Re: Plotting double precision

["Richard G. French" <rfrench(at)wellesley.edu>]

THis has been a limitation in IDL since the beginning, and it surely
seems that the time has long since come for RSI to update PLOT so that
it can handle double precision. I understand the need for backward
compatibility, so if they want us to add a /DOUBLE keyword, I'm willing
to do it. Can we band together and urge RSI to do something about this
long-standing and unnecessary limitation?

Dick French


Jacques Basson wrote:
> 
> Hi all
> 
> Does anyone know how I can plot double precision values in IDL. The plot
> routine help says:
> 
> Plots created with PLOT are limited to the range and precision of
> single-precision floating-point values.
> 
> Unfortunaltely, this means that values which do not lie in the
> +-10^(+-38) range can't be easily plotted. Of course as luck would have
> it, my values are of the order 10^(-39), and I'd rather not have factors
> of 10 in my labels. The other option would be to take logs before
> plotting rather than using the /ylog keyword, but I prefer the axis
> label to have the value of the variable, rather than its log.
> 
> Thanks
> Jacques Basson