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Re: Mac OSX [message #27152 is a reply to message #27034]

Wed, 10 October 2001 23:01

Randall Skelton
Messages: 169
Registered: October 2000

Senior Member

It is probably in poor taste to answer my own post but here goes...

> On Wed, 10 Oct 2001, David Fanning wrote:
>
>>> Are they an alternative?
>> No.
>
> The R data language looks promising.
> http://www.r-project.org/

I just donwloaded a carbonized version of the R data language and I must
admit that I'm rather impressed. The syntax seems a little difficult to
wrap my head around (statisticians/mathematicians wrote the language) but
the capabilities are there and the extendability exists. It is, like IDL,
a programming/scripting language model which can be extended with
C/Fortran.

Supported platforms include:
Mac OS 9.x, OS X (binary/source carbonized)
Windows 9x/NT/2000 (binary/source)
Linux/Unix (source)

This seems to already cover more platforms than IDL these days and it is
all free under the GNU license.

The FAQ is avaliable at: http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html.

With regard to David's last comments:

> I really hate to be cynical on a newsgroup I
> love so much, but I don't believe the majority
> of the people beating their chests now will really
> leave IDL. Too many colleagues, too much invested,
> too easy to buy a new Dell machine and carry on.
> And you will end up needing the new feature IDL
> has added that is not available in whatever the
> alternative de jour is that you decided to use
> as a protest.

Call me fickle (and rather stuborn) but I'd rather only loose a years work
of coding on my PhD than risk loosing 2 or 3 when RSI decides that AIX,
SGI, Solaris or Linux aren't profitable. I have beat 'my chest', sent my
letters and spread the news of RSI's decision to every IDL user I know.
I don't honestly expect RSI to change its mind on this but I certainly am
not going to buy a bunch of windows PCs just for the privilege of running
IDL at $1500 for each academic license. I nevertheless agree that others
(with a code base of a decade) have a difficult choice to make.

Randall

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[Message index]

		Mac OSX By: Richard Adams on Mon, 08 October 2001 03:53
		Re: Mac OSX By: Dick Jackson on Wed, 10 October 2001 12:21
		Re: Mac OSX By: colinr on Thu, 11 October 2001 01:17
		Re: Mac OSX By: Dennis Boccippio on Fri, 12 October 2001 07:22
		Re: Mac OSX By: Pavel A. Romashkin on Wed, 10 October 2001 12:46
		Re: Mac OSX By: Stein Vidar Hagfors H[1] on Wed, 10 October 2001 11:34
		Re: Mac OSX By: colinr on Thu, 11 October 2001 01:19
		Re: Mac OSX By: Paul van Delst on Wed, 10 October 2001 12:38
		Re: Mac OSX By: Todd Clements on Wed, 10 October 2001 10:43
		Re: Mac OSX By: Pavel A. Romashkin on Wed, 10 October 2001 07:55
		Re: Mac OSX By: Noam R. Izenberg on Wed, 10 October 2001 07:22
		Re: Mac OSX By: Jaco van Gorkom on Wed, 10 October 2001 06:18
		Re: Mac OSX By: Richard Adams on Wed, 10 October 2001 05:56
		Re: Mac OSX By: Randall Skelton on Wed, 10 October 2001 05:24
		Re: Mac OSX By: Bernard K. on Wed, 10 October 2001 00:37
		Re: Mac OSX By: Rob.Preece on Fri, 12 October 2001 07:29
		Re: Mac OSX By: Bernard K. on Wed, 10 October 2001 00:33
		Re: Mac OSX By: Wayne Landsman on Tue, 09 October 2001 23:18
		Re: Mac OSX By: Randall Skelton on Tue, 09 October 2001 22:55
		Re: Mac OSX By: Pavel A. Romashkin on Tue, 09 October 2001 21:28
		Re: Mac OSX By: gschneider on Tue, 09 October 2001 16:01
		Re: Mac OSX By: Stein Vidar Hagfors H[1] on Wed, 10 October 2001 12:20
		Re: Mac OSX By: Pavel A. Romashkin on Tue, 09 October 2001 14:09
		Re: Mac OSX By: Mark Hadfield on Thu, 11 October 2001 13:45
		Mac Scoop (Long) By: Noam R. Izenberg on Thu, 11 October 2001 14:25
		Re: Mac Scoop (Long) By: msienkiewicz on Fri, 12 October 2001 17:30
		Re: Mac OSX By: Pavel A. Romashkin on Thu, 11 October 2001 09:24
		Re: Mac OSX By: richard hilton on Thu, 11 October 2001 09:06
		Re: Mac OSX By: Andrew Cool on Sun, 14 October 2001 17:09
		Re: Mac OSX By: John-David T. Smith on Thu, 11 October 2001 09:06
		Re: Mac OSX By: John-David T. Smith on Fri, 12 October 2001 07:47
		Re: Mac OSX By: Martin Otte on Thu, 11 October 2001 14:49
		Re: Mac OSX By: Pavel A. Romashkin on Thu, 11 October 2001 08:48
		Re: Mac OSX By: Noam R. Izenberg on Thu, 11 October 2001 08:23
		Re: Mac OSX By: Randall Skelton on Wed, 10 October 2001 23:01
		Re: Mac OSX By: David Fanning on Wed, 10 October 2001 21:25
		Re: Mac OSX By: John Boccio on Wed, 10 October 2001 20:19
		Re: Mac OSX By: David Fanning on Wed, 10 October 2001 19:00
		Re: Mac OSX By: Mark Hadfield on Wed, 10 October 2001 18:33
		Re: Mac OSX By: David Fanning on Wed, 10 October 2001 16:41
		Re: Mac OSX By: pit on Sat, 13 October 2001 11:44
		Re: Mac OSX By: Randall Skelton on Wed, 10 October 2001 14:54
		Re: Mac OSX By: David Fanning on Wed, 10 October 2001 13:39
		Re: Mac OSX By: Noam R. Izenberg on Wed, 10 October 2001 13:27
		Re: Mac OSX By: Pavel A. Romashkin on Wed, 10 October 2001 13:12
		Re: Mac OSX By: David Fanning on Wed, 10 October 2001 13:09
		Re: Mac OSX By: Ken Prager on Fri, 12 October 2001 09:06
		Re: Mac OSX By: Noam R. Izenberg on Fri, 12 October 2001 08:01
		Re: Mac OSX By: pit on Mon, 15 October 2001 12:21
		Re: Mac OSX By: Craig Markwardt on Sun, 14 October 2001 17:51

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