the publishing and grant giving process?
-- Jamie
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:An interesting take on the GPL (Score:2)
Re:An interesting take on the GPL (Score:1)
Re:An interesting take on the GPL (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:An interesting take on the GPL (Score:2)
The greater problem, in my experience, has been a general lack of motivation or interest in publishing software at all. Often time software is just written as an in-house hack. Very little effort goes into generality, and even less frequently does someone go to the effort to package something up for distribution. Scientists are specialists in their particular field, and are usually not really aware of
Thank You to all who responded! (Score:2)
Instructions (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Instructions (Score:1)
Python Announces Fork... (Score:4, Funny)
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)
Re:Ever since Igor (Score:3)
Re:Ever since Igor (Score:3, Interesting)
Why not try R [r-project.org]? There's not much point and click, but the command are quite ok, and as you can see from their page it generates some VERY good-looking graphs. Its GPL'ed
Grace (aka Ace/gr) (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:Grace (aka Ace/gr) (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Grace (aka Ace/gr) (Score:3, Insightful)
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)
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.
Re:Where the name comes from (Score:2)
Gretl (Score:3, Informative)
It's a perfect clone of eViews, and it's free as in "just grab it"
OK, fine... (Score:2, Funny)
You open source people have to cover this or Microsoft will walk all over you.
(Satire, probably bad, noted here to CMA.)
What does he do with it? (Score:2)
Yawn, same old third for license issues, third for introduction... Leaves just a couple sentences to what would be most interesting to a geek: what is he doing with it.
gondola pointing sensor time traces, and bolometer detector, sound more like something that a fiction author made up to this not an astro physicist, but reasonably smart. I'd be much more interested in his research and how the program works than all the boring details around the program and who uses it.
Gnuplot? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.).
So, if it was with Gnome, it would be: (Score:2)
(bleh, what else to do that write silly comments on Slashdot on a boring day like this...)
Starlink (Score:2)
Lots of pieces, but no free Mathematica equivalent (Score:2)
While Wolfram and his team have done some truely amazing things and produced a product that is worthy of the $1880 price tag, I am astonished that the mathematic and scientific communities have not pooled their resrouces to produce somet
Re:screenshot? (Score:2, Informative)
kst1.png [tomchance.org.uk]
kst2.png [tomchance.org.uk]
Re:Funding (Score:4, Interesting)
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:2)
* This is a work of the US Government. In accordance with 17 USC 105,
* copyright protection is not available for any work of the US Government.
*
* This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
* WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
* MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
Unfortunately, this lack of copyright doesn't mean that
Re:Funding (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Funding (Score:4, Insightful)
Dumbass.
Not so... (Score:2)
That would not prevent you from taking the BSD parts and create a derivative work using another (non-GPL) toolkit under a non-GPL licence though. This is the same logic as SCO against IBM. There are two separate works (Kst source/JFS,RCU and Qt/Un