From: ajsw@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Andrew J Wilson)
Newsgroups: comp.graphics.visualization
Subject: Re: Khoros?
Summary: Information on Khoros (long)
Date: 16 Apr 92 11:19:46 GMT
Reply-To: ajsw@epcc.ed.ac.uk (Andrew J S Wilson)
Organization: Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre

In article <1992Apr16.011709.6267@cpsc.ucalgary.ca> gaston@cpsc.ucalgary.ca (Gaston Groisman) writes:
>
>Can anyone who knows what KHOROS is tell me abit about it?  I
>know it is supposed to be s system for image processing but from the
>docs I read I could not figure it out!
>
>Thanks
>
> Gaston Groisman          +-------------------------------------+
> Computer Science Dep.    |      gaston@cpsc.ucalgary.ca        |
> University of Calgary    |      groisman@uncamult.bitnet       |
> Alberta, CANADA          +-------------------------------------+

Hi,

Khoros is kinda like apE, AVS and IRIS Explorer and, in the same way
that it would be misleading to describe these systems as just
visualisation tools, it is perhaps a little misleading to describe
Khoros as just an image processing system.  (Disclaimer: EPCC has only
apE, IRIS Explorer and Khoros so my comparison with AVS is based
entirely on second hand info.  Oh Yeah and if anyone wants to send me
some info on IBM's Data Explorer I would be very grateful). 

A couple of brief points:

:-)  Khoros is public domain and full source is freely available by FTP 
:-)  Khoros has been ported to pretty much every machine you can think of
:-)  binaries for a number of machines are also available by FTP
:-)  Khoros modules can be run standalone so hacking together a batch
     job is easier than for some other similar packages
:-)  the Khoros map editor has an undo button :-)

:-(  the compile times for Khoros are typically measured in hours
:-(  the Sun4 binaries total to almost 100 Meg
:-(  as far as I know Khoros does not yet include a volume renderer 

Personally I like Khoros :-)

There follows some introductory text reposted without permission from
the comp.soft-sys.khoros newsgroup.  (comp.soft-sys.khoros is very
active with an exceptionally high signal to noise ratio.  Support is
provided on this news group by the user community and by the Khoros
developers.)


                FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT KHOROS

                ( Please Read!  Please Redistribute! )

                  Contents:  Questions 1 - 52

    Q1. What is the Khoros system?

    A1. Khoros is an integrated software development environment for
        information processing and visualization, based on X11R4.  Khoros
        components include a visual programming language, code generators
        for extending the visual language and adding new application packages
        to the system, an interactive user interface editor, an interactive
        image display package, an extensive library of image processing,
        numerical analysis and signal processing routines, and 2D/3D
        plotting packages.

        *  X Windows Applications:
        Animate - Interactive Image Sequence Display Tool
        Cantata - Extensible Visual Programming Language
        Concert - A system for distributed X user interfaces (groupware)
        Editimage - Interactive Image Display & Manipulation Program
        Xprism2 and Xprism3 - Comprehensive 2D and 3D Plotting Packages
        Viewimage - A basic interactive program for surface rendering
        Warpimage - An interactive program for registering and warping images

        *  Data Processing Algorithms:
        Khoros contains over 260 programs, in the following

        *  Data Processing Algorithms:
        Khoros contains over 260 programs, in the following
        categories: arithmetic, classification, color conversion,
        data conversion, file format conversion, feature extraction,
        frequency filtering, matrix algebra (LINPACK and EISPACK),
        spatial filtering, morphology filtering, geometric manipula-
        tion, histogram manipulation, statistics, signal generation,
        linear operations, segmentation, spectral estimation, sub-
        region, and transforms. Khoros supports the following file
        formats: TIFF, pbm, BIG, DEM, DLG, ELAS, FITS, MATLAB, Sun
        raster, TGA, and xbm.

        *  User Interface Tools
        Preview  - Graphical User Interface Display Tool
        Composer - Interactive Graphical User Interface Editor
        Conductor - Code Generation Tool for a Graphical User Interface
        Ghostwriter - Code Generation Tool for a Command Line User Interface
        Source Configuration & Management - Tools to install and maintain a
                                    distributed source tree.

        For complete details, please read the "announce.ftp" and "khoros.ftp"
        documents that are available in the khoros release/ directory.
        These documents can be obtained via anonymous ftp from any official
        Khoros ftp site (see Q2).


    ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

    Q2. How do I obtain the Khoros system?
        What is the most recent version of Khoros?

    A2. The most recent version of Khoros, Khoros 1.0 Patch 5, can be
        obtained free of charge via anonymous FTP.
        Our official FTP sites from which you can get
        the Khoros system is listed below.

        USA:            ftp pprg.eece.unm.edu  (129.24.24.10)
        (University of  Login:  anonymous  (or ftp)
         New Mexico)    Password: user_name@machine
                        cd /pub/khoros


[four other FTP sites deleted]

Hope this was useful and sorry for all the bandwidth :-)

Andrew J S Wilson     
<ajsw@uk.ac.ed.epcc>         -=-        Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre