epicsQt

EPICS Qt 3.5 Release Notes

Release Index

r3.5.3
r3.5.2
r3.5.1
Earlier Releases

r3.5.3

Release date: 16th April 2018.

The main changes in this release are:

qegui

In the standard File menu, there are two new menu items. These are:

• List PV Names…
  This will offer the user a Save File dialog and if a file nominated, then it will write all the PV names used on the current window to the nominated file; and

• Screen Capture…
  This will offer the user a Save File dialog and if a file nominated, then it will perform a screen scrape of the the window and write the image to the nominated file (png format).

qeframework

QEPlotter

The QEPlotter now checks for and does not attempt to plot NaN and +/- Inf numbers. The widgits minimum and maximum X and Y range values are now exposed as properties.

QEStripChart

The QEStripChart widget modified to provide an expression evaluation capability. This is similar to that already provided by QEPlotter.

QEImage

Reorganized the how ffmpeg functionality is/is not included into QEImage. No functional change per se but does now avoids a seg-fault in designer.

QEUtilities

QEUtilities includes the functionality for List PV names and do a Screen Capture, so this is now available to non-qegui Qt applications.

elementsRequired property

For single variable widgets such as QELabel, QESimpleShape etc., added an elementsRequired integer property in order to limit the number of requested elements from an array PV. The default value is 0 which is read as subscribe for all elements. While restricting the number of elements subscribed for is sensible for monitors such as QESimpleShape and QEBitStatus (the reason behind this change) care should be taken when using it with control widgets.

disconnected graphical widgets

Make disconnected graphical widgets unambiguously greyer. Modify QBitStatus to use the same washed-out colours as QESimpleShape.

disconnected signals

Issue the disconnected signals immediately on subscribe - then await connection. This ensures widgets look disconnected asap if the associated PV does not exist.

font change events

Updated/added font change event in the event filter (as opposed to overriding the fontChange function which isn’t virtual in Qt5) to these widgets: QEHistogram, QEMenuButton, QNumericEdit, QRadioGroup, QERadioGroup and QETable. This widgets now respond property to font changes within designer and at run time.

QELabel, QESubstitutedLabel

For QLabel based widgets (QELabel, QESubstitutedLabel) widgets now have a light gray colour style, both within designer and at run time (by setting the defaultStyle property). This colour is very close to, but sufficiently different from the standard form background colour, to be unobtrusive and yet help visualisation when designing forms and at run time.

For alarm sensitive labels, this will be superseded by the standard alarm colour when displaying the form at run time.

Note: For non alarm sensitive QELabels on forms with a non standard background colour, you will have to clear the defaultStyle property.

QEDescriptionLabel (new)

The QEDescriptionLabel widget directly inherits from QELabel. There is no extra functionality; however the widget has different default property values (smaller font, not alarm sensitive, clear style-sheet, no indentation). It is suitable/intended for displaying descriptive text, typically from the .DESC field of a record.

QECalcout (new)

The QECalcout widget provides a calcout record-like widget. So much so that where applicable the property names have been chosen to match the calcout record. This widget can be used instead of and/or to complement the QELink widget. This widget has no PV variables of its own. The inputs, A to L, must be provided either by signals from other (QE) widgets or preset as ‘constants’ using the a to l properties. Under the covers, this widget uses the same calculation engine as the calc/calcout record.

QEPVLoadSave

The QEPVLoadSave widget has been updated to show not only the snap-shot/load/save value, but also show the live value and difference value.

QEPvProperties

The built in list of records and associated record fields used by the QEPvProperties widget has been updated to reflect base 3.15.5.

documentation

Updated the support documentation.

r3.5.2

Release date: 11th November 2017.

The main changes for this release are:

qegui

Above and beyond any application scaling (see option -a in documentation and/or qegui -h), qegui will now scale an individual window in response to a number of control+key combinations in a similar fashion to many browsers and other programs. The control+key actions are:

• control+plus-key or (control+equal-key): increase scaling by 2%;
• control+minus-key: decrease scaling by 2%; and
• control+zero-key: reset scaling.

qeframework

mingw architecture

The framework project file now automatically defines the _MINGW macro if the EPICS host architecture is “win32-x86-mingw” or “windows-x64-mingw”.

QEPvProperties

The QEPvProperties’ context menu now provides a process record option (this writes 1 to the record’s PROC field) and now provides consistent context menu even when clicking on the value field within this widget.

QEPlotter

The QEPlotter widget has been updated so that it does not attempt to plot data if the associated array PV has an invalid severity. In now also clears any old plot data when establishing a new channel connection.

QEMenuButton

Incorporated Bob Gunion’s change to the QEMenuButton which has modified to introduce a labelText property to allow the button’s text to be set and also to honor the widget’s font setting.

dbValueChanged

All single PV widgets now emit a parameter-less dbValueChanged signal in addition to various other signals.

units

The units (typically specified in the EGU field) for a DBF_CHAR type has now available to the QELabel and other widget type. String formatting has modified to ignore the units when a DBF_CHAR array PV is interpreted as a long string.

QEPvLoadSave

The way in which QEPvLoadSave widget handles array PVs and enumeration PVs has been improved.

r3.5.1

Release date: 9th July 2017.

The main change for this release is that the QEPlugin library has been split the into two distinct libraries which are:

• QEFramework - the functional library which contains the widgets themselves together with support functionality. qegui and any other bespoke display managers programs will need to link against this library.

• QEPlugin - strictly the widget plugin library usable by any application using the ui loader, such as qegui and designer. The QEPlugin library is dependent on the QEFramework library.

Both libraries are part of the the qeframework repository, with QEFramework built from the qeframeworkSup application and the QEPlugin library built from the new qepluginApp application. Using linux-x86_64 as an example EPICS host architecture the libraries are built and installed into:

<top>/lib/linux-x86_64/libQEFramework.so
<top>/lib/linux-x86_64/designer/libQEPlugin.so

This means that QT_PLUGIN_PATH need not change as the plugin library is installed into a directory called designer (as was previously “faked” by use of a symbolic link). When linking application building using the framework library need to reference QEFramework as opposed to QEPlugin.

Because the qepluginApp build uses the qeframeworkSup, the following has been added to the qeframework configure/RELEASE file:

QE_FRAMEWORK=...

This needs to be configured to point to the qeframeworkSup top directory. Unfortunately one cannot say QE_FRAMEWORK=$(TOP). Please see comments in configure/RELEASE.

There have also been a number of other changes to qegui and qegramework since release r3.4.3 as outlined below. Apart from referencing the QEFramework library there have been no other changes to qeByteArrayTest, qeMonitor, qeReadArchive etc.

qegui

For windows - if the main window is off screen, then re-position windows to position (0,0).

Introduced an independent font scaling capability. Use the -f options. Run qegui -h for details.

qeframework

QEConfiguredLayout, QEFileBrowser, QELog, QERecipe, QEScript

Modified QEConfiguredLayout, QEFileBrowser, QELog, QERecipe, QEScript to scope local enumeration definitions so that they don’t clash if two or more headers are used in same compilation unit.

FFmpeg

mpeg - more version related conditional compilation.

framework project file

Added $$(EPICS_BASE)/include/compiler/msvc to the include path and for windows defined EPICS_CALL_DLL when compiling the QE framework.

plugin icons

Updated some of the EPICS aware widget designer icons to be distinct from non EPICS aware counter parts.

QEPvProperties

QEPvProperties - ensured correct field referenced when fields are sorted. Also added RMOD, ADEL, MDEL, ALST, MLST and SYNC fields to the built in motor record field list.

QEPlotter and QEStripChart

Save, set and restore all line styles when drawing graphic markups.

String Formatting

Add forceSign boolean property to widgets using string formatting, the default value is false.

Font Scaling

Introduced independent font scaling functionality.

QEPVLoadSave

Ensure all array elements are of the same and a suitable type before writing to the channel.

windowCustomisation

Include a QAction object as opposed to inheriting from QAction. This is to support running on MAC OS.

QEPlot

Remove outward dependency on QWT, so that plugin library build does not need to include QWT header files, and do a general tidy up. Also inherit from QEFrame in order to provides the standard properties.

Earlier Releases

Please see the release notes 3.4 page for the the 3.4 series release notes.

Last updated: Mon Jul 20 18:17:10 AEST 2020

This site is open source. Improve this page.