Hi,

just wanted to let you know about the SIG for Fuerte called "ROS GUI":
http://www.ros.org/wiki/fuerte/Planning/ROS%20GUI

It is a Qt based GUI framework for Python and C++ plugins and one of the 
first plugins I developed for it does exactly what your are looking for 
(as GUI though).

The Publisher plugin lets you publish messages by selecting the message 
type and showing you all it's fields in a tree view.
The default value for all fields are shown in the correct Python syntax, 
making it very easy for you to edit them to what ever you like.
You can even put in small formulas to get changing values over time i.e. 
sin(i/10.0) for a periodic output using the publish counter 'i' as input.
There are already some more plugins for i.e. topic introspection, robot 
steering, image viewing and 2D plotting of numerical data.

The ROS GUI is still under a lot of development, but for easy tasks like 
this it is quite usable.
I have not done anything similar for services yet, but we are looking 
for good plugin ideas and are open to contributions ;-)

Cheers,
Dorian

On 2011-11-01 16:29, Wim Meeussen wrote:
> +1
>
> I usually end up writing a python script with a publisher because I
> can't remember the rostopic pub yaml syntax.
>
> Wim
>
>
> On Tue, Nov 1, 2011 at 8:24 AM, Benjamin Cohen <bencohen2@gmail.com 
> <mailto:bencohen2@gmail.com>> wrote:/
> > +1
> >
> > I always forget that syntax.... especially when using vectors.
> >
> > -ben
> >
> > On Nov 1, 2011 11:21 AM, "Jack O&apos;Quin" <jack.oquin@gmail.com 
> <mailto:jack.oquin@gmail.com>> wrote:
> >>
> >> On Tue, Nov 1, 2011 at 8:01 AM, Thibault Kruse <kruset@in.tum.de 
> <mailto:kruset@in.tum.de>> wrote:
> >> > Hi,
> >> >
> >> > When using rostopic pub or rosservice call I often find it 
> difficult to
> >> > get
> >> > the YAML right quickly, and a bit tedious as well.
> >> >
> >> > I therefore implemented a function for
> >> > $ rosmsg prototype
> >> > $ rossrv prototype
> >> >
> >> > that work similar to rosmsg show and rossrv show, except that 
> yaml is
> >> > returned that can be used for rostopic pub / rosservice call.
> >>
> >> > Examples:
> >> > $ rosmsg prototype sensor_msgs/PointCloud
> >> > "{channels: [{name: '', values: []}], header: {frame_id: '', seq: 0,
> >> > stamp:
> >> > {nsecs: 0,\
> >> >      secs: 0}}, points: [{x: 0.0, y: 0.0, z: 0.0}]}"
> >>
> >> +1
> >>
> >> I find "rostopic pub" commands difficult to type by hand on the fly,
> >> which is when they are most useful.
> >> --
> >>  joq
> >> _______________________________________________
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> >> https://code.ros.org/mailman/listinfo/ros-users
> >
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> >
> >/
>
>
>
> -- 
> -- 
> Wim Meeussen
> Willow Garage Inc.
> <http://www.willowgarage.com)
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