Frequently Asked Questions

Questions are marked with Q, answers with A.

Q:

Why another GUI for BEST?

The BEST software distribution already includes GUI front-ends. The main BEST HMI (Human Machine Interface) is written in Tcl/Tk and runs on all the supported platforms i.e. Windows^TM, GNU/Linux and SUN Solaris2^TM.

For Windows^TM it is also available a cool Visual Basic HMI having a native look and feel.

So why another GUI?

A:

When I first started the project I was learning GUI programming with Python and PyGTK and I needed a project for my experiments. So I made a sort of clone of the Tcl/Tk HMI and then I realized that, thanks to the GTK+ toolkit, the look an feel of BESTGUI was by far better than the original, at least on my Linux box.

So I decided to go on and implemented some extra features like a smart environment handling, progress bars, colorized output log, an improved AOI (Area Of Interest) dialog and the ability of stopping the BEST elaboration (that in some cases can take a very long time) from the GUI. Some of this features are also present in bestw, the Visual Basic HMI available for Windows^TM) only.

In conclusion, it is my opinion that users of relatively fresh GNU/Linux distributions will appreciate a lot BESTGUI.

Q:

Is BESTGUI an ESA software?

A:

No. BESTGUI is an independent project.

At the moment it has just one developer (me) and I work on it in my free time (not too much to tell the truth).

BESTGUI is free software. It is release under the terms of the GNU General Public License and the source code in available on the project site. Anyone can get it and make its own customizations and improvements.

Of course any kind of contribute or feedback (comments, bug reports, feature request, patches for bug-fix or enhancements) is really welcome and will receive the adequate attention.

Q:

What advantages will I have using BESTGUI?

What advantages will I have using BESTGUI instead of one of the standard BEST HMI? And which are the disadvantages?

A:

The Visual Basic HMI provided by ESA is a good tool and it also includes many of the features provided by BESTGUI. With respect to BESTGUI it misses the progress bars, the colorized output log, the stop button and any output viewing capabilities.

By the other hand, due to the GTK+ toolkit, BESTGUI have a non native look on Windows^TM.

Another advantage of BESTGUI against Visual Basic HMI is the portability. BESTGUI is fully cross-platform so if you work with more than one platform you will appreciate using always the same GUI.

Compared to the Tcl/Tk HMI, BESTGUI is, in many cases, a better choice. It has a modern look and many extra features. Further than the ones mentioned above there are also the enhanced AOI dialog, the smart BEST environment handling, and the preference dialog.

Anyway if you run BEST on very aged systems the Tcl/Tk HMI could result the only solution practicable. The PyGTK v 2.4 (or higher), required to run BESTGUI, is a rather new software and could be very hard install it on some not quite fresh systems ;).