  The GOSIP (Gigabit Optical Serial Interface Protocol) provides communication
via optical fibres between multiple kinds of front-end electronics and the
KINPEX PCIe receiver board located in the readout host PC.
  In recent years a stack of device driver software has been developed to
utilize this hardware for several scenarios of data acquisition. On top of this
driver foundation, several graphical user interfaces (GUIs) have been created.
These GUIs are based on the Qt graphics libraries and are designed in a modular
way: All common functionalities, like generic I/O with the front-ends, handling
of configuration files, and window settings, are treated by a framework class
GosipGUI. In the Qt workspace of such GosipGUI frame, specific sub classes may
implement additional windows dedicated to operate different GOSIP front-end
modules. These readout modules developed by GSI Experiment Electronics
department are for instance FEBEX sampling ADCs, TAMEX FPGA-TDCs, or POLAND
QFWs.
  For each kind of front-end the GUIs allow to monitor specific register
contents, to set up the working configuration, and to interactively change
parameters like sampling thresholds during data acquisition. The latter is
extremely useful when qualifying and tuning the front-ends in the electronics
lab or detector cave. Moreover, some of these GosipGUI implementations have
been equipped with features for mostly automatic testing of ASICs in a
prototype mass production. This has been applied for the APFEL-ASIC component
of the PANDA experiment currently under construction, and for the FAIR beam
diagnostic readout system POLAND.
