Re: emacs idlwave-shell

["J.D. Smith" <jdsmith(at)astro.cornell.edu>]

Alan Barnett wrote:
> 
> When I try to run idlwave-shell on emacs version 9.30, it fails, and I get
> the error message
> 
> Symbols value as varable is void: :tag
> 
> What does this mean, and how do I fix it?
> 
> I run idlsave successfully on other machines running emacs 20.2.2 and 20.3.1.
> 
> I'm running idlwave-shell version 3.5

Carsten mentions the need for Emacs 20.3 or XEmacs 20.4 on the site
(http://www.strw.leidenuniv.nl/~dominik/Tools/idlwave/).  I'm not sure how much
compatibility for older emacsen is left (I presume you meant 19.30), but I'd
suspect this is your problem.  

On a similar note, a new version of IDLWAVE, with a ton of outstanding new
features, is due out shortly (we've been in the debug cycle for months ...
actually I debug and bicker and request features and Carsten codes -- not
exactly a fair deal).  I think it will pull not a few people over from the IDLDE
dark side.  

Just to whet your appetites with one of the tasty new morsels... who here has
not suffered for hours or days under the opprobrium of a bug which, upon closer
inspection, reveals itself to be merely a namespace conflict (a "shadow"), with
a routine from another library on your !PATH, or even (gasp) RSI's library? 
With the newest version of IDLWAVE, due out "real soon now", we are finally
freed from this tyranny, thanks to the complete namespace information IDLWAVE
offers from its unique vantage point.  You can even search all of your catalog,
the RSI supplied system routines, anything compiled into the shell, and any
routine visited in a buffer for a master list of name shadows, sorted by
likelihood of IDL actually using that version!  Let's see the DE do that.  

Watch this space for release announcements. 

JD

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