Hello World

[Steve_pi]

I want to write a program in C++ that will allow me to automate my making of an animated .gif of Jupiter spinning around. Ideally the input would be a folder full of .avi files and the output would be a single .gif animation.

I found an article in PixInsight magazine "Introduction to PixInsight Module Development" which shows you how to make a project called Sandbox. It appears that Sandbox makes a .dll.

I am confused as to what is meant by the term "core." There is the PixInsight.exe and there are all the .dll files. Which is considered the "core?"

I don't want to make a .dll but a .exe project instead. I will be using Windows with MFC and would like to use the wavelet stuff in the PixInsight .dll files. Is there an example somewhere like Sandbox but for making a .exe instead of a .dll?

[Juan Conejero]

Hi Steve,

I don't want to make a .dll but a .exe project instead.

The PixInsight Class Library (PCL) is not intended to build standalone executables. Although you can link PCL to an executable (for example, the PixInsight Core application does precisely that), its main purpose is the development of PixInsight modules. PixInsight is a modular system; a module is a special shared object (aka dynamic load library) that can be installed with the PixInsight Core application.

I will be using Windows with MFC

Instead of creating a standalone program for Windows, consider writing a PixInsight module instead. Along with direct portability to FreeBSD, Linux, Mac OS X and Windows, with PCL you get a powerful graphical interface, parallelization, advanced image processing resources, and integration with a rapidly evolving platform with thousands of users. For your specific application, you only need a portable AVI decoder such as ffmpeg for example.

I am confused as to what is meant by the term "core."

By core we refer to the PixInsight Core application. The core provides the fundamental infrastructure for all modules. Think of the core as an operating system, and of modules as applications that can be installed/uninstalled and executed.

[Steve_pi]

I am just trying to find the quickest path for me in terms of learning new stuff. I am familiar with writing Windows programs with MFC and calling DLLs to do image processing for me. If PI is not set up for this then I will continue to try to understand the Sandbox project.

I am trying to understand Figure 1 in the article about the Sandbox project. It shows Server-Side Objects and Client-Side Object Aliases and has pictures of an ellipse, star, square, and a spiral. This all means nothing to me. Could you give me an example of a server-side object, a client side object alias, and an ellipse?