Re: IDL Survey Comments

[bowman(at)csrp.tamu.edu (Kenneth P. Bowman)]

In article <49ic4s$pi7@aplinfo.jhuapl.edu>, gotwols@strdev.jhuapl.edu
(Bruce Gotwols) wrote:

> 1.  Provide better tools for large projects ...

I would like to see a better development environment as well, plus such
things as 32-bit integers as the default.  I don't envi (sorry for the
pun) them trying to maintain backwards compatibility though.  They would
likely face the same uproar that Fortran users unleashed when the
standards committee proposed 'deprecating' some features (there are still
a lot of computed GOTO's out there).

> 2.  Provide modern support for presentation quality graphics:
> Ditch the Hershey caligraphy set and support on screen characters properly!  
> Any characters written to the screen or to a Tiff file look like they are
> straight out of the 70's.  IDL has not kept up in this area and it is 
> gradually forcing us away from IDL for all applications involving
presentation 
> graphics. In all cases where I need a Tiff file to send to our $25K Kodak dye 
> sub color printer I have to resort to Adobe Photoshop to get decent lettering.

Won't your printer take PostScript files?  I used to import IDL graphics
into Canvas and re-do labels, etc., but now I go straight from IDL to the
printer.  It is a minor hassle to get all the fonts and sizes right, but I
much prefer a programmable way to make presentation graphs to fiddling
around in a graphics program.

Regards, Ken Bowman

-- 
Kenneth P. Bowman, Assoc. Prof.                  409-862-4060
Department of Meteorology                        409-862-4132 fax
Texas A&M University                             bowman@csrp.tamu.edu
College Station, TX   77843-3150