| Re: PV-WAVE vs IDL ? [message #3523] |
Sun, 05 February 1995 10:53  |
mahan
Messages: 17
Registered: October 1994
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Junior Member |
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Dave Michelson (davem@ee.ubc.ca) wrote:
: Sorry if this is a FAQ, but what are the differences between PV-Wave
: and IDL?
: I'm vaguely aware that these packages share a common origin. How
: different are they now?
: Also, could an IDL-based package like ENVI run under PV-Wave?
: --
: Dave Michelson University of British Columbia
: davem@ee.ubc.ca Radar Remote Sensing Group
I have discussed with some of the people at RSI the differences between IDL and
WAVE. The following is what I have extracted from these discussions. I have
worked some with WAVE, but most of my experience has been with IDL. I
welcome any comments on the following, but this is as I understand some
of the profound differences from the RSI perspective :-)
WAVE widgets are for Motif, period. IDL Widgets provide a common API under
which are implemented native widgets/controls for Motif, Windows, and Mac.
If application portability is important to you, IDL has an advantage. If
you want to dive deep into Motif and don't need PC/Mac support WAVE widgets
may be your cup of tea.
Also, IDL generally includes consistent functionality across all platforms
with each release, whereas PV-WAVE Personal Edition is a subset of WAVE for
Unix. Finally, whereas the latest release of IDL is available on all
platforms, PV-WAVE for Windows and NT (and VMS?) are downlevel at V4.2,
while PV-WAVE for Unix is at Version 5. This also would cause porting
problems if you use a 5.0 feature.
----clipped from a recent post--------
I've been programming in IDL for a couple years and recently switched
to Wave when I changed projects at work. There is virtually no
compatibility between the products at the widget level, but at the
command level I was pleasantly surprised at how little, if any, changes
need to be made to run my previously coded IDL procedures under Wave.
But, you were asking about widgets, weren't you? Well, sorry to say,
you can't get there from here. There are some things I think IDL
widgets do better (easier mouse handling in drawing widgets, more
robust usage of UValues, better error recovery during widget
development) and some things I think Wave widgets do better (Form
layouts, WwMessage widgets). At this point, I can't claim that one is
better overall than the other (although I bet their vendors can).
---- end previous post dated 01/16/95----
To specifically address the ENVI question, Wave Widgets and IDL Widgets
are not compatible, therefore ENVI would have to be rewritten to run
under PV-Wave.
-Steve
__________________________
Stephen L. Mahan
mahan@aurora.phys.utk.edu
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