Khoros, a coarse-grain visual programming environment. Khoros is a powerful, integrated software development environment that allows users to harmoniously compose and perform a variety of tasks related to image and signal processing, data exploration, and scientfic visualization.
Khoros is a software integration and development enviroment which puts an amazingly broad range of tools at your fingertips. Khoros includes a visual programming language, a suite of software development tools that extend the visual language and help you create new applications, an interactive user interface editor, an interactive image display package, 2D/3D plotting, and an extensive suite of image processing, data manipulation, scientific visualization, geometry and matrix operators.
Yet the system does not appear complex - Khoros is designed to hide its own inherent complexity, as well as the complexity of UNIX and the X Windows System, so that you don't have to spend a lot of time understanding the underlying structure. That way, you are free to focus on using Khoros to meet your specific needs.
Khoros is a UNIX and X-windows based system and runs on several different architectures. Khoros addresses your needs at several levels. Khoros crosses the different levels of a work group and redefines the working process to include all members, from the application end-user to the software developer. Khoros is a comprehensive system that may be viewed in different ways depending on your needs and objectives.
-Application Users can use Khoros as it stands to solve problems immediately.
For those who need end user solutions to scientific problems, Khoros may be used as it stands, providing a rich set of programs for information processing, data exploration, and data visualization. Multidimensional data manipulation operators include pointwise arithmetic, statistic calculations, data conversions, histograms, data organization, and size operators; image processing routines and matrix manipulation are also provided. Interactive data visualization programs include an image display & manipulation package, an animation program, a 2D/3D plotting package, a colormap alteration tool, and an interactive image/signal classification application. In addition, 3D visualization capabilities are also offered; a number of data processing routines for 3D visualization are provided, along with a software rendering application. The Khoros operators are generalized, such that each can solve problems in a variety of specific areas such as medical imaging, remote sensing, process control, signal processing, and numerical analysis.
-Visual Programmers can use Khoros to rapidly prototype new solutions.
All information processing and visualization programs in Khoros are available via the visual programming language, cantata. Cantata is a graphically expressed, data flow visual language which provides a visual programming environment within the Khoros system. Data flow is a "naturally visible" approach in which a visual program is described as a directed graph, where each node represents an operator or function and each directed arc represents a path over which data flows. By providing a natural environment which is similar to the block diagrams that are already familiar to practitioners in the field, the visual language provides support to both novice and experienced programmers. Cantata supports coarse grain distributed processes; it can handle both stream and block data. Its visual hierarchy, iteration, flow control, and expression-based parameters make it a powerful simulation and prototyping system.
-Software Developers can develop new programs and toolboxes.
For software developers, Khoros contains programming services and software development tools that support all aspects of developing new engineering and scientific applications. Applications written to Khoros can take advantage of the same capabilities offered by the Khoros data processing and visualization routines, including the ability to transparently access large data sets distributed across a network, operate on a variety of data and file formats without conversion, simultaneouslysupport different widget sets, and maintain a consistent presentation with a standardized user interface. The software development environment provides developers with a direct manipulation graphical user interface design tool, automatic code generation, standardized user interface and documentation, and interactive configuration management. The Khoros software development system can also be used for software integration, where existing programs can be brought together into a consistent, standardized, and cohesive environment.