Re: Top 10 IDL Requests

[Bruce Bowler <bbowler(at)bigelow.org>]

HTML help?  Ickkk...

On the subject of help, I was reading one of the paper manuals (don't
recall which one) a few weeks ago (it's just not the same taking a
computer to "the reading room") and stumbled across a line that almost
made me fall off "the chair".  It said (paraphrasing since I can't find
the original page, and, remember this is the PAPER copy of the
documentation) "click here for more information about 'x'".

Someone else somewhere else mentioned that they thought the RT license
should be cheaper...  Let me add another "business practices" issue to
the top 10.  If RSI wants to gain inroads into big (or little) business,
they should _GIVE AWAY_ the student edition (some would say that $79 is
"giving it away" but I would (obviously) disagree).  Oh yeah, keep it up
to date, the web site says the current version is based on 5.0, why
isn't the current SV based on 5.3?

My (as an IDL novice) number 1 issue would be to "clean up the syntax". 
Some specific suggestions (I "grew up" using FORTRAN and VMS if that
helps explain my position at all)

- get rid of the comma that immediately follows a command 
- it ain't intutitive that /argument is equivalent to argument=1, I
prefer the latter.

I'm sure people who have been around IDL longer than I have probably
have more things they dislike about the syntax...

I guess that's enough for now...


wmc@bas.ac.uk wrote:
> 
> Luis Alonso <luis.alonso@uv.es> wrote:
> >I use IDL's help every day.
> 
> >> IDL Online Help facility, and I heartily believe that this help
> >> facility is one of IDL's strongest and most oft-neglected points.
> 
> !?! One of my requests would be to throw away the current help system
> and provide an html-based version.
> 
> The other big request would be to make "contour" work properly
> so that /cell_fill is unnecessary. I mean, in this day and age...
> 
> -W.
> 
> ps - sorry no wit...
> 
> --
> William M Connolley | wmc@bas.ac.uk | http://www.nerc-bas.ac.uk/icd/wmc/
> Climate Modeller, British Antarctic Survey | Disclaimer: I speak for myself