| IDL Expert Programmers Convention Coming Up [message #9177] |
Tue, 10 June 1997 00:00 |
davidf
Messages: 2866
Registered: September 1996
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Senior Member |
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Hi Folks,
The Programming Committee of the IDL Expert Programmers
Convention has asked me to come up with new criteria for
being invited to this year's secret convocation of IDL masters.
(Last year's question, you remember, was how many characters
did the Execute command allow before it quit working?)
Since RSI has fixed the Execute command we need something
else.
How would you feel about inviting anyone who could write
a simple contour plot in object graphics in under 8 hours?
I figure that is going to eliminate about 99% of the riffraff
out there. :-)
Has anyone seen this stuff? Unbelievable!
Andy Loughe is going to love this because he won't have
to jump on RSI all the time about what a bad job they
did with the contour command. He can write his own
routine...from scratch...every time. This is exceedingly
low-level stuff. You basically have to get the path
information from the *old* contour command and then build
your own contour plot, including all the axes, annotation,
contour lines, etc.
I can't find any sensible way to label the contour intervals,
so basically I was left with having to use color to indicate
different levels. This in itself is maybe not so bad, but
it certainly requires some kind of legend, which is nowhere to
be found. Anyway, I have a contour plot working (without legends)
and I'll put it up on my web page tomorrow. If someone would like
to take this as a starting point and try to make something
useful out of it, please be my guest. I'm moving on to something
easier like trapezoidal tessellated volumes in Freudian n-space.
To be honest, I actually *like* this object stuff. It is alluring
because I can see that some of the things that are really hard to
do in IDL 4 are really easy to do with object graphics. Resizeable
windows, for example, are just too easy to believe. But I get
frustrated at how incredibly hard it is to accomplish some of
the most basic, simple things. And the frustration is just
magnified many times over by the complete absence of any
meaningful examples in the manual or on-line.
Come on, RSI, help us out a little.
Cheers,
David
BTW, I won't be attending the IDL Expert Programmers Convention
this year because...er, well, because I'll be out of town. :-(
------------------------------------------------------------ -----
David Fanning, Ph.D.
Fanning Software Consulting
Customizable IDL Programming Courses
Phone: 970-221-0438 E-Mail: davidf@dfanning.com
Coyote's Guide to IDL Programming: http://www.dfanning.com
IDL 5 Reports: http://www.dfanning.com/documents/anomaly5.html
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