Messages from Usenet group comp.lang.idl-pvwave, compiled by Paulo Penteado
David M. Legler writes I assume the heritage of these packages goes back to a common ancestor somewhere. What was it and how long ago did it exist ? I was told by a guy on the NCAR Graphics team that IDL, NCAR Graphics, and PV Wave share the same original architect/author. He said the name but I forgot it. When I was getting an excellent demonstration of IDL I mentioned this and the demo driver said he knows the originator and the story is true. Who is this masked man? I think IDL was the name of the original package. Mark R. Thomsen
In article <287A5B06.504A@deneva.sdd.trw.com> thomsen@spf.trw.com (Mark R. Thomsen) writes: > > I was told by a guy on the NCAR Graphics team that IDL, NCAR Graphics, > and PV Wave share the same original architect/author. He said the name > but I forgot it. When I was getting an excellent demonstration of IDL > I mentioned this and the demo driver said he knows the originator and > the story is true. > Maybe I can shed some light on this. The NCAR Graphics project began quite a while back. I would say that the principal person involved in that effort was Tom Wright. David Stearn created IDL. Its main connection with NCAR Graphics has been the ability to invoke NCAR Graphics from within IDL. David's company, Research Systems Inc., licensed IDL to Precision Visuals Inc. with a provision that PVI could buy their own copy of the source code at which time they would no longer get updates from Research Systems but would be free to make their own changes to it. It is my understanding that PVI has now exercised this option. As a result future enhancements made to IDL by RSI will not be reflected in PVWave and, as before, enhancements made by PVI to PVWave will not be reflected in IDL. Ray