Library Wishlist

Items that would be useful in the common library. Note that these must not require changes to VEE itself since we no ability to make such changes. If you should happen to have a little time and interest, here's some ideas! Posted in chronological order with no ranking.

• Python Embed << Done for VEEOS 2
• SNP/Citifile IO
• HDF support
• R Interface  << Done for VEEOS 2
• Matlab Clone interface  << Done for VEEOS 2
• Clean local documentation
• Embed system and/or circuit simulation technology. << possible with VEEOS 2 via scripting
• Embed physical simulation technology (EM, thermal, etc.)
• Modern math library  << possible with VEEOS 2 via scripting
• Help in description containers << Done
• Downloaded help in PDF or CHM (not just the present html) << Done
• Send email/text  << possible with VEEOS 2 via scripting
• AES encrypt/decrypt
• Quantile function
• Waterfall plot << possible with VEEOS 2 via scripting
• Symbolic math library << possible with VEEOS 2 via scripting
• Address Namespace Collisions << Done
• IEEE Numeric representations
• PCL network printer library?
• Integer math library? << possible with VEEOS 2 via scripting
• Standard checksums
• Windows forms toolbox (datagrid/etc)
• Prototyping environment- massive project for an entire major release but could start simple with basic SDR/SDIO
• Set/Get Array Mappings in functions so can use in formula << Done for VEEOS 2
• Reliable and more flexible "beep"
• FTP/SFTP automation << Done for VEEOS 2
• OPC support
• SIO - Synthetic IO - Real-world analog and digital waveform synthesis library using DIO modules.
• CRC routines
• Add "scale" choice to the "traces" control input on plots- enables programmatic choice of which scale to use
• Voice Output  << possible with VEEOS 2 via scripting

Python Embed

• Description - create an interface to Python . Presumably similar to the Matlab Script object
• Posted - 4OCT2015 by Stan Bischof
• Estimated Difficulty - medium - interface is very well documented and supported
    UPDATE: for VEE 9 the interface is apparently not documented or supported so the difficulty level goes to HIGH
• Estimated Value - high - could open up the whole Python world within VEE
• Notes/References - Python provides a C API replete with header files, docs and everything else needed. The basic interface should be simple (see Python Embedding) though may depend upon choosing a particular Python distribution in order to deal with details. Stumbling block may be in dealing with data types, passing data. Ideally would be able to write Python scripts in VEE and execute them similarly to the way "Matlab Script" deals with Matlab scripts. Unlike Matlab, Python is free so readily available in its full capabilities, not a restricted subset. Python is very widely used and well supported, so a Python interface could well lead to a very wide range of extended capabilities. Probably makes sense to include the def file in VEE so that it doesn't have to be kept track of - use importCLib(). Eventually want to pass variables by reference for efficiency and data size reasons, but pass by value is more likely first step.
• Progress

Help in Description Containers  << Done

• Description - Place help in the function ( and maybe object) "Description" fields for the various function. This to augment the web-based help
• Posted - 7OCT2015 by William Drago
• Estimated Difficulty - low but tedious
• Estimated Value - medium
• Notes/References - The "Description" field is available to both User Objects and User Functions. For UO's it is accessed form the object menu. For UO's it is also available for us in the Function and Object Browser. Where this becomes a pain is that the Description field is, as of VEE7, RTF, but the Function and Object Browser not only doesn't recognize RTF, but it also doesn't recognize windows-style EOL. At the same time, if the description is added via the GUI, then it is always RTF. Due to the RTF and EOL issues, the text shown in Function and Object Browser becomes ugly and largely unreadable. Workaround would be to create the description field with correct EOL and then splice it into the library files manually. Simple enough but enough details that it is tedious to do, not to mention the usual danger of manually modifying VEE source. Clean way to do this may be to write a VEE program to automate as much as possible (perhaps read the source HTML, generate the "description" lines automatically with right EOL, then manually drop them into the lib files). Another alternative is to modify the development VEE install to default to plain text rather than RTF (as with VEE6 and before), which takes care of the RTF issue. Then for the EOL issue use unix editor, or VEE program ,or quote each line and be careful of the Description2 <linecount> syntax. Anyhow- need to work out process before jumping into this one.
• Progress - March 2017 - completed in release R1 for all functions and for the wrappers. Simple utility developed to format the description content properly after copying it from the function websites.

Downloaded Help in PDF << Done

• Description - Presently have downloaded HTML help. Would be useful to have the help self-contained so that browser not needed to view it.
• Posted - 7OCT2015 by William Drago
• Estimated Difficulty - low but maybe tricky
• Estimated Value - low
• Notes/References - real trick here would be to choose the right tools. Presumably one could find a tool that converts all of the library documentation to a single PDF doc in an automated fashion. With this in place it could be added to makeRelease so that there would be no manual steps. CHM would be handled also in same manner. Once automated process in place this would be a no-brainer. So- look for right tools to built completely automated process.
• Progress
  09OCT2015 - take a stab at PDF referenceGuide using Acrobat. This seems to work OK but would really like to have automated process if possible. Post this one to the web for now as some might find it useful.
  17OCT2015 - automated solution not yet found. It turns out that Acrobat ha an OLE interface but documentation is not apparent and experimentation did not yield success. Also other automation avenues didn't pan out- largely because most would not maintain links within the end PDF. At this point it only takes a few minutes to manually generate using Acrobat, so stay that route for now. CHM appears to be more work since additional pages (index et al) need to be generated.
  March 2017 - completed in release R1. Create PDF manually using Acrobat.

Send email/text

• Description - Would like function to send email from VEE. Once this is in place can also use it to send Text messages.
• Posted - 17OCT2015 by Stan Bischof
• Estimated Difficulty - medium low or high depending upon implementation
• Estimated Value - medium
• Notes/References - In the "old" days it was very easy to fire up SMTP on port 25 of a server and send email. This has been around since the 90's in VEE's examples. While it will still function in some cases, in most cases it will not since the bulk of mail servers have tightened up security and use secure sockets (SSL or TLS) and in some cases alternate ports. One approach would be to incorporate openSSL into VEE (probably as an imported library) and then implement SMTPS. This would likely be a fair amount of effort. An alternative- and likely far simpler- approach would be to choose one of the various command-line mail tools that are available and send email by writing to a file and then firing up the command-line tool. That way the vagarities of ports and secure transfer are handled independently.
• Progress

AES Encrypt/Decrypt

• Description - Add AES encryption and decryption capability
• Posted - 20OCT2015 by Kjeld Alexander
• Estimated Difficulty - low to medium
• Estimated Value - low
• Notes/References - Could be added as a call to an external program which would be quick and easy and likely makes sense since one usually encrypts/decrypts files. Hardest part would be selecting which external program to use and making distribution as invisible as possible. Or take approach of a DLL and hence pass data direct to a function that would return  the encrypted (or decrypted) data. This would be useful if one wants to do the encryption right inside VEE.  Third route is to use David Watling's code from 2007, though since it relies on kernel calls it would be less portable/flexible.
• Progress

Quantile Function

• Description - implement a probability "quantile" function.
• Posted - 21OCT2015 by Detlef Baranski
• Estimated Difficulty - low to medium
• Estimated Value - low to medium
• Notes/References - this would probably be best done as part of a more general modern math library. As such it would be easy to implement, likely requiring very little individual effort.
• Progress

Waterfall Plot

• Description - create a waterfall plot to augment the existing displays.
• Posted - - 21OCT2015 by Detlef Baranski
• Estimated Difficulty - medium
• Estimated Value - low to medium
• Notes/References - This has been on enhancement lists for 2 decades or more so is obviously non-trivial. The hard part of waterfalls is the hidden-line removal. In this case almost certainly requires compiled code and may require new display object completely. It is indeed possible to "fake" a waterfall plot using the existing XY plot and redrawing lines, but while visually it is not too bad, it lacks any ability to use markers or otherwise identify data.
• Progress

Namespace Collisions << Done

• Description - veeos function names collide with user's function names
• Posted - 02NOV2015 by Detlef Baranski
• Estimated Difficulty - low
• Estimated Value - high
• Notes/References - Anytime one has multiple locations where functions can be found, one can (and likely will) have namespace collisions when calling those functions. One way to address this is to use fully qualified function names, and this approach was taken by initial Alpha veeos. However, as Detlef points out, this helps prevent veeos from colliding with user's functions, it does nothing to help the opposite problems: user's calls accidentally seeing veeos functions.
• Progress - 04NOV2015: Alpha 2 version restructures the library and redoes all function calls by adding a prefix ("o_") to all veeos function names. (Actually there's one exception: bootstrapLib doesn't add prefix to its functions, but that's for good reasons). At the same time, the calls are changed to un-qualified which has the advantage of being immune to future changes in veeos library names or content.
  March 2017 - completed in release R1 by staying with the o_<function> naming.

IEEE Numeric Representations

• Description - IEEE sets a universally-used standard (IEEE-754) for representing floating point numbers. This is coded in virtually every program including VEE that has to deal with floats, yet VEE has no exposed method for converting to and from floats except for during IO. This is occasionally useful inside of VEE but also when doing IO directly to memory such as with register-based instrument control. Also, VEE only understands 32 and 64-bit floats, and not the 128-bit floats added well after VEE became "stable".
• Posted - 25JAN2016
• Estimated Difficulty - low
• Estimated Value - low
• Notes/References - IEEE-754 is well defined. Implement by grabbing the standard and implementing. Likely a half dozen functions for to/from 32,64 and 128-bit floats (4,8,16 bytes respectively).
• Progress

Voice Output

• Description - add capability to output synthesized speech as this could be much more useful than the existing "beep"
• Posted - 23FEB2017
• Estimated Difficulty - low-med
• Estimated Value - low
• Notes/References - "espeak" or similar could do the job fairly simply. Need standalone tool that doesn't require install.
• Progress

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• Progress