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Re: Unhappy plotter [message #48326 is a reply to message #48192]

Fri, 07 April 2006 09:08

Rick Towler
Messages: 821
Registered: August 1998

Senior Member

liamgumley@gmail.com wrote:
> I'm not a Matlab user, but a while back I spent some time looking at
> the documentation for the Matlab handle graphics suite. It really looks
> very simple, straightforward, and powerful.

Everything looks greener from the other side of the fence...

About a year and a half ago I started working in a MATLAB shop. I had
always wanted to spend some real time with MATLAB and now I had the
chance. Someone opened the (very expensive) gate and guess what? The
lawn on the other side has just as many brown spots, mole mounds, and
doo doo piles.

From a programmer's perspective, I think IDL's OG are superior to ML's
HG. IDL's object API is superior. I hear Michael and others groaning,
but the truth is while not complete it is sufficient and most
importantly easy to use. Maybe it is just me, but I always feel
constrained (and a bit confused) when writing classes in MATLAB. In
IDL, I was composing classes in literally minutes under David's tutelage.

To be fair, ML's HG aren't bad. The biggest advantage (and I guess this
is pretty big, I have been waiting for this from RSI for *years*) is
that the HG system has a lot of "value added". Mathworks doesn't just
give you the bricks, but full blown houses. RSI gave us the atoms and
took a "If you build it, they will come" attitude and, well, very few
people have come.

But at the end of the day they both have their warts. MATLAB doesn't
pass by reference, doesn't have keywords nor pointers, and is *really*
expensive. IDL's IDE is lacking (especially non-windows platforms), the
GUI builder is weak, and it's OG library is limited.

To bring this back to the iTools discussion, for those of you that
haven't used MATLAB, the iTools are, IMO, RSI's attempt to provide an
interface similar to MATLAB's figure. And let's be honest, this is
sorely needed in IDL. I think the problem is that RSI went from one
extreme (atoms) to the other (iPlot, iSurface, iImage) and I think the
majority of IDL users live somewhere in between wanting something with
the ease of the direct graphics system and the power of the object
graphics system. While some of us have made attempts, we the users
can't really do it. iTools has shown us that some of this needs to be
implemented internally. I wish I would have had the vision to see this
back during the 6.0 alpha...

It will be interesting to see where all of this goes. I for one will
stay around, not because of the iTools, but because (despite the warts)
when I need to do 3d, IDL is the best game in town. But since now I
need to do some quick and dirty 2d plots from the command line, I'm
firing up MATLAB.

-Rick

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[Message index]

		Unhappy plotter By: Cliff on Thu, 06 April 2006 15:41
		Re: Unhappy plotter By: Michael Galloy on Fri, 07 April 2006 09:51
		Re: Unhappy plotter By: Cliff on Wed, 19 April 2006 14:42
		Re: Unhappy plotter By: Rick Towler on Fri, 07 April 2006 09:08
		Re: Unhappy plotter By: David Fanning on Fri, 07 April 2006 06:06
		Re: Unhappy plotter By: Jo Klein on Fri, 07 April 2006 04:07
		Re: Unhappy plotter By: liamgumley on Fri, 07 April 2006 02:56
		Re: Unhappy plotter By: Robbie on Thu, 06 April 2006 20:03
		Re: Unhappy plotter By: David Fanning on Thu, 06 April 2006 18:22
		Re: Unhappy plotter By: Andrew Cool on Thu, 06 April 2006 17:15
		Re: Unhappy plotter By: David Fanning on Thu, 06 April 2006 16:01
		Re: Unhappy plotter By: David Fanning on Wed, 19 April 2006 16:43

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