Dan's Log

Progress and Task Log for Daniel

Tasks

• Finalize/clean-up build instructions.
• Figure-out how to add elements to GUI
• DONE - Steal Kyle's rather spiffy wiki formatting
• Get rid of red lines
• Add way to change material of target in GUI
• Add way to change particle beam in GUI
• Display commands issued by GUI
• Need to be able to turn on magnetic fields
• Need command interface
• Ability to list/change variables
• Need list/glossary of GEANT4 commands (linked from JLAB wiki)
• ^Plus, need our changes
• Document XML
• Make simple, limited XML description
• Model single chip
• Make nice macros
• Are SVT5 and SVT6 micromegas? Is Sim12 model still accurate?
• Are material descriptions incomplete? If so, should we fill-out?
• Get sanitized version of Sim12 source
• Understand how SVT works
• Write summary of how SVT works

Misc. Notes

• nTrigger is the number of times the beam is fired.
• Sim12/Material_HDDS.xml says that XML spec is at http://www.gluex.org/hdds, but get a 404. Maybe $HDDSROOT/HDDS-1_0.xsd is what was there?

Log

October 2007

Wednesday 24

Started working 3PM, had Freshman Physics in the middle.  Left at 6:30PM.
Experienced crash hitting Uranium target.  Start trying other materials.  Barium crashes too.  Is Barium's
(for example) small definition a problem?
Barium crash generates "Unknown Hit Type on SVT1" (for each SVT) error message.
Frustrating that GEANT4 is seemingly so specialized that google returns few people talking about it.
Read on GEANT4 site that ALL particles must be specified (seems reasonable).  Possibly the
interactions are generating undefined particles?  Should search code for error message tomorrow.
Reorganized/expanded my bits of the wiki.
Added GUI elements to Batch Guide.

Thursday 25

Started working 12:45.  Left 13:45 for Linguistics, back at 16:00.
Searched for Magnetic Field definition.  Looks like we need to make it.
Searched for error message having to do with Unknown Hits.  Didn't find it.  Could have to do with using the
default "geantino" particle?
Looked around code for place to add handy things to menus (such as particle type) and found a reference to 
visTutor/gui.mac.  It has exactly the sorts of things I would add!  Why is it not getting read?  Maybe should
set-up breakpoints in Sim12.cc?
You can apparently run macros from within the GUI, which I tried.  At first I thought it didn't work, but it did.  
The first few lines of the macros I tried set the verbosity to 0, so I didn't see them running commands.  Further, 
the addMenu etc. commands seem not to work.  Why?  Probably something to do with pointers...
Not speaking of which, why does the source of Sim12 say that Batch Mode is the default, when it clearly is not?
Also, there's something funky with that whole area of command line parsing.
GUI mode should have ability to run commands.  Batch mode should be able to run headless, dump data.  Forget the
pictures.
Need to figure-out what the mode-selection code is actually doing.

Friday 26

Worked from 10:00-11:00, and 15:00-18:00
Trying to understand mode code.  Think I've got pointers now, but I need to try using them.  
Thought of a way to turn on/off magnetic fields, change materials, etc. on the fly:  Can change in-memory copy of
XML file, then re-load that new copy.  With this we could add buttons to toggle fields, change target materials,
etc.  On second thought, maybe we don't care about being able to do this.
Meeting with Maurik.  Sounds like priority is getting real data out of the program on particle trajectories etc.  
Tonight should polish build guide and run through the GEANT4 Application Developer's Guide in order to understand
Sim12.

Saturday and Sunday, 26-27

Off the clock.
Re-made build guide, building on MacOS X on Alice for hints.  Should mentioned that I needed to install expat,
motif, svn.
Realized that GUI mode has a command line!!!  It was there all the time, but we thought it was a meaningless
box!

Tuesday, 30