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Re: IDL Comments [message #39054]

Fri, 09 April 2004 11:17

JD Smith
Messages: 850
Registered: December 1999

Senior Member

On Thu, 08 Apr 2004 13:32:07 -0500, Michael Wallace wrote:

> This might be a dumb question, but my curiosity has gotten the best of
> me. Why is it that the main comment block in RSI's IDL code (as well as
> David's) always begins with ';+' ? Is the '+' on the end some sort of
> marker RSI uses to indicate what comments to use when they crank out new
> documentation?

IDLWAVE uses the delimiters to provide context sensitive help in
routine headers. If the header follows normal conventions, the help
entries for individual keywords etc. can be visited.

JD

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Re: IDL Comments [message #39063 is a reply to message #39054]

Thu, 08 April 2004 12:01

Michael Wallace
Messages: 409
Registered: December 2003

Senior Member

> Check out doc_library.pro in the RSI IDL Library. Given a procedure name, it
> automatically displays the comment text between ;+ and ;-. Quite a handy
> little tool...

Thanks! Earlier today I was wishing for just such a command.... just so
I wouldn't have to go through the trouble of opening the PDF files...

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Re: IDL Comments [message #39064 is a reply to message #39063]

Thu, 08 April 2004 11:38

Paul Van Delst[1]
Messages: 1157
Registered: April 2002

Senior Member

Michael Wallace wrote:
> This might be a dumb question, but my curiosity has gotten the best of
> me. Why is it that the main comment block in RSI's IDL code (as well as
> David's) always begins with ';+' ? Is the '+' on the end some sort of
> marker RSI uses to indicate what comments to use when they crank out new
> documentation?

Yep. Well, sorta. The ";+" and ";-" delineate the comment fields when you use the

MK_HTML_HELP

procedure. It produces a somewhat natty html file containing all your documentation. I
altered the IDL code to allow me to do the same for my Fortran90 code. I get nice pages I
can direct people to when they ask questions that clearly indicate they haven't read the
documentation. E.g.

http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/~paulv/Fortran90/Emissivity/Emiss ivity_Define.f90.html

paulv

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Re: IDL Comments [message #39065 is a reply to message #39064]

Thu, 08 April 2004 11:35

mperrin+news
Messages: 81
Registered: May 2001

Member

Michael Wallace <mwallace.removethis@swri.edu.invalid> wrote:
> This might be a dumb question, but my curiosity has gotten the best of
> me. Why is it that the main comment block in RSI's IDL code (as well as
> David's) always begins with ';+' ? Is the '+' on the end some sort of
> marker RSI uses to indicate what comments to use when they crank out new
> documentation?

Check out doc_library.pro in the RSI IDL Library. Given a procedure name, it
automatically displays the comment text between ;+ and ;-. Quite a handy
little tool...

- Marshall

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Re: IDL Comments [message #39135 is a reply to message #39054]

Tue, 20 April 2004 18:57

kklare
Messages: 7
Registered: April 2004

Junior Member

In the olden days IDL used the ;+ and ;- markers to delimit the header
text for making .help files.
In the lib/obsolete directory you will find mk_library_help.pro to
convert a directory of .pro files into an special (offsets and topics
first) file with the bodies. Then mp_widget.pro was used to display
them. HTML and PDF have obsoleted that. It did not support help on the
basics and internals of IDL, e.g., + or FLOAT.

I improved mp_widget to use a list for a large number (~200) of topics
but did not square subscripts nor add no_block. (I use a special
xmanager that does not block inside other widgets, circa 1991 and
potentially in the main program to allow it to be in the event loop
for variable creation.)
; 1-Aug-1995 KAK Monospaced font for list widgets.
; 1-Aug-1995 KAK Handle empty .help elements of HELP_PATH.
; 1-Aug-1995 KAK Buttons columns auto-sized based on area. (later
irrelevant)
; 11-Dec-1995 KAK remove STRLOWCASE because my Unix path has upper.
; 11-Dec-1995 KAK make it 2 lists and the text, only a quit button.
; 25-Mar-2004 KAK make routine width 15, text box 30 not 45.

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