One of the biggest drawbacks of the circuit simulator has been the lack of a graphical user interface. For a Linux user, running a software from a command line is not too much of a hassle, but for users of other operating systems, it usually is. A graphical user interface where one or a few windows gives you everything you need is what everyone wants. Something like that may be too much to build at this point of time, but I have been considering options that can provide a consolidated interface without a full-scale graphical component.
Since the time I have been using Django for web development, I have been thinking of using it to create a user interface for the simulator. Django is fairly easy to install in any operating system. It is fairly easy to setup particularly as a standalone server with the SQLite database good enough for development applications and also easy to configure. The database setup scripts are not too hard. And once the server is running, you could access the app through a web browser.
There are aspects of the simulator that are good the way they are. For example, designing circuits through spreadsheets. That will remain for a long time as it is fairly convenient and also spreadsheet software are available for any operating system. So trying to replace the design of the circuit at the current moment is not really necessary. However, many other aspects are. For example, entering the circuit parameters. This could be made much more interactive through a web app. Once the circuit design is processed, instead of asking the user to change the parameters in the spreadsheet, an interactive form can be designed to help the user out with entering circuit data. The next is in designing controllers. Right now, every controller has a descriptor spreadsheet which lists the inputs, outputs and also special variables. This process can be made interactive as the user can be allowed to choose meters from any spreadsheet or outputs from any sheet. The last and the most important is the plotting of circuit data. Using Gnuplot is extremely convenient but for most this just isn't interactive enough. If a plotting interface can be built into the web app where a user can choose the x and y axis of every plot and simply click a button to get the plot either embedded in the web browser or as a separate window, it would be much simpler. Eventually, the result is what is most important to the user, and I need to make the viewing of results a little easier.
Since this simulator is for large circuits with a large amount of data being generated, trying to run the simulator remotely over a server is not a feasible option. It may be for smaller circuits that do not require much data being transmitted over the network but for larger circuits, it wouldn't work. So the purpose of using Django is merely to build an interface that is almost graphical but without using something like Tkinter or PyQt that would take me a lot of time.
Django allows the user to enter data in forms similar to any web form. The only additional layer is to make the forms relevant to the circuit by creating a model layer. Moreover, this model layer will have to be dynamic as every circuit is unique. Therefore, Django will merely replace the cells in a spreadsheet with HTML forms that hook up to a database.
Since the time I have been using Django for web development, I have been thinking of using it to create a user interface for the simulator. Django is fairly easy to install in any operating system. It is fairly easy to setup particularly as a standalone server with the SQLite database good enough for development applications and also easy to configure. The database setup scripts are not too hard. And once the server is running, you could access the app through a web browser.
There are aspects of the simulator that are good the way they are. For example, designing circuits through spreadsheets. That will remain for a long time as it is fairly convenient and also spreadsheet software are available for any operating system. So trying to replace the design of the circuit at the current moment is not really necessary. However, many other aspects are. For example, entering the circuit parameters. This could be made much more interactive through a web app. Once the circuit design is processed, instead of asking the user to change the parameters in the spreadsheet, an interactive form can be designed to help the user out with entering circuit data. The next is in designing controllers. Right now, every controller has a descriptor spreadsheet which lists the inputs, outputs and also special variables. This process can be made interactive as the user can be allowed to choose meters from any spreadsheet or outputs from any sheet. The last and the most important is the plotting of circuit data. Using Gnuplot is extremely convenient but for most this just isn't interactive enough. If a plotting interface can be built into the web app where a user can choose the x and y axis of every plot and simply click a button to get the plot either embedded in the web browser or as a separate window, it would be much simpler. Eventually, the result is what is most important to the user, and I need to make the viewing of results a little easier.
Since this simulator is for large circuits with a large amount of data being generated, trying to run the simulator remotely over a server is not a feasible option. It may be for smaller circuits that do not require much data being transmitted over the network but for larger circuits, it wouldn't work. So the purpose of using Django is merely to build an interface that is almost graphical but without using something like Tkinter or PyQt that would take me a lot of time.
Django allows the user to enter data in forms similar to any web form. The only additional layer is to make the forms relevant to the circuit by creating a model layer. Moreover, this model layer will have to be dynamic as every circuit is unique. Therefore, Django will merely replace the cells in a spreadsheet with HTML forms that hook up to a database.
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