Re: RSI / CreaSo survey: Whish list

[peter(at)hpl.hp.com (Peter Webb)]

Joseph M Zawodny (zawodny@arbd0.larc.nasa.gov) wrote:
: Well since a few other folks are airing their wishes, here are mine.

: - IDL Compiler for development of standalone applications.  Yes I would
:   like to distribute or even sell some programs without requiring the end
:   user to shuck out $1500 for IDL first.  Now if IDL was only a couple
:   of hundred bucks well... maybe we would not need this capability.  I would
:   not mind buying this compiler as a separate option.

Yes.

: - Multi threading for asynchronous widget event processing (eg. this could
:   get you your desired command prompt while running a widget).

Yes.

: - WYSIWYG for printing (sorely needed and a very high priority on my list)

Absolutely.  Since this implies keeping some internal series of commands
to be repeated when the user asks for printing, extend this to automatic 
replot when windows are resized.

: - Dual color tables.  One for "standard items" such as foreground/ background
:   axis lines and labels (this might be only 2-5 colors in length).  The
:   second for color images and contour plots.  This way there would be no need
:   for twiddling either fore/back-ground keywords or scaling images to fit
:   above, below, or between the "standard colors" in a single color table.
:   If you have run into the problem, then you know what I mean.  Maybe this
:   could be implemented by adding a few system variables.

This interacts with the above, since it is images in particular that
don't WYSIWYG very easily.

I'd ask for some work on the programming environment for those of us who
write large applications.  Breakpoint should be able to find the source
code for any routine that lies along the path, without needing explicit
pathnames (the interpreter can find them, why can't breakpoint?).  This
becomes incredibly exasperating if your source code is split over more
than one directory.  If I set a breakpoint on a line, execution should
stop BEFORE that line, not after.  This might seem trivial, but try
setting a breakpoint in a routine which has a for loop followed
immediately by a return.  You can't set the breakpoint anywhere useful.
When I'm stopped at a breakpoint, I should be able to look at the
context of any routine on the call stack, so that I can, for example,
find out what values the stopped-in routine was called with.  

Apart from that, great product!

Peter


--------------------------------
Peter Webb, HP Labs Medical Dept
E-Mail: peter_webb@hpl.hp.com        
Phone: (415) 813-3756