KHOROS 2.0.1 Developer's Release

What is it?

Khoros is a fully fledged general programming environment that supports data flow programming. You can quickly develop an application by pasting existing library modules on a workspace, connecting the inputs and outputs of the modules, and run the network of modules.

The Khoros system is currently installed on department's SGI's and Suns. However, only the Sun installation is complete (contains all the extra toolboxes and sample data).

Configuration

First you have to configure your environment. If you have previously used Khoros 1.0 you should remove from your .cshrc file all the related information. Especially important is that you remove a path to the old Khoros bin.

Now you have to log on to one of the Sun workstations, e.g., hobbes. Then you need to execute /projects/image/KHOROS_2.0.1DR/bin/kconfigure. Among other things it will ask you about the base directory for Khoros, that will be /projects/image/KHOROS_2.0.1DR. You should accept all the other defaults.

The configuration script creates a file .khoros_env into your home directory. You should add lines

into that file. This environment variable is needed if you want to execute the sample workspaces that you can download from the Khoros DIP course. After you modified the .khoros_env, type source .cshrc and rehash.

Trying it out

You should be now able to run cantata, the graphical user interface of Khoros. Type cantata. If you now get error messages about some missing libraries, you should add into your .cshrc, type source .cshrc and try again. Warning: cantata is rather particular about its colors. If you run mosaic or netscape while running cantata you'll get dozens of warnings about colors that couldn't be allocated and you may end up trying to read white text on white background (which is quite hard...)

To test everything is fine, try this exercise. Go to Input/Output menu and choose Generate Data/2D Gaussian. Place the module to your workspace. Then go to Visualization menu, choose Non-Interactive Display/Display Image and place it to the workspace to the right from the 2D Gaussian module. Connect the right (yellow) arrow of the 2D Gaussian to the upper left arrow of the Display Image by clicking the arrows. Click the option icon of the 2D Gaussian module, it should open you a window with several parameters. Set the values of variance along height and width and the peak value all to 100, then close the option window. Now run the whole workspace by pressing the leftmost accelerator icon (above "Command String:"). After a short while you should get a window with some white Gaussian blur on black background.

How to learn more

There are some on-line helps that you can access directly from cantata that explain what Khoros and cantata are about and how to use them. There is also a whole course about image processing with Khoros that is really useful.

A tip for homeworks and learning

You can download fully configured workspaces from the DIP course that demonstrate image processing tricks and how they are done with Khoros (use the Files button on the left of the workspace to load them). For example, all the edge detection and Laplace filtering stuff is directly there. Remember to set the environment variables DIP and MMACH, though, the examples use them.

If you notice that there is something missing or wrong in these instructions, please send mail to kapu@cs. Also good tips are welcome (such as how does one use the *.pane files that you can also download from the DIP course).

(Last Update: 18 April 1995)