Re: FSC_surface and xsurface under LINUX/IDL5.3

[davidf(at)dfanning.com (David Fanning)]

Andrew Meigs (ameigs@jet.uk) writes:

> This is a question that I probably should have put to David alone, but it
> could be a general object graphics problem under LINUX. So here goes:
> 
> I have been using David Fanning's object graphics surface plotting routines,
> xsurface and recently fsc_surface, under Win-NT4 with no problems; however
> under Linux and IDL5.3 the resizing feature seems to not work. The plotted
> window 'wants' to be one size no matter how big or small you make the window
> frame. All other features seem to work well.
> 
> Has anyone had similar problems with IDL under LINUX? Does anyone know of a
> solution?

This reminds me that I *have* to find some time to
update my web page. Unfortunately (fortunately?), I'm
selling so many books this week there is no time. :-)

This turns out to be a bug in IDL 5.3. I wrote these
programs to be "object graphic" example programs. Thus,
when the window is resized, I wanted to dimension the 
window in the "object-graphics" way. So I do this:

   info.theWindow->SetProperty, Dimensions[event.x, event.y]

This works in all but the UNIX versions of IDL 5.3
apparently, so I wasn't aware of the problem until 
recently.

The work-around is to simply resize the draw widget:

   Widget_Control, info.drawID, Draw_XSize=event.x, Draw_YSize=event.y

But since the "proper" way is working in IDL 5.4
(as I understand it), I'm reluctant to put in a kludgy
work-around.

Anyway, I wanted to get an article written that explains
the problem. (And I guess I have it about half done now.)
If you have problems getting your version to work, let me
know and I'll send you the fix.

Cheers,

David

> BTW: David's new book is excellent.

You wouldn't want to tell that to the folks at Amazon
would you? Thanks to so many old friends my book is
rocketing up the charts again, but friendly reviews do
wonders for book sales. The downside, of course, is that
I have less time to write articles. :-)
-- 
David Fanning, Ph.D.
Fanning Software Consulting
Phone: 970-221-0438 E-Mail: davidf@dfanning.com
Coyote's Guide to IDL Programming: http://www.dfanning.com/
Toll-Free IDL Book Orders: 1-888-461-0155