| Re: New IDLDE [message #52975 is a reply to message #52877] |
Fri, 09 March 2007 09:14   |
Paul Sommer
Messages: 9
Registered: December 2006
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Junior Member |
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On Mar 9, 7:50 am, Kenneth Bowman <k-bow...@tamu.edu> wrote:
> In article <MPG.205a348c332de2bd989...@news.frii.com>,
> David Fanning <n...@dfanning.com> wrote:
>
>> Kenneth Bowman writes:
>
>>> That would seem to fit with general trends, which I would describe
>>> as moving IDL toward being more of a product for programmers, and
>>> less of a product for scientists.
>
>> Thank you. How come I can't be this eloquent!?
>
>> Yes, this is *exactly* the trend, and *exactly* my fear.
>> Pushed too far in this direction and IDL stops being what
>> it is the very best at and becomes an also-ran in the
>> programming language sweepstakes. It would be a shame if
>> that happened.
>
> I certainly don't object to ITT adding new features and capabilities to
> IDL. It can be a great thing for us users. But, it is frustrating that
> there is no investment in fixing problems with older pieces of IDL, like
> direct graphics. And, many of the new tools seem to only be suitable for
> use by "professional" programmers. (Which makes me an unprofessional
> programmer, I guess.) I like to think that the next iteration of the
> iTools will be much better documented and easier to program.
>
> One of the capabilities of their new web site is the ability to
> set up private forums, which they call "group portals". These are for
> customers like Siemens and Raytheon, who develop large applications
> with IDL. Clearly they need to take care of big customers like
> medical imaging systems developers and the remote sensing
> establishment, but to me that signals a permanent shift toward
> large application development and away from the small- to medium-sized
> data analysis project that has always been their forte, to my mind.
> In fact, this sounds a lot like PV-WAVE.
>
> Ken
Hi Ken,
I have to pipe in here as I have driven activity into the Private
Portals to support users just like you :-) Our recent motivation has
been to try and do a better job creating and actively participating in
the user community. The Portal concept is a small step in this
direction. You may ask why we don't just push people to the
newsgroup. We do. However, in cases like Raytheon, they have a lot
of proprietary IDL content they also want to share with their internal
teams. For example, one group has a bunch of really useful and
powerful IDL code that an adjacent program could use. So, we set up a
private portal for them with forum capability, links to relevant
content that relates to their work and host their code contributions
via secure protocols to protect their IP. We then assign both an
internal moderator, or champion and an ITT Vis Sales Engineer to
address forum questions regarding IDL, etc.
In essence, we are trying to recreate the nirvana you all seem to
experience here for folks that are firewalled. Again, we continue to
point new contacts to this group as well and I hope to have a more
public link to this group from the InfoNET in the future. As I told
David in a recent meeting, the InfoNET is in its infancy and we really
hope to do a better job of recognizing community in all forms - our
internal engineering forums, our public ITT Visual Information
Solutions forum, this news group, private portals, user group
meetings, etc. So, do not fear...we definitely don't want to give you
the impression that only the big accounts matter. It's the entire
community that makes our software successful.
Best regards,
Paul
___________________________________
Paul M. Sommer
Lead Technical Sales Engineer
ITT
Visual Information Solutions
psommer@ittvis.com
Direct Line: 303-402-4679
http://www.ittvis.com
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