Making IDL Code Available

["Richard G. French" <rfrench(at)wellesley.edu>]

I would like to cast a vote in favor of David Fanning's proposal to set
up a shareware library. MATLAB has a set of 'toolboxes' that one can buy
which do certain tasks well, and I would be happy to pay for a similar
set of very well written and well documented procedures that do specific
tasks. I think this satisfies a very different set of needs than this
newsgroup, which is primarily "How do I get around this particular
quirk of IDL?" rather than "How can I get a good general-purpose
interactive plotting program?" Another big advantage of having these
routines would be that they would serve as templates for ones own
projects. I've certainly found that it is easier to write a widget
program from David's examples than from the IDL manuals.

Dick French, Astronomy Dept. Wellesley College