Re: [Visualpython-users] Do Vpython have good future?

[Bruce S. <bas...@un...>]

Some context and history may be helpful. The creator of Visual, David
Scherer, left college early to take advantage of an unusual business
opportunity. That left Ruth Chabay and me as custodians of the project, but
during the last year and a half or so we were pretty consumed with a major
move from Carnegie Mellon University to North Carolina State University and
were unable to exploit a grant from the National Science Foundation to push
VPython in new and broader directions. Also, our major responsibilities are
not VPython, so any enhancements or maintenance we were able to undertake
were necessarily aimed for the most part at supporting our physics education
work, though much of this work has been of wider benefit. We finally have
our feet on the ground at our new institution and plan to use the NSF grant
resoursces to hire a strong full-time programmer to begin to address wider
interests and needs of current and potential research and educational users.

Also, Scherer has some interesting ideas on a longer-range restructuring of
the Visual module to make it an open-source project in fact as well as in
principle. Scherer's original implementation in C++ got VPython running
amazingly quickly, with excellent capabilities, execution speed, and
stability. However, the code is rather complex, which has meant in practice
that no one other than Scherer has felt competent to make major changes to
the core of Visual. Mind you, no one is preventing anyone from changing
Visual to suit their own needs, since Visual is an open source project
housed at sourceforge.net. But the benefits of open source may not be fully
realizable if the source looks too difficult for newcomers to modify.

Scherer believes that it could be possible to rewrite Visual with a
radically different architecture which would have the goal of making it
feasible for many people to be able to contribute to its further
development, once the new architecture is in place. A related goal is to
make the basic graphics capabilities sufficiently "professional" to attract
the interest and inputs of those people who are very knowledgeable in
computer graphics. No one is currently working on such a new architecture,
but Scherer's vision is important, because if the project were truly
modifable by many people it could more easily and quickly grow or be
customized to address diverse needs and interests. And if it were made
interesting to graphics experts that too would stimulate interesting further
development.

Bruce Sherwood

----- Original Message -----
From: "Arthur" <aj...@ix...>
To: <vis...@li...>
Sent: Sunday, December 29, 2002 8:54 AM
Subject: Re: [Visualpython-users] Do Vpython have good future?


> Good question.
>
> I think VPython is wonderful.  And could have a great future.
>
> If its potential  beyond physics currciulum visualization were actively
> pursued and better considered and promoted.
>
> Unfortunately its seems to have found itself cornered in a situation were
> those who have undertaken responsibility for it have only that one narrow
> interest in it.
>
> Art

----- Original Message -----
From: "zhang xianying" <th...@ya...>
To: <vis...@li...>
Sent: Sunday, December 29, 2002 7:23 AM
Subject: [Visualpython-users] Do Vpython have good future?


> Hello!
>
> I find out this list is very dull.Do Vpython have future?
>
> I hope get your response.
>
> Thanks!
>
> Zhang xianying