updated IDL DLM code on www.rlkling.com

[Ronn Kling <ronn(at)rlkling.com>]

All,

Randall Frank has just sent me an update to his files on my web site.
These routines do the following.

This release consists of the following broad features:

	* Sockets API for Windows and Unix
	* An interface to gzip compression for files and variables
	* An async sound playing API for Windows (DirectSound based)
	* A polygon mesh decimation routine
	* A TWAIN interface for Windows
	* An array slabbing API
!NEW!   * A generic interface for calling Windows DLL functions directly

the link is www.rlkling.com under freeware.

The idl_tools_bin contains the dlm and dll for IDL53 on windows.
idl_tools_src contains the source so that routines can be built on other
platforms.

The newest addition is the generic interface to Windows DLL's.  This new
function, called extproc is a cross between call_external and
link_image.  With this routine you can call any windows dll whether it
uses the CDECL or stdcall convention.  It is similiar to link_image
in that you initialize the routines once and then use them.  It
resembles call_external in the way that you call the initialization
routine.  For example, say that you wanted to use the double precision
sin function in msvcrt.dll. This is what you would do.

 IDL > print,EXTPROC_DEFINE("mysin","msvcrt.dll","sin","d(d)",/CDECL)

This defines the function MYSIN() to IDL to take a single argument (as a
double) and to return a double.  From this point on (in the IDL session)
you can use mysin as a standard IDL function. Note that the big
advantage of this is that you do not have to write any of the normal IDL
to C wrappers.  The README contained in the zip files give more details.

These are "provided as is" so make sure you test them before you use
them.


-Ronn



--
Ronn Kling
Ronn Kling Consulting
Application Development with IDL book at : http://www.rlkling.com
UPDATED FOR IDL 5.3!
email: ronn@rlkling.com
Shareware and Freeware at: http://www.rlkling.com/


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