| Re: IDL objects (not object graphics) tutorial? [message #46456 is a reply to message #46455] |
Wed, 23 November 2005 20:18  |
David Fanning
Messages: 11724
Registered: August 2001
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Senior Member |
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Dick French writes:
> I'd like to learn how to make use of IDL objects. I'm not ready for object
> graphics yet, because I'd like to understand INITS and SELF and classes and
> methods before worrying about viewports and plots disappearing because I am
> not using the correct projection scheme.
> Someone must be out there just waiting to get rich writing a book on this
> topic.
Getting rich is the easy part. Watching your marriage fall
apart and your kids become alienated while you labor away
writing the darn thing days, nights, and weekends is the hard
part.
And then, of course, you realize you are NOT going to get
rich unless you put a lot more sex into the thing than it
has now, so you wonder if maybe fame will make the cost worth it.
In the end, you would have been further ahead to have just
purchased the IDL T-shirt and have been done with it. :-)
The last chapter of my book has a decent introduction to
objects, although I can see that the example I used might
have a "why bother" feel to an astronomer. It is hard to
find the right example. They have to be easy enough to be
explained, but sophisticated enough to suggest real world
problems.
In the Hawaii classes I resorted to writing slightly simplified
versions of my Catalyst objects, and maybe the combination of
me spilling all my secrets and the astronomers asking for
certain functionality created some kind of synergy. All I know
is that all of a sudden we were in a grove and writing programs
that became significantly easier to write with objects than it
would have been otherwise.
I have a feeling our Thanksgiving celebration will be abbreviated
a bit tomorrow, so maybe I'll have time to add some annotations
to the programs we wrote and make them available. (We have been
celebrating Thanksgiving for 25+ years with some college friends,
but this year they suddenly decided they are vegetarians and there
would be no turkey! We tried this experiment 10 years ago and it
was a disaster, but I guess they don't remember. Sigh...) Anyway,
if my famous butternut squash dish doesn't take too long in the
morning, I'll see what I can do. :-)
Happy Thanksgiving!
David
--
David Fanning, Ph.D.
Fanning Software Consulting, Inc.
Coyote's Guide to IDL Programming: http://www.dfanning.com/
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