Messages from Usenet group comp.lang.idl-pvwave, compiled by Paulo Penteado
On Mar 8, 10:20 am, Kenneth Bowman <k-bow...@tamu.edu> wrote: > Is Eclipse in the future for IDL? > > There's a story at the Reg titled "Developers tell Eclipse why it sucks". ;-) Every time I hear IDL will be including eclipse in the next release I freak out about not being able to use emacs and idlwave anymore. Does anyone know if it will still be supported on linux? Matt
Kenneth Bowman writes: > Is Eclipse in the future for IDL? > > There's a story at the Reg titled "Developers tell Eclipse why it sucks". ;-) Well, after reading the article I would think Eclipse and iTools would be a match made in heaven! :-) Cheers, David -- David Fanning, Ph.D. Fanning Software Consulting, Inc. Coyote's Guide to IDL Programming: http://www.dfanning.com/ Sepore ma de ni thui. ("Perhaps thou speakest truth.")
Matt wrote: > On Mar 8, 10:20 am, Kenneth Bowman <k-bow...@tamu.edu> wrote: >> Is Eclipse in the future for IDL? >> >> There's a story at the Reg titled "Developers tell Eclipse why it sucks". ;-) > > > Every time I hear IDL will be including eclipse in the next release I > freak out about not being able to use emacs and idlwave anymore. Does > anyone know if it will still be supported on linux? Hi Matt, As far as I understand it, JD Smith writes IDLWAVE and is independent of ITTVS. All it needs is an idl rather than idlde interface, and nobody has said *anything* about losing that. I suspect you're safe... Cheers, Ben [As part a long-overdue toe-dipping exercise this morning I formatted a buffer in IDLWAVE. My eyebrows were seen to raise. This could be the start of a beautiful friendship...] -- Ben Panter, Edinburgh, UK. Email false, http://www.benpanter.co.uk or you could try ben at ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
On Thu, 08 Mar 2007 09:43:35 -0800, Matt wrote: > On Mar 8, 10:20 am, Kenneth Bowman <k-bow...@tamu.edu> wrote: >> Is Eclipse in the future for IDL? >> >> There's a story at the Reg titled "Developers tell Eclipse why it >> sucks". ;-) > > > Every time I hear IDL will be including eclipse in the next release I > freak out about not being able to use emacs and idlwave anymore. Does > anyone know if it will still be supported on linux? IDLWAVE isn't going anywhere. If anything, ITTVIS has been far more supportive of it over the last years. In fact, the fancy new help interface, which allows you to pull up context help in the Assistant from any IDL version starting with 6.1, is courtesy of the idl_catalog.xml file now distributed with IDL, and built directly by their documentation group. IDLWAVE parses this to learn system calling syntax, location of help topics, etc. In the old days, we had to scan PDF and HTML versions of their docs to discover this information, using a giant and very difficult to maintain Perl script. Long time IDLWAVE users might even remember the text-based help converted from PDF, which we augmented by splicing in the "What's New" information when v5.5 was released without updated documentation -- for a while, IDLWAVE had the only up to date manuals for IDL! There may be less motivation to use IDLWAVE for new users, given how awful the current Motif IDLDE is, but I don't expect any other changes. Those of you looking to get started with IDLWAVE, I strong recommend getting hold of a recent copy of Emacs 22 (still in pre-release, but very stable and feature-packed). IDLWAVE is up to date and optimized for this version. One could speculate Emacs 22 will be released in the next months, but then again, it's been "months away" for several years now... JD
On Mar 8, 10:20 am, Kenneth Bowman <k-bow...@tamu.edu> wrote: > Is Eclipse in the future for IDL? > > There's a story at the Reg titled "Developers tell Eclipse why it sucks". ;-) > > http://www.regdeveloper.co.uk/2007/03/08/eclipse_sucks/ > > Ken Bowman As someone who uses Eclipse regularly for development in other languages this brings up a couple competing issues for me: 1. Eclipse is complicated for new users. There are perspectives, views, editors, workspaces, projects, etc. and it is not intuitive (at least for me when I started) exactly what they are and how they interact. Everything is part of a project (which is part of a workspace), so what happens to the scientist who just wants to edit a single file, run the program, and discard it? 2. Eclipse is powerful for experienced users. But will it be difficult to take advantage of that because ITT VIS installs their own Eclipse and/or disables functionality (to streamline the process for new users) instead of using my system installed version? I'm hoping that the IDLDE can both be easy to use for beginners and play nice with other plugins for developers who want to use Eclipse beyond what ITT VIS provides (but I have my doubts). Mike -- www.michaelgalloy.com
mgalloy@gmail.com wrote: > On Mar 8, 10:20 am, Kenneth Bowman <k-bow...@tamu.edu> wrote: >> Is Eclipse in the future for IDL? >> >> There's a story at the Reg titled "Developers tell Eclipse why it sucks". ;-) >> >> http://www.regdeveloper.co.uk/2007/03/08/eclipse_sucks/ >> >> Ken Bowman > > As someone who uses Eclipse regularly for development in other > languages this brings up a couple competing issues for me: > > 1. Eclipse is complicated for new users. There are perspectives, > views, editors, workspaces, projects, etc. and it is not intuitive (at > least for me when I started) exactly what they are and how they > interact. Everything is part of a project (which is part of a > workspace), so what happens to the scientist who just wants to edit a > single file, run the program, and discard it? > > 2. Eclipse is powerful for experienced users. But will it be difficult > to take advantage of that because ITT VIS installs their own Eclipse > and/or disables functionality (to streamline the process for new > users) instead of using my system installed version? > > I'm hoping that the IDLDE can both be easy to use for beginners and > play nice with other plugins for developers who want to use Eclipse > beyond what ITT VIS provides (but I have my doubts). I tried to use Eclipse with the Fortran (Photran) plugin. After about a day mucking about I'm back to not using it. I achieve the same functionality with a good editor and judicious environment variable declarations. I find GUI IDEs to be more of a hindrance than a help. cheers, paulv -- Paul van Delst Ride lots. CIMSS @ NOAA/NCEP/EMC Eddy Merckx
In article <1173384248.331648.314040@q40g2000cwq.googlegroups.com>, "mgalloy@gmail.com" <mgalloy@gmail.com> wrote: > 1. Eclipse is complicated for new users. There are perspectives, > views, editors, workspaces, projects, etc. and it is not intuitive (at > least for me when I started) exactly what they are and how they > interact. Everything is part of a project (which is part of a > workspace), so what happens to the scientist who just wants to edit a > single file, run the program, and discard it? That would seem to fit with general trends, which I would describe as moving IDL toward being more of a product for programmers, and less of a product for scientists. Ken
Dear Ken, I have to admit that I could not make heads or tails of eclipse last time I installed it. It's about as confusing as MS Visual Studio (Visual C++). I'm still looking forward to using eclipse because of it's built in functionality for CVS and the ability to include, build and test C/C++ and/or Java code in the same project (you can do this right?). Even though eclipse is complicated, I don't think that it would be that difficult to follow a 'cookbook' for starting a new IDL-Eclipse project. It should be easy enough that even if a user totally messes up his/her project (e.g. by utilising esoteric plugins), they can just start again with the bare .pro files. Robbie
Kenneth Bowman writes: > That would seem to fit with general trends, which I would describe > as moving IDL toward being more of a product for programmers, and > less of a product for scientists. Thank you. How come I can't be this eloquent!? Yes, this is *exactly* the trend, and *exactly* my fear. Pushed too far in this direction and IDL stops being what it is the very best at and becomes an also-ran in the programming language sweepstakes. It would be a shame if that happened. Cheers, David -- David Fanning, Ph.D. Fanning Software Consulting, Inc. Coyote's Guide to IDL Programming: http://www.dfanning.com/ Sepore ma de ni thui. ("Perhaps thou speakest truth.")
Matt wrote: > On Mar 8, 10:20 am, Kenneth Bowman <k-bow...@tamu.edu> wrote: > >> Is Eclipse in the future for IDL? >> >> There's a story at the Reg titled "Developers tell Eclipse why it sucks". ;-) > > > > Every time I hear IDL will be including eclipse in the next release I > freak out about not being able to use emacs and idlwave anymore. Does > anyone know if it will still be supported on linux? > > Matt > Hi Matt it is planned to add it to the 7.0 release this year (at the end) not in 6.4. From my point of view, I know eclipse with pydev on linux. And I do like using some of it's tools for web2 applications. I do like vim and emacs too. People are different. I like the idea to switch to a crossplatform ide instead of developing an own poor environment which is not neat and which has much differences between windows and linux platforms. I would prefer more someone of us would have developed this like the pydev people http://pydev.sourceforge.net/ so it would be open and plugin extension would be easier, e.g. google/SOC. If itt maintain this eclipse plugin the same way as they did it in the past with the idlde environment then for long term usage we should better use emacs as ide with the support of JD. cheers Reimar -- Reimar Bauer Institut fuer Stratosphaerische Chemie (ICG-1) Forschungszentrum Juelich email: R.Bauer@fz-juelich.de ------------------------------------------------------------ ------- a IDL library at ForschungsZentrum Juelich http://www.fz-juelich.de/icg/icg-i/idl_icglib/idl_lib_intro. html ============================================================ =======
In article <MPG.205a348c332de2bd989ec2@news.frii.com>, David Fanning <news@dfanning.com> wrote: > Kenneth Bowman writes: > >> That would seem to fit with general trends, which I would describe >> as moving IDL toward being more of a product for programmers, and >> less of a product for scientists. > > Thank you. How come I can't be this eloquent!? > > Yes, this is *exactly* the trend, and *exactly* my fear. > Pushed too far in this direction and IDL stops being what > it is the very best at and becomes an also-ran in the > programming language sweepstakes. It would be a shame if > that happened. I certainly don't object to ITT adding new features and capabilities to IDL. It can be a great thing for us users. But, it is frustrating that there is no investment in fixing problems with older pieces of IDL, like direct graphics. And, many of the new tools seem to only be suitable for use by "professional" programmers. (Which makes me an unprofessional programmer, I guess.) I like to think that the next iteration of the iTools will be much better documented and easier to program. One of the capabilities of their new web site is the ability to set up private forums, which they call "group portals". These are for customers like Siemens and Raytheon, who develop large applications with IDL. Clearly they need to take care of big customers like medical imaging systems developers and the remote sensing establishment, but to me that signals a permanent shift toward large application development and away from the small- to medium-sized data analysis project that has always been their forte, to my mind. In fact, this sounds a lot like PV-WAVE. Ken
On Mar 9, 3:58 am, Reimar Bauer <R.Ba...@fz-juelich.de> wrote: > Matt wrote: >> On Mar 8, 10:20 am, Kenneth Bowman <k-bow...@tamu.edu> wrote: > >>> Is Eclipse in the future for IDL? > >>> There's a story at the Reg titled "Developers tell Eclipse why it sucks". ;-) > >> Every time I hear IDL will be including eclipse in the next release I >> freak out about not being able to use emacs and idlwave anymore. Does >> anyone know if it will still be supported on linux? > >> Matt > > Hi Matt > > it is planned to add it to the 7.0 release this year (at the end) not in > 6.4. > From my point of view, I know eclipse with pydev on linux. And I do like > using some of it's tools for web2 applications. I do like vim and emacs > too. > > People are different. > ... > cheers > Reimar > > -- > Reimar Bauer > > Institut fuer Stratosphaerische Chemie (ICG-1) > Forschungszentrum Juelich > email: R.Ba...@fz-juelich.de > ------------------------------------------------------------ ------- > a IDL library at ForschungsZentrum Juelich > http://www.fz-juelich.de/icg/icg-i/idl_icglib/idl_lib_intro. html > ============================================================ ======= Great. Not in time be useful, so looks like its Kate+IDL (in wine) or LiteEdit+IDL for the rest of my degree. Though the CVS support would be tempting, I need to learn that ... :-)
On Sun, 11 Mar 2007 05:17:28 -0700, swingnut wrote: > On Mar 9, 3:58 am, Reimar Bauer <R.Ba...@fz-juelich.de> wrote: >> [quoted text muted] > ... >> [quoted text muted] > > Great. Not in time be useful, so looks like its Kate+IDL (in wine) or > LiteEdit+IDL for the rest of my degree. Though the CVS support would > be tempting, I need to learn that ... :-) Plug for Emacs+IDLWAVE: typical editing session: 1. Edit, edit, edit. 2. Complete keywords with M-Tab, look up calling syntax with C-c ?, investigate the curious divergence of DIMENSION keywords and arguments among TOTAL/MEDIAN/etc. in the manual with M-?. 3. Review changes to last checked in version: C-x v = 4. Check in with CVS: C-x v v 5. Compose witty commit messages, commit with C-c C-c Emacs has powerful hooks for lots of revision control systems, and it's quite useful. Check the commit logs, look at who futzed with what when, etc., all without leaving the browser. And yes, there are menu items for all of these, until you learn the shortcuts. JD
On Mar 8, 2:40 pm, JD Smith <jdsm...@as.arizona.edu> wrote: > On Thu, 08 Mar 2007 09:43:35 -0800, Matt wrote: >> On Mar 8, 10:20 am, Kenneth Bowman <k-bow...@tamu.edu> wrote: >>> Is Eclipse in the future for IDL? > >>> There's a story at the Reg titled "Developers tell Eclipse why it >>> sucks". ;-) > >> Every time I hear IDL will be including eclipse in the next release I >> freak out about not being able to use emacs and idlwave anymore. Does >> anyone know if it will still be supported on linux? > > IDLWAVE isn't going anywhere. If anything, ITTVIS has been far more > supportive of it over the last years. In fact, the fancy new help > interface, which allows you to pull up context help in the Assistant > from any IDL version starting with 6.1, is courtesy of the > idl_catalog.xml file now distributed with IDL, and built directly by > their documentation group. IDLWAVE parses this to learn system calling > syntax, location of help topics, etc. In the old days, we had to scan > PDF and HTML versions of their docs to discover this information, > using a giant and very difficult to maintain Perl script. Long time > IDLWAVE users might even remember the text-based help converted from > PDF, which we augmented by splicing in the "What's New" information > when v5.5 was released without updated documentation -- for a while, > IDLWAVE had the only up to date manuals for IDL! > > There may be less motivation to use IDLWAVE for new users, given how > awful the current Motif IDLDE is, but I don't expect any other > changes. > > Those of you looking to get started with IDLWAVE, I strong recommend > getting hold of a recent copy of Emacs 22 (still in pre-release, but > very stable and feature-packed). IDLWAVE is up to date and optimized > for this version. One could speculate Emacs 22 will be released in > the next months, but then again, it's been "months away" for several > years now... > > JD Windows users can find pre-compiled binaries of emacs-22 on the AucTeX site ( http://www.gnu.org/software/auctex/download-for-windows.html)