| Re: IDL 7 [message #67804 is a reply to message #58923] |
Thu, 27 August 2009 22:13   |
Michael Galloy
Messages: 1114
Registered: April 2006
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Senior Member |
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James Kuyper wrote:
> The government contract that pays my paycheck recently transferred from
> one company to another, and so, perforce, did I and most of my
> coworkers, along with most of the associated hardware and software. Our
> new employer is going to have to buy new licenses, and I was asked
> whether we should upgrade from IDL 6.3 as well. What's the current
> consensus? I heard a lot of bad things about IDL 7.0 when it first came
> out - has the situation improved? Did it get easier once you got used to
> it?
ITT VIS responded to the "eternal analyzing code" problem and several
other issues in the Workbench. I still find it fairly slow, but the
features are great. I end of using it only about 20% of the time since I
spend most of my time at the Unix command line.
I would recommend IDL 7.1 much more highly than IDL 7.0. Some IDL 7.1
features (these all have articles on my website at michaelgalloy.com
that begin "IDL 7.1:"):
* iTools programmatic API
* 24-bit PostScript
* code distribution features (platform extensions for DLMs and update
site wizard)
* Windows command line
IDL 7.0 had the IDL Workbench, but that was such a big change that it
seems reasonable to wait a bit for it to be more stable. The MAKE_RT
command (from within IDL) was added. There were actually some fairly
nice features in the 7.0.x series: IDLdoc support in the Workbench, Mac
OS X 64-bit support, and some Workbench tweaks.
IDL 6.4 had:
* 24-bit Z buffer
* IDLnetURL class as an HTTP/FTP client
Of course, all three versions had minor bug fixes and other small
miscellaneous features (although they are big if it's the one thing you
really need).
I wish ITT VIS would produce and publicize a bit more useful set of
release notes for each version of IDL. I will try to create at least an
overview article about future versions (if I'm feeling motivated I'll
try to do the more detailed version with some examples like I did for
IDL 7.1).
Mike
--
www.michaelgalloy.com
Associate Research Scientist
Tech-X Corporation
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