| More IDL 5.0 'anomalies' [message #9299] |
Thu, 26 June 1997 00:00  |
A. Maudsley
Messages: 5
Registered: September 1996
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Junior Member |
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I've been looking at running some existing applications under IDL V5, and
have a few observations, questions and gripes to add to the ongoing
discussions.
Firstly, let me give a large round of applause to David Fanning for his
'IDL 5.0 Anomaly Database' and doing what RSI should be doing! I hope
they are paying you lots of money David! :-)
This is an old standing complaint that RSI will not provide a list of
known bugs, problems and possible workarounds, leaving us all to spend
many frustrating hours rediscovering bugs that are already known.
Anyway, here are a couple of minor 'anomalies' that I've found running
under Windows 95, that I can not find any reference to in the
documentation or David's web page:
1)
The DEVICE command can no longer be used to shrink the IDL development
window, i.e.
device, main_window_size=0 ; shrink IDL window - DOES NOT WORK
2)
Starting main programs from the Windows command line (or icon) has changed
Under IDL 4, an application can be started with an icon having the
properties/Target set as:
C:\RSI\IDL40\IDL32.EXE D:\test.pro
In IDL %5.0, the @ is now needed:
C:\RSI\IDL50\idlde.exe @D:\test.pro
3)
DEFINE_KEY cannot be used for F1 and F3 (F1 is used for Help, F3 for Find).
The documentation is wrong on this.
WIDGETS
Yes, many list widgets appear different, e.g.
4)
I get different fonts on a Widget_Droplist. I set the default font on
Widget creation, using:
WIDGET_CONTROL, Base, default_font=def_font()
But then I get a different font on the Droplist than on buttons and labels.
5)
My use of Group_Align_Right, or Align_Right works differently in
many cases. - I gave up trying to define why or when.
6)
An organization of multiple widgets in 2 columns, that worked well in
V 4.01, put 2" in column 1 and 12" in column 2, with Version 5!
ANNOYANCES
When you open a file in a new directory using the icon or File/Open, IDL
doesn't change it's default to that directory.
OK, so for Windows, Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V is nice to have, but what happened to
Ctrl+Insert/Ctrl+Shift etc. Why can't we have both like many other text
editors?
OK, so RSI finally gave us an editor which allows printing, but how
about including the ability to set preferences for the page layout etc.
On my system (Postscript printer) the printer font size is increased
by about 4 points over what is specified in the Editor Preferences,
making the printer output useless.
Why can I not scroll up and down in the output log window using the up
and down arrows? (Needs PageUp and PageDown). Also, why can't I change
the width of the output log window, and overlap editor and log windows.
When running a Widget Program, the editing window can be used (which
is nice), but you cannot save the file - Why?
In conclusion, for my existing applications I've decided that it's too
much trouble to 'redesign' all my widgets, so I'm sticking to Version 4.
Andrew Maudsley
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