comp.lang.idl-pvwave archive - RDF feed
type: channel
description: Messages from Usenet group comp.lang.idl-pvwave, compiled by Paulo Penteado
items: Inexpensive / free-ware similar to IDL?
items: Re: Inexpensive / free-ware similar to IDL?

Inexpensive / free-ware similar to IDL?
type: item
description: I am looking for inexpensive solutions for data analysis, other than IDL, but similar in capability. IDL has been a wonderful tool and has enormous strengths, but individuals cannot afford it. I have used it for over a decade while I worked at govt. sponsored/educational labs. Its flexibility is addictive. Having moved over to the private sector, and switching fields, in a different area of data analysis things are different! Many folks have not heard of IDL, and when informed of its use are able to nod in appreciation but quickly loose interest because it is way too pricey! and very compareable to the price of some workstations. I am not sure how many folks out there use ANA http://ana.lmsal.com/ It has the potential for a robust freeware and needs lots of work. Are there similar freeware packages? I am also aware of xmgrace, xmgr, etc for less intensive applications. Suggestions appreciated
creator: K. S. Balasubramaniam
date: 1999-09-21T07:00:00-00:00

Re: Inexpensive / free-ware similar to IDL?
type: item
description: I for one find this very interesting, and think the post did us all a great service. Do any of these products have all of the following characteristics (which IDL and WAVE both have): (1) Ability to handle arrays of arbitrary dimensionality (not just 1 or 2 or 3 dimensions), of 1, 2 and 4 byte integers, 4 and 8 byte reals, and 8 and 16 byte complexes (actually, WAVE omits the 16 byte complexes, last I checked). (2) Ability to read raw bytestream files containing mixtures of 1,2 and 4 byte integers, 4 and 8 byte reals, and complex numbers. We all frequently need to handle other-people's-data-format files. (3) Ability to reverse byte orders of those data types, so we can easily interpret data from other types of machine. (4) Can produce PROFESSIONAL-LOOKING (e.g. not GNUPLOT-like) 2D plots, with professional looking fonts. Can overplot other plots and isolated points on the same plot frame in other colors. Should be able to display to screen, and output to postscript, and output to an image file would also be nice. (5) Can display images easily, with user settable pseudo-color tables. Same comments about display and output as above. (6) Can read and write common image formats, like TIFF and GIF. (7) Has support for matrix operations (inversion, solution of equations, eigen-values and eigen vectors), for the most frequent transcendental arithmetic operations you find on scientific calculators. (8) Allows you to draw buttons (or at least text) on a graphics screen, and can detect the press of a mouse button and where it occurred--useful for setting up one's own GUIs. Another capability that is nice (but not essential) is the ability to detect single key presses. If any of the free packages meet all this, I might well switch for some purposes, especially if they run as fast or faster than IDL/PV-WAVE, and run on multiple platforms. Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Before you buy.
creator: grunes
date: 1999-09-26T07:00:00-00:00

Re: Inexpensive / free-ware similar to IDL?
type: item
description: A few of you may be able to take advantage of RSI's offer to sell a "home" license to users who have a "work" license. The price is $500 (pc). I got one and now I get to work at home as well as the office!? * Sent from RemarQ http://www.remarq.com The Internet's Discussion Network * The fastest and easiest way to search and participate in Usenet - Free!
creator: htonishi
date: 1999-09-27T07:00:00-00:00

Re: Inexpensive / free-ware similar to IDL?
type: item
description: > "K. S. Balasubramaniam" wrote: >> IDL has been a wonderful tool and has enormous strengths, but individuals >> cannot afford it. Liam Gumley wrote: > If you're already familiar with IDL, is the cost of a single-user IDL > license for Windows more or less than the cost of your salary and > benefits for however many weeks it takes for you to find, learn, and do > something productive with a 'free' package? <climbs onto soapbox> A part of the price issue that seems to be forgotten is how pricing affects the availability of IDL to students, both graduate and undergraduate. RSI encourages universitiy departments to use IDL by offering discounts for license packages and site licenses. This has happened at both my undergraduate and graduate institutions. In my undergraduate physics program, IDL was indispensible because of the variety of locally written an vendor provided routines. We did things in our homework assignments that we couldn't dream of doing otherwise. We were lucky, however, that there were so few of us, and thus we almost always had access to machines with IDL. However, as dorm PCs (not owned by the university) have become more prevalent and powerful, the option of students having individual copies of IDL has become much more popular. The *idea* is popular, but the price makes it impossible. In the graduate level world, an increasing number of students have their own PCs at home, and again the same problem arises. Yes, there is a "student version" of IDL. We helped Beta test it at Lawrence University back in 1996 or 1997. Even back then we knew that the array limitations (65,536 bytes of memory/array, not to mention the other limitations) would make it almost difficult or impossible to use the student version for most assignments in even the sophomore level physics courses. We informed RSI of this at the time. It would be a great convienence to have a full version of IDL available to students (to run on their own machines, not university owned) at reasonab…
creator: Chris Schmidt
date: 1999-09-27T07:00:00-00:00

Re: Inexpensive / free-ware similar to IDL?
type: item
description: htonishi wrote: > A few of you may be able to take advantage of RSI's offer > to sell a "home" license to users who have a "work" > license. The price is $500 (pc). I got one and now I get > to work at home as well as the office!? That will help some people, but it does not address the general problem. $500 is still out of reach of many students at both levels. It sounds like that price is targeted at corporate users. -Chris
creator: Chris Schmidt
date: 1999-09-28T07:00:00-00:00

Re: Inexpensive / free-ware similar to IDL?
type: item
description: On 21 Sep 1999, K. S. Balasubramaniam wrote: > I am looking for inexpensive solutions for data analysis, other than > IDL, but similar in capability. > > IDL has been a wonderful tool and has enormous strengths, but > individuals cannot afford it. I have used it for over a decade while > I worked at govt. sponsored/educational labs. Its flexibility is > addictive. Having moved over to the private sector, and switching > fields, in a different area of data analysis things are different! > Many folks have not heard of IDL, and when informed of its use are > able to nod in appreciation but quickly loose interest because it is > way too pricey! and very compareable to the price of some > workstations. > > I am not sure how many folks out there use ANA http://ana.lmsal.com/ > It has the potential for a robust freeware and needs lots of work. > Are there similar freeware packages? I am also aware of xmgrace, > xmgr, etc for less intensive applications. Suggestions appreciated There are lots of open source tools whose functionality overlaps IDL. PerlDL and IBM's DataExplorer are two recent additions to the list. Omegahat is a new and promising project with roots in the statistical community (http://www.omegahat.org). Many open source tools are designed to perform a limited task well and to intact with other "small" tools. To get the capabilities of IDL you would several such tools and a system (e.g. unix) that supports this approach over the single large app model. As hardware gets cheaper, software costs should increase because the software can be more capable. These days, it is reasonable for software on a typical workstation to cost more than the hardware. Open source software may not have direct costs, but there is still a very real cost associated with each package you install on your system. For most of us, monetary costs are secondary to the losses associated with time spend learning a package that turned out to be ill-suited to the problem or had a show-stopping bu…
creator: George White
date: 1999-10-02T07:00:00-00:00