| A rant: features vs. programming features [message #10278] |
Sat, 01 November 1997 00:00  |
gurman
Messages: 82
Registered: August 1992
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Member |
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I was wondering whether anyone else is has the impression that I do of
IDL 5: that it makes programming many things easier, and certainly niftier
(at least if OOP is your idea of nifty), but it hasn't added much in the
way of real functionality.
One area of functionality that I thought was screaming for attention
was the production of Web-based material, specifically:
� an /INTERLACED keyword for WRITE_GIF,
� a WRITE_GIF_MOVIE routine, with keywords for pause length and repeats,
� a WRITE_MPEG routine,
��a WRITE_SOUND routine (with AIFF and WAVE options),
� a WRITE_QUICKTIME routine, and
� maybe even WRITE_AVI.
I realize that there are straightforward, free ways to do all of these
things --- on some operating systems. But one of IDL's strengths is its
cross-platform capabilities.
Other areas that could be addressed include creation of image maps,
clicking on any of which returns a pixel value, the straightforward
creation of HTML tables from 2-D arrays of data (or structures), ....
I know there's an "IDL on the Web" product in testing, but my
impression is that that is quite different (opposite, in some sense): it
is meant to make it easier to create Web pages that cause IDL to do
things.
Is anyone else interested in the kind of features I've mentioned, or
am I totally crazy? I get the impression that almost everyone who uses IDL
to display data representations eventually puts some of those
representations on the Web, or would like to.
Joe Gurman
P.S. I must be getting to be a real curmudgeon, because I see the creation
of Web content as a much more promising area for scientific/technical
software than keeping programmers gainfully occupied. Still, both of the
people we sent to the recent advanced (read "objects") IDL course came
back thinking of ways they could do several things easier and better, so I
shouldn't complain.
--
Joseph B. Gurman / NASA Goddard Space Flight Center/ Solar Data Analysis Center / Code 682 / Greenbelt MD 20771 USA / gurman@gsfc.nasa.gov / gurman@ari.net
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