Re: Plea for IDL 2000 (was: a plea for more reliable mathematical routines) [message #17134] |
Thu, 16 September 1999 00:00  |
Theo Brauers
Messages: 58 Registered: November 1997
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"Martin.Schultz@dkrz.de" wrote:
>
> * Mathematical routines: well, see the thread. But definitively, they
> should all operate on DOUBLE as default and -- if at all -- allow a
> /SINGLE keyword in case one runs out of memory with DOUBLE arrays.
Making them double does help in some cases but does not overcome the
problem of wrongly coded and badly documented math. I still think that
attaching a powerful well established math libary to IDL would help a
lot.
>
> * Foreign language support in the vector fonts would also be on my
> wish list (but please don't go as far as Windows where you always
> have to access the system's control panel to change from ',' as
> decimal notation to '.' if you exchange data with colleagues in
> an Excel spreadsheet). It would just be nice if one could e.g.
> write "o for an o-umlaut (perhaps it would be great if the Tex2IDL
> interface would become some integral part of IDL. TeX is extremely
> powerful in formatting equations etc., and it is much more intuitive
> to write 'A_3' or 'A_{3,2}' instead of 'A!L3!N' or 'A!L3,2!N'.
> Also, TeX is fairly wide spread so people would not have to adapt
> to yet another formatting syntax.
>
Good idea. BUT please dont come up with language versions of IDL! Dont
even mention that to a sales rep. At the end you are going to program
WENN a DANN x=1
instead of
IF a THEN x=1 .
Also imagine help files in French, Spanish, German, Japanese, ......
Theo
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