Future Directions

An absolutely critical addition to this library is the ability of the client application (user of the EMC Library) to receive messages initiated by the instrument (or more likely the EMC Server). For instance a client should be able to request the instrument (or EMC Server) send it a message whenever the magnification gets changed (either by another client, or at the console as soon as the EMC Server is aware of the change). For every controllable parameter it should be possible to receive event notification when that parameter is changed.

A new em function would be created which would bind an event to a user defined function so that whenever the event occurs that function would get called. Other issues are the ability to lock parameters, and control access to the instrument, and caching of instrument/EMC Server information.

These have all been given some thought, and would be implemented by the EMC Library designed to communicate with an EMC Server. It would only make sense to implement in the device specific EMC Library if the Instrument were capable of the functions... such an instrument would have to essentially incorporate an EMC Server into it's software. This would be a long term goal of the project, to define a standard robust enough that instrument vendors would build in the EMC Server function into the instrument. Until then its not too onerous a task to place a server machine next to the instrument. The server should run on any flavor of Unix (include the free Unix clone for PCs known as Linux) and Windows NT (possibly Windows 95/98 as well).

Page 9 of 54