[Coin-discuss] PROJECT PROPOSAL: graphical user interface for some COIN packages

[Matthew Saltzman]

On Wed, 22 Jun 2005, Raphael Langerhorst wrote:

> Hello!
>
> I am an IT student and we work on various projects on an per-semester
> basis. In the last semester we learned something about OR. I am
> basically interested in doing a project based on COIN for the next
> semester.

That's the kind of thing we like to hear.  8^)

>
> I would like to know if there is general interest in an easy to use
> GUI to test/show various algorithms. As far as I have seen there is
> no ready-to-use GUI provided by the COIN project (please prove me
> wrong, I have not searched for too long). I would like to do a

There are interfaces to a couple of tools.  The Windows-based (and 
window-based) MPL model-building system by Maximal has an interface to 
some COIN-OR tools and there is an AMPL interface, which provides access 
to the (relatively primitive but portable) AMPL GUIs that are available.

That's all I'm aware of at the moment.

> project that provides a nice GUI for various COIN packages to show
> the capabilities of some OR algorithms. I am very familiar with Qt
> programming and would implement such an interface with Qt, maybe also
> KDE if there is interest.

I'd suggest Qt, with whatever care is necessary to build the tool on both 
Linux and Windows.

What kinds of features were you thinking of, and what components were you 
thinking of connecting through?

>
> The target audience is, again, universities or wherever Operation
> Research is taught. The simple/direct GUI to the algorithms would be
> helpful to show the students and make clear to them how the
> algorithms work. I would of course put this project under an open
> source license and would make it publicly available for further
> improvements to make it as useful as possible for everyone.

That would be great.  In fact, there's probably no reason we couldn't host 
it for you.

I think these kinds of tools are just as likely to be of interest to 
practitioners as to academics.

>
> Please let me know what you think as soon as possible as we have to
> decide about our next-semester projects within a few days.

Do other list members have suggestions for features they'd like to see or 
other advice?

>
> Thank you very much,
>

-- 
 		Matthew Saltzman

Clemson University Math Sciences
mjs AT clemson DOT edu
http://www.math.clemson.edu/~mjs