comp.lang.idl-pvwave archive - RDF feed
type: channel
description: Messages from Usenet group comp.lang.idl-pvwave, compiled by Paulo Penteado
items: [Q] IDL vrs. PV-WAVE as GUI Builders
items: Re: [Q] IDL vrs. PV-WAVE as GUI Builders

[Q] IDL vrs. PV-WAVE as GUI Builders
type: item
description: Greetings... I am planning to use either IDL or PV-WAVE to develop a GUI front-end and display back-end for a series of Fortran processing/modeling codes to run on either a Unix (probably SGI) or PC (Windows-NT on Pentium) system (not necessarily on both). I have some experience with IDL as a graphics platform, but have never used it as a GUI (via its widgets implementation). I would appreciate any views/opinions on which of the two is better suited to this sort of application. Thanks in advance. Jim *--------------------------*-------------------------------- ----* | Jim Secan | Northwest Research Assoc., Inc. | | (jim@salsa.nwra.com) | P.O. Box 3027 | | (206) 453-8141 ext 304 | Bellevue, WA 98009 | *--------------------------*-------------------------------- ----* -- *------------------------*---------------------------------- --* | Jim Secan | Northwest Research Assoc., Inc. | | (jim@salsa.nwra.com) | P.O. Box 3027 | | (206) 453-8141 | Bellevue, WA 98009 |
creator: jim
date: 1995-03-03T16:48:36-00:00

Re: [Q] IDL vrs. PV-WAVE as GUI Builders
type: item
description: In article <D4vIp0.2wq@nwra.com>, jim@nwra.com (Jim) wrote: > Greetings... > > I am planning to use either IDL or PV-WAVE to develop a GUI front-end > and display back-end for a series of Fortran processing/modeling codes > to run on either a Unix (probably SGI) or PC (Windows-NT on Pentium) > system (not necessarily on both). I have some experience with IDL as a > graphics platform, but have never used it as a GUI (via its widgets > implementation). I would appreciate any views/opinions on which of > the two is better suited to this sort of application. > > Thanks in advance. > Jim This is a new newsreader for me. My normal news system has been down for a few days and now I'm going through news withdrawals. I'll repost (eventually) from a different account if this looks bad. I've been using IDL for about three years and PV-Wave for about five months. I've created several applications with full GUI's in IDL and a couple in Wave. Anyway, I feel that IDL widgets are slightly easier to code than Wave widgets. Both have some advantages over the other regarding their widget development styles, though. In IDL's favor, their use of UValues makes passing data between modules easier than with Wave (Wave uses UValues also, they are just not as flexible as IDL). UValues are not very well documented in the manuals, but once you see what they offer in IDL, you won't turn back to using common blocks. Unfortunately, in Wave I've had to regress back to using some common blocks. Without actually counting, I believe IDL provides more keywords in their widgets than Wave does which makes it easier to add functionality to a widget. In Wave's favor, the /Form option in layouts makes designing layouts easier than in IDL. The /Form option allows attachments to other widgets, whereas with IDL the attachment is more dependent on the calling order of the widgets. Wave has a more flexible (and more difficult) widget development concept with two levels of widgets (wt and ww types). Wave offers …
creator: mgs
date: 1995-03-09T07:24:15-00:00