IDL Program Updates

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

Hi Folks,

Someone (I won't say who because I don't want to embarrass him)
actually downloaded the program XWindow, a "smart" resizeable
graphics window, from my web page. And low and behold it didn't
work the way it was suppose to work. What he found is that
when he grabbed the window on a UNIX machine and just resized
in the X direction that the Y direction changed as well, if just
by a small amount. 

I had never seen this behavior. But then I don't usually run
my programs on UNIX machines either. In any case, this behavior
turns out to be a bug in (at least) the 5.2 version of IDL,
in which the event.x and event.y fields of a resizeable
top-level base that has a menu bar inside it reports the
wrong size information. The work-around is to keep track of
the top-level base size yourself, and then to update the size
with the difference between the old size and the new size, 
obtained like this:

   Widget_Control, event.top, TLB_GET_SIZE=newsize

So, if anyone else has downloaded this program (doubtful,
apparently) I put a new version on my web page that has
the work-around incorporated in it:

   http://www.dfanning.com/programs/xwindow.pro

I have also been working through a lot of my old object
graphics programs (XPLOT, XSURFACE, and XCONTOUR) fixing
things that I didn't used to understand and re-arranging 
code so that it makes more sense, etc. These programs are
MUCH better than they used to be. So if anyone uses them,
even as examples, you might want to get an update.

You can find them here:

  http://www.dfanning.com/documents/programs.html

Another program that has seen recent upgrades is TVImage.
This replacement for the TV command can now set the decomposed 
keyword correctly depending upon whether the image is 8-bit or
24-bit, so you don't have to worry about setting it, 
works the same in PostScript and on the display, works with
!P.MULTI, and even has a keyword to make it display images
(if you want to) *exactly* like the TV command, but with the
decomposed smarts left in. You can find it here:

   http://www.dfanning.com/programs/tvimage.pro

Cheers,

David

-- 
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