| Re: Sacrilegious but genuine question [message #28786 is a reply to message #28762] |
Fri, 11 January 2002 08:26   |
David Fanning
Messages: 11724
Registered: August 2001
|
Senior Member |
|
|
Francis Burton (F.Burton@biomed.gla.ac.uk) writes:
> Seriously, I'm interested to know why you think it's no good.
> Did RSI drop it for the same reason?
The official word is that IDL dropped Insight because
it could not be made compatible with the Y2K problem.
I, personally, take everything RSI says at face value,
so I believe them. :-)
Insight lives on, though, in the form of Live Tools.
But I'm afraid these don't meet your requirements for
extensibility either, as RSI does not make the source
code for these tools available. (Presumably they are
too difficult to modify, even to solve time/date
problems.) My biggest problem with these tools is
that they do 90% of what I want (possibly), but it
is that other 10% that I desperately need.
As you are discovering, this is probably true of
most, if not all, applications. That is why a programming
language is preferable to an application for most
scientists. When you can combine a program (e.g., ENVI)
with a programming language, you may have the best of
all possible worlds. And there is a LOT of IDL code
out there. For example, I think my MPI_PLOT program
would probably be quite easy to modify for your
purposes. You would have a very nice, interactive
program that displays data exactly the way you want
it to, and you could extend it easily.
>> I meant an IDL program that allowed you to display
>> data the way you want to, without everything "quickly
>> becoming a mess".
>
> Oh, alright. I think I should have a go at that myself -
> make it my first IDL project.
It would be a perfect first project, I think.
> "But IDL is a language, not an application."
Yes, but a high-level language that *builds* applications.
That is the key, I think.
> Patience David - I'm learning! :-P
Me, too. :-)
Cheers,
David
--
David W. Fanning, Ph.D.
Fanning Software Consulting
Phone: 970-221-0438, E-mail: david@dfanning.com
Coyote's Guide to IDL Programming: http://www.dfanning.com/
Toll-Free IDL Book Orders: 1-888-461-0155
|
|
|
|
comp.lang.idl-pvwave archive
Members
Search
Help
Login
Home
