[pdp.aero]

Hi Everybody,

I was thinking what a cute language it is, object-oriented Glyph scripting. However, I am wondering for a very long time to know where does it come from. I am writing to ask about its origin. Did you guys in Pointwise invented this language? Or it was already invented for other purposes and you guys reoriented its purpose for the grid generation.
If you did invent this language for grid generation, who was the inventor and how s/he reached at this point to invent something like this for grid generation purpose?

Frankly, I am big fan of object-oriented Glyph scripting. The language is easy to gain, easy to utilized, easy to understand, it is somehow talking to the person who scripting for grid generation.

By the way, are you updating it in course of time? for example assume there is no command for getting the names of a list of grid entities and printing it in the message panel, and scripter needs to get the names one by one and put them into a list and then printing them. In this case, can you add a command for doing this? I would like to know are also developing the language itself or not?

I appreciate your knowledge, possible opinions and ideas about my questions.

Cheers,

[jchawner]

Hi Payam and thanks for your question about Glyph.

However, I'm not certain "cute" is the word I'd use to describe it!

Glyph is based on Tcl. Tcl is a widely used scripting language that's been around and available for decades. Tcl DID NOT originate at Pointwise.

Glyph was originally introduced in Gridgen Version 14 in 2002. We added a scripting capability to Gridgen so that users could write templates and macros to automate part or all of their mesh generation process.

Adding Glyph to Gridgen was an interesting exercise because Gridgen pre-dated Glyph. So we had to add scripting to an existing interactive code. This made for an interesting computer science exercise. One practical result was that there wasn't a 1-to-1 correspondence of script command to GUI command.

How did we choose Tcl as the basis for Glyph? I don't recall the specific details of what languages we looked at but Tcl's availability and popularity at the time weighed heavily in its favor. Since someone is bound to ask, I don't recall whether Python was considered. At the time Python was still relatively immature (version 2) with its big major release (version 3) not coming out until 2008. Many people would really like to have a version of Glyph that's based on Python but that's a laborious computer science exercise that we're not yet willing to tackle.

When we developed Pointwise, the next-generation successor to Gridgen, we had an opportunity to rework Glyph in an object-oriented manner that reflected the way Pointwise's GUI worked relative to Gridgen's. And since Pointwise's infrastructure was built from the ground up, we could incorporate Glyph (or actually Glyph v2) right from the start to ensure 1-to-1 correspondence between GUI commands and script commands.

As many of you are no doubt aware, Glyph 1 (Gridgen) and Glyph 2 (Pointwise) are very different languages and you can't run Glyph 1 scripts in Pointwise. That was a design decision we made with input from our Advisory Team.

Yes, Glyph is actively developed in lock-step with Pointwise's ongoing development. As new capabilities are added to the GUI code, similar capabilities are added to Glyph.

One way that users can contribute to Glyph's development is through our Glyph script exchange that we host on Github (http://pointwise.github.io/). We post scripts there, customers post scripts there, and we can all share them. They become great learning tools.

Thanks again for your question and I hope to see your scripts submitted to the Script Exchange soon.

[pdp.aero]

Thank you John for your response.

Then, Glyph 2 is next gen of Glyph 1, which is developed originally based on Tcl. See, that's way I described it cute. Its cuteness is something like being familiar with somebody's young grandchild, or maybe my grandchild in the very future. Although, I have read somebody called Tcl venerable, in case this what you would like Glyph to be called in future.

One practical result was that there wasn't a 1-to-1 correspondence of script command to GUI command.

Is that the reason that there isn't a console instead of message panel, something like interactive panel that user can enter their Glyph commands and see the results instantly in console or GUI? Although, I had found a script, named "Quick Script" I guess, which simulates something like an editor for scripter.

For me there are lots of similarities between the way that Pointwise do grid generation and Matlab do its work. In Matlab users developing their code using a language that is easy and fast enough for routine works, and because it is not just a complicated GUI, people can do lots of work with it. In the same way, Pointwise assist users with a GUI and a language for the grid generation, which is very appreciated, and being ground up with OO Glyph script really helps users I think. Users always like to be able to manipulate software.

Oh, I really do like to tackle what you just wrote, Python-based Glyph scripting. This is something that I have lots of plan for it. So many theurgic plans are in my mind, benefiting from this kind of language. Albeit, I have to confess I hit on my idea when I was reading one of your blogs in "This Week in CFD."

Thanks again for your informative response, I appreciate it. By the way, I have submitted one script almost a year ago through my Github, I guess it is still proceeding for being include in the Glyph script exchange.

[jchawner]

The problem with Glyph 1 (lack of a 1-to-1 correspondence between GUI and script) is NOT why there isn't a console. There's no console because the language isn't amenable to easy typing of 1-line commands. In my opinion.

As for your submitted script, one year sounds way too long to wait. Please resubmit.