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Re: Hello again, and iTools [message #52848 is a reply to message #52845]

Thu, 08 March 2007 14:52

Michael Galloy
Messages: 1114
Registered: April 2006

Senior Member

struang...@cantab.net wrote:
> In short: are the iTools stable, usable and extendable enough to make
> it worth my while to learn the whole application framework? Are there
> any bugs or gotchas that will bite me if I try to build an application
> more substantial than simple data viewers on top of the iTools base
> layer? I like the provided viewers, but have found a few bugs down
> among the details, and I am not yet convinced they are worth the
> commitment. I can bang together a basic program from my old widgets
> in short order, but most of what I am currently writing will be used
> by non-programmers later, and it seems as if a program built around
> iTools will be safer in the long run.

I think I'm slightly more optimistic about the iTools than most
responses so far. (Full disclosure: I used to teach people how to
program the iTools when I worked for RSI. So I have spent plenty of
time trying to figure out how to do things with the iTools.)

But I still don't think it's for the faint of heart. Programming using
them takes a commitment to learning their system. And even though it
addresses many of the problems with LiveTools and Insight, in my
opinion, it is not a "complete system" for application development
yet. What is present right now, has been stable for me. I think the
API is consistent and usable (if not complete or completely
documented).

Besides writing examples, I have "upgraded" one real application from
direct graphics to the iTools and it wasn't too bad. I got a lot of
functionality very quickly. The result looks pretty nice, but is
definitely slower. All the functionality that I wanted from the iTools
was not there. In some cases, I used undocumented features (you get
the source code for the iTools) and in other cases I used workarounds
that were more or less unpleasant. I won't be looking forward to
updating IDL.

In general, if your application is "like iPlot except for..." then
programming with the iTools is probably a really fast way to get what
you want. If it's not, then the answer is much more complicated.

If that didn't scare you off, I have a few (pretty simple) iTools
examples on my website:

http://michaelgalloy.com/category/idl/itools/

Mike
--
www.michaelgalloy.com

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[Message index]

		Re: Hello again, and iTools By: David Fanning on Thu, 08 March 2007 16:20
		Re: Hello again, and iTools By: Michael Galloy on Thu, 08 March 2007 14:52
		Re: Hello again, and iTools By: David Fanning on Thu, 08 March 2007 10:43
		Re: Hello again, and iTools By: Paul Van Delst[1] on Thu, 08 March 2007 10:35
		Re: Hello again, and iTools By: Kenneth Bowman on Thu, 08 March 2007 09:14
		Re: Hello again, and iTools By: David Fanning on Thu, 08 March 2007 08:12
		Re: Hello again, and iTools By: David Fanning on Thu, 08 March 2007 08:10
		Re: Hello again, and iTools By: Paul Van Delst[1] on Thu, 08 March 2007 08:03
		Re: Hello again, and iTools By: David Fanning on Thu, 08 March 2007 06:50

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