Re: OPLOT fails intermittently, any ideas?

[tam <tam(at)lheapop.gsfc.nasa.gov>]

Lawrence Bleau wrote:
> 
...> 
> My thanks to Doug for confirming this is a problem elsewhere.  Now to fix
> it....  If any of you comes up with a combo that works around the bug, please
> inform this group and I'll test it on my system.  I use the Z-buffer to have
> IDL prepare - in a noninteractive session - a plot to be written to a disk file
> in GIF format.
> 
> Lawrence Bleau

Purely as a possible workaround...

If you're running on a platform with X-windows and your IDL sessions are
running in an environment in which the console is known, then you could probably
use X-window PIXMAPs instead of the Z buffer.  E.g.,

    set_plot,'X'
    window,1,/pixmap,xsize=nx, ysize=ny
    ... plotting ...
    c = tvrd()
    write_gif,...

shouldn't actually send anything to the display.  

However if the IDL session doesn't know about an X-windows device
this won't work.  So if by non-interactive session you mean a job
on a batch queue this probably doesn't help, but if you just mean
that you're running IDL from a script it might do the trick.

	Tom McGlynn
	NASA/GSFC
        Posted and Mailed