| IDL 8 on a Laptop [message #76434] |
Thu, 02 June 2011 11:21 |
David Fanning
Messages: 11724
Registered: August 2001
|
Senior Member |
|
|
Folks,
I'm getting ready to be gone for some number of weeks
teaching IDL courses. As a result, I have been getting
my laptop ready to go. I have a couple of things to
report.
First, it is impossible to have IDL 8 filling up the
laptop display, as it has to if you are teaching with
screen projector and someone in the back wants to see
what you are doing, and do any kind of interaction with
a widget program. As soon as you call the widget program
and release the interaction (draw a rubberband box, for
example) the graphics window pops behind the IDL window
and you have a devil of a time finding it again.
Or course, you can choose to have windows "Appear on
Top" of the IDL window, but this applies only to
IDLgrWindows, not to normal graphics windows used
in probably 99.9% of current widget programs.
To interact with a program, you have to call it,
minimize the IDL window, interact with the program
(hoping it is not sending any information or error
messages to the command log, for God's sake!), then maximize
the IDL window again to talk about what is going on.
This is so annoying in and of itself, that I plan on
using IDL 7.1 for most of the class work, reserving
IDL 8 for just the things that absolutely require it.
Second, I have solved a long-standing problem with
my Dell laptop that may be of interest to some users.
When I type on my laptop the cursor will all of a
sudden jump to another part of the document! I have
not maintained proper "piano-playing" posture with my
hands, and I have accidentally brushed against the
touch pad or something, which causes this.
I've been all over the Internet trying to solve this
problem, but to no avail until today. Most "advice" is
to modify the properties of the touch pad through the
Mouse Control Panel. Alas, my Mouse Control Panel doesn't
seem to know anything at all about the touch pad. (I don't
know if this is a Windows 7 feature or a feature of the
Dell Latitude D630 computer I am using.)
Finally, today, I discovered that it is possible to
either turn the touch pad off completely, or to turn it
off if an external mouse is installed, from parameters
in the bios. Entering Setup via the F2 key, and changing
this option in the bios has solved this incredibly
annoying problem for me!
With this option set, and IDL 6.4 on my computer, I
think I could be happy forever! :-)
Cheers,
David
--
David Fanning, Ph.D.
Fanning Software Consulting, Inc.
Coyote's Guide to IDL Programming: http://www.idlcoyote.com/
Sepore ma de ni thui. ("Perhaps thou speakest truth.")
|
|
|
|
comp.lang.idl-pvwave archive
Members
Search
Help
Login
Home
