| Re: widget builder [message #10012 is a reply to message #6196] |
Fri, 26 September 1997 00:00  |
davidf
Messages: 2866
Registered: September 1996
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Senior Member |
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Alvaro Ivanoff writes:
> I'm trying out the 30-day evaluation of IDL 5.0 and I'm just wondering
> if there is a successor to "wided", the widget builder. I've used the
> widget builder before with IDL4.0, to build the frame work for a GUI and
> since it's labelled as obsolete I was hoping there would be an updated
> version.
There is no updated version of WIDED. One can certainly argue
that there should be a visual GUI editor in IDL, but I don't
think anyone would argue that WIDED was a good one. As someone
who teaches IDL programming for a living, I can tell you that
WIDED probably sent hundreds of people to my IDL widget
programming classes. The code it produced was simply
unfathomable. People would spend a day trying to figure out a
piece of WIDED-generated code as an example of a widget program
and immediately sign up for a class. It was almost embarrassing
to show them how really simple and easy widget programming
could be if you just spent a couple of hours learning about
how widget programs work.
> Is there a better way for making a complex GUI, besides coding
> it in manually.
There is only one way to make a complex GUI, at least in IDL,
and that is to code it manually. Once you understand
widget programs, writing a program with a GUI is no more
difficult than writing any other type of IDL program. That is
to say, it is very much easier than C or Fortran and probably
a little bit harder than Visual Basic.
The "successor" to WIDED in IDL 5 might be INSIGHT, a graphical
front end to IDL. INSIGHT is powerful, but it just seems to be
awfully slow, at least on some machines. You might want to give
it a try.
Cheers,
David
------------------------------------------------------------ ----
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
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