| Re: IDL procedure to test/cerify IDL routines [message #41211 is a reply to message #41209] |
Mon, 18 October 2004 10:16   |
JD Smith
Messages: 850
Registered: December 1999
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Senior Member |
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On Mon, 18 Oct 2004 10:12:37 -0600, David Fanning wrote:
> Reimar Bauer writes:
>
>> what is "any possible situation" for you.
>
> I think he wants to know if the RSI marketing hype about
> IDL code being "cross-platform" is really true. I think
> the honest answer is "Uh, not exactly. Better test like
> crazy."
>
> Cheers,
>
> David
>
> P.S. Let's just say there are ways to write your programs
> so that they are *more* cross-platform compatible, but
> even careful coders get surprised more often than you might
> expect.
It would be interesting to have a list of potential pitfalls for
cross-platform compatibility... David? That said, from the
obviously-biased point of view of someone who almost never runs
anything under Windows (so take this with a grain of salt), I'd say
about the only real cross platform issues anymore, assuming you are
intelligent about filepaths, are problems with widget layout.
Smart use of things like:
files=file_search(filepath(ROOT=some_dir,SUBDIRECTORY='other s','*.txt'))
instead of
files=file_search(some_dir+'\'+others+'\*.txt')
will save you lots of trouble. When you need to decompose file
strings yourself, use PATH_SEP() instead of '\', or '/'. Stay away
from calls to SPAWN (much easier now that IDL offers lots of
cross-platform file status and directory listing/search commands
internally). Even DLMs and CALL_EXTERNAL libraries can be
automatically built cross-platform (with some amount of up-front
effort) -- see MAKE_DLL.
Current IDL (V6.x) is much more homogenous than older versions, where
VMS and other vestigial systems were supported. In fact, there are
now only two windowing systems still supported: Motif (Linux, Solaris,
AIX, IRIX, HP-UX, Mac OSX), and Windows. For the most part, widget
layouts designed for any of the Motif systems will work well with any
of the other Motif systems (assuming you don't make too many
assumptions about font size). Windows is a bit of a separate world,
and most layout issues you hear about come from crossing the boundary
dividing Windows & Motif.
As a side note, I believe Motif is essentially dead, supported
in-house for legacy applications or by proprietary software
developers, but less and less deployed on the "frontline" of Unix
development. The last widely used Motif application was probably
Netscape 4.X, and that, thankfully, is gone the way of the dodo. Even
Solaris is moving to GNOME/GTK. My personal view is that GTK+ would
be a much more capable target widget set than Motif, and that, at some
point, RSI is going to have to bite the bullet and re-target their
widgets (or cut off half of their user base, drop cross-platform from
their sales pitches, and become a Windows-only program). For this
effort they get a much more compelling toolkit, with many more native
widget components, and better platform integration. But it's no small
task.
JD
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