We are glad to announce the last major release 12.0.1 of FW4SPL !!!
The focus is still to simplify the framework API to make it easier to use and learn. See what’s new below.
Generic scenes
The VTK and Qt (scene2D) generic scenes used to be a specific case inside the framework. Adaptors were services, but behave differently and their life cycle was managed by a specific service manager. With the introduction of AppConfig2 in 11.0.3, regular services became able to start and stop depending on the availability of their data, a bit like adaptors. Actually we got inspired by adaptors in this past rework. That’s why it was obvious at some point that adaptors should become regular services. That was already the case in the more experimental ogre3D based scene.
Thus we put a lot of efforts this summer on this rework and we also harmonized the API and the internal code of VTK, Qt and Ogre3D scenes. You can have a look at the generic scene documentation to see how it works now.
appXml discontinued, appXml2 promoted !
The former appXml bundle disappeared and to make things simpler for new comers, we renamed appXml2 to appXml. So there is no longer a distinction between those two ways of writing services and XML configurations.
All applications, tutorials and samples now use this new standard.
Service configuration
Few years ago, we started to experiment ::boost::property_tree::ptree as an alternative to our own class ::fwRuntime::ConfigurationElement to parse xml trees. We officially deprecate the latter in favor of ::boost::property_tree::ptree, because the API is much nicer and new users are more likely to know its usage.
For instance, the following code:
if ( m_configuration->hasAttribute( "autoRender" ) )
{
const std::string attr = m_configuration->getAttributeValue("attr");
const bool attrBool = (attr == "true");
this->setMember(attrBool);
}can easily be replaced by:
const bool attrBool = config.get<bool>("attr", true);
this->setMember(attrBool);Better bitmap images support
The service ::ioVTK::SImageReader has gained support for common bitmap images. Previously we only handled .vtk, .vti or .mhd. We added a lot of formats like .jpg, .png, .tiff, which are rarely used to contain real medical images, but can still be useful in other cases, for instance when texturing meshes.
Parameters replacement in configuration
In appXml2, you had to think twice when passing arguments to a sub-config with SConfigController and SConfigLauncher. You should either use by for raw strings or uid for service, object, or channels identifiers:
<parameter replace="label" by="patientName" />
<parameter replace="subConfigChannel" uid="comChannel" />
<parameter replace="actionService" uid="actionStart" />Now, this ambiguity is removed and you can safely use by in any case:
<parameter replace="label" by="patientName" />
<parameter replace="subConfigChannel" by="comChannel" />
<parameter replace="actionService" by="actionStart" />This should help to avoid headaches while building sub-configurations. And you can still use uid but be warned that it will be dropped at some point.
Third-party libraries
As usual we try to keep up-to-date with the latest open-source software. FW4SPL 12.0.1 notably contains the following updates:
-
Qt 5.9
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VTK 8.0