Re: idl2matlab translate-o-matic

[Mike Schienle <mgs(at)ivsoftware.com>]

In article <8914kf$2l6$1@skates.gsfc.nasa.gov>, 
thompson@orpheus.nascom.nasa.gov (William Thompson) wrote:

>Mirko Vukovic <mvukovic@taz.telusa.com> writes:
>
>>In article <88v2b8$pj1$1@ra.nrl.navy.mil>,
>>  "tb" <tbowers@nrlssc.navy.mil> wrote:

...

>>> If IDL wants to be *the* scientific software development leader, then
>>it
>>> first needs to be a true application development environment.
>>>
>>AND it needs to use emacs as official editor. (semi seriously but
>>100% wishfull)

...

>Personally, I mainly use IDL on Unix workstations, and never use 
>idltool--I
>tend to feel it just gets in the way.  I certainly would never use the 
>editor
>built into idltool except in desperation, even on a PC, simply because I'm 
>so
>used to using emacs.  :^)
>
>My vote is for allowing a user-defined alternative editor.
>
>William Thompson

Add another vote for a user-defined alternative editor. I'm a fan of 
BBEdit on a Mac. Although it's no Emacs, it's certainly far beyond the 
IDL editor on the Mac and allows text files from any platform to be 
used. I've asked RSI several times to provide some sort of link to 
BBEdit, which is very extensible. BBEdit has a great link to Perl 
development that allows you to compile and run perl programs through the 
MacPerl environment. At this point, I use IDL and BBEdit much like it 
was in a vi and UNIX environment. Edit in BBEdit, switch to IDL and 
compile. It's not worth using a half-assed editor to work with IDL.

-- 
Mike Schienle                                 Interactive Visuals, Inc.
mgs@ivsoftware.com                  Remote Sensing and Image Processing
http://www.ivsoftware.com/         Analysis and Application Development