Karabo-GUI: The multi-purpose graphical front-end for the Karabo framework

The Karabo GUI is a generic graphical user interface (GUI) which is currently developed at the European XFEL GmbH. It allows the complete management of the Karabo distributed control and data acquisition system. Remote applications (devices) can be instantiated, operated and terminated. Devices are listed in a live navigation view and from the self-description inherent to every device a default configuration panel is generated. The user may combine interrelated components into one project. Such a project includes persisted device configurations, custom control panels and macros. Expert panels can be built by intermixing static graphical elements with dynamic widgets connected to parameters of the distributed system. The same panel can also be used to graphically configure and execute data analysis workflows. Other features include an embedded IPython scripting console, logging, notification and alarm handling. The GUI is user-centric and will restrict display or editing capability according to the user's role and the current device state. The GUI is based on PyQt technology and acts as a thin network client to a central Karabo GUI-Server. (author)