OpenScientist is now deprecated.
In 2010 the appearance of iOS, Android tablets and smartphones induced that the basic choice done for the graphics in OpenScientist (coin3d) is no more tenable. At that time there was clearly no wish around Coin3D to have a version of this library based on GL-ES only. At LAL the effort around display and analysis tools are now reported on the "softinex" software for which the graphics and GUI are based over GL-ES and permit then to build applications running from smartphones, tablets, laptops, desktops, and up to platforms as "wall of screens". Then if you are looking for some tools for a new project, we definitely encourage you to have a look at the softinex portal at : softinex
If you use OpenScientist on an existing project (probably for a Geant4 application), don't worry, we are going to ensure anyway the user support but only for patches to pass recent versions of Linux distributions, compilers or GUI toolkits for the "before 2010" targeted platforms (mainly laptop, desktop on which there are OpenGL and a GUI toolkit as OpenMotif, gtk2 or Qt). The patches are going to be done on the 16.11 serie, being understood that no more "essential developments" are going to be done here. If you have adopted an osc_vis kit for doing visualization with Geant4, we definitely encourage you to look at the "g4exa" pages under the softinex portal to see how to build a Geant4 "app" able to run... on your phone or tablet! (If you are stucked to a laptop,desktop you can obviously use the Geant4 vis system). If using an osc_batch, osc_vis kit as an AIDA implementation, have a look to the examples of recent Geant4 versions to see how to use the "Geant4 analysis manager" (using below our "g4tools") to book, fill, save histograms and ntuples.
OpenScientist is an integration of open source products working together to do scientific visualization and data analysis, in particular for high energy physics (HEP).
(OpenScientist is definitely not one million lines of intricated and unnecessary complicated home made code reinventing everything).
The distribution comes with the osc-plot program that permits to visualize generic common analysis data as histograms, tuples, functions, cloud of points that are stored in file at various formats as plain ascii, aida XML, HDF5, old CERN/hbook and (already old) new CERN/root format. The osc-plot program permits to do interactive manipulations over these kind of data through dedicated GUI (Graphical User Interface) palettes. Someone can do also interactive fitting on them.
From the 16.8, comes also the osc-g4-vis program that permits to instrument in a swift some of the Geant4 examples and then permits to bring high level GUI and visualization to a Geant4 application.
Beside these, there is also the osc-gui-viewer that permits to view a GUI described in files at the XML .onx format. We attempt also to have some compatibility to the HEP past by having the osc-paw program.
The distribution comes also with an implementation of the AIDA interfaces. These API interfaces permit to easily program some common task needed in batch physics program (for example a simulation) as creating histograms and tuples, fill them and then write then in file at various formats.
But the distribution comes also with the coin3d library that permits to program easily a high level 3D (or not) visualization for your data.
And at last, but not the least, the GUIs of the various applications are described in XML files (at the .onx XML format). The XML files being read at run time, someone can strongly customize the user interface in a very easy and nice way without any C++ programming. OpenScientist comes with various GUI factories that permits, from the XML files, to create GUIs by using OpenMotif, native Win32, Qt, gtk but also SDL. In particular this last one opens the way to "jump" in your data as if being in a video game !
The pages are organised around various tutorials describing how to start quickly with the various programs (mainly osc-plot, osc-g4-vis), how to build simple (and less simple) AIDA and coin3d programs and also how to create some simple GUIs by using the .onx XML format.
The download area is organized around "kit" zip files. There is mainly two kind of kits : osc_batch and osc_vis ones. The download area offers the sources but also the binaries of them according the platforms (OS+compiler).
The very light osc_batch flavour is targeted for "data capturing" in batch programs. Then mainly to book, fill and save histograms and tuples in files at various formats by using the AIDA interfaces. There is no interactivity and visualization in a batch kit.
The osc_vis flavour contains the osc_batch one plus programs, as the osc-plot, to do some plotting and have some interactivity over the files produced by batch programs. A vis kit contains also the coin3d and HEPVis libraries to do advanced visualization. According the platform a vis kit contains also the GUI factories for OpenMotif, Win32 but may contain also the ones for Qt, gtk and SDL.
To start and have a good overview of what OpenScientist can do the best is to start with an osc_vis kit.