image_view disparity_view stereo_view OSX

edit

**This post is not about asking a question but to document a workaround.

When running image_view/disparity_view/stereo_view tools in MacOSX. The program opens an standard opencv window but shows a blank (black/white) image. When you move the mouse cursor over the window, the cursor turns into a spinning wheel indicating the window is not responding.

Reason: These programs use "cv::startWindowThread()" instead of "cv::waitkey()" to handle UI update. However, cv::startWindowThread is not implemented in opencv highgui Carbon/Cocoa/QT backend which are typically used on OSX.

Workaround Add cv::waitKey() to the main thread. Here's the example for image_view.cpp

--- src/nodes/image_view.cpp    (revision 37880)
+++ src/nodes/image_view.cpp    (working copy) 
@@ -1,5 +1,6 @@  
   #include <ros/ros.h>  #include <nodelet/loader.h>
  +#include <opencv2/highgui/highgui.hpp>    
   int main(int argc, char **argv)  { 
@@-15,7 +16,9 @@    my_argv.push_back("--shutdown-on-close"); // Internal
     manager.load(ros::this_node::getName(), "image_view/image", remappings, my_argv);
-
-  ros::spin();
+  while(ros::ok())
+  { 
+     cv::waitKey(5);
+  }    return 0;  }