lgorithm
evelopment
ibraries
A sneak preview of TINA for the Macintosh.
The Brits were right. There Is No Alternative. If you are into image processing research then TINA is the tool of choice. Now it is available on the Macintosh. Over 10 years of research from the Sheffield and Manchester Universities is now available as a Macintosh package. For more information see the TINA pages at Manchester. Manchester or (There is an older version at Sheffield.)
The Macintosh version was ported by Julie S. Porter . My interest in stereo reconstruction of watch and clock data lead me to create this new version. I am making this available as I want to encourage more of this sort of thing. I retain all rights to the Tina frame works code. (An independent creation not affiliated with either the Sheffield or Manchester universities.) Since it is a GNU Library General Public License.program. The TINA source and my extensions are covered under that. The TINA Libraries are covered for commercial use by Visual Automation Ltd.. I have no interest or association to the original development. No warranties or endorsements are given as to use of this software.
TINA is a research tool and is not intended as a commercial application. It is a complete environment for the analysis of complex data sets. It is designed for the X window interface. There are quite a few places where It does not follow User Interface guidelines. It is recommended that one is familiar with the TINA Concept before attempting to run TINA is on a Macintosh.
The biggest surprise to the commercial GUI user is the concept of a 'TINA Visual' called a TV. This is where the graphical results are displayed. All the windows in TINA are floating windows. These are like modeless dialogs. No attempt was made to make TINA into a Macintosh Application. Instead the X calls are converted into Macintosh GUI objects. X uses a 3 button mouse. The extra buttons are mapped to the option and command keys.
While there are X servers for the Macintosh (Mix from Microimages for example) The task of porting even the X11 lib not to mention the Xfree libraries is too much of a task. This also precludes using the TINA libraries within the Macintosh OS. The first attempt to port TINA started over 3 years ago. The idea then was to completely replace the X and Motif interface with a native Macintosh Interface. Given the dependence on X data structures and to follow the Motif design for the placement of buttons This approach was abandon in the favor of a framework that intercepted the X calls. This framework came from the ImageMagik package. It did not include a server or actual X code.
The frameworks make no attempt to be an X server. The memory and List structure managers are called from the TINA libraries. It might be possible to re work this as a more generic X interface. This is not the goal. The calls are designed to serve the Stereo and Calibration tools. The interface expects the arguments to be sent in the order these tools define them. No attempt has been to conform to any X Guideline or rule. Most of the GUI structures are stored private in linked lists. Where TINA needs to get a value from the X subsystem a valid is stored in an X like structure. These are fragments no value stored in these structures is anything other than a default. Much of the drawing takes place in an offscreen Gworld. This code is in a constant state of flux as more tools are brought online. For the 1.0 release this may cause extra data written to the wrong window.
TinaMac was tested on a powerbook5300ce running OS7.6, A G3/300 running OS8.1, and a Powermac 8500/300 running OS8.6. It has not been tested on the newer Macintoshes.
As this is the initial 1.0 release there are a number of bugs and caveats.
At present TINA requires the input of a Macintosh pathname. This is a holdover from the Unix foundations. Future versions will allow for the setting of default names. Cutting and pasting are not functional, these will be in a future release. For now one has to type the names in converting Unix path separators (/) to the Macintosh equivalent (:).
The pop up menus, radio buttons and check boxes should be familiar to the commercial GUI user. Unlike a commercial application pressing buttons at random is not a good idea. The researchers at Sheffield and Manchester have put a lot of thought into the use of these buttons. Before trying the program read the excellent documentation they have provided.