Re: Interesting IDLgrContour Bug

[Harold Cline <hjcline(at)home.com>]

Thank you very much for understanding and also for being persistent in
plowing through this with us.

Have a great weekend,
Harold Cline, RSI

David Fanning wrote:
> 
> Harold Cline (harold@rsinc.com) writes:
> 
> > The bug itself is already being investigated, I wanted to follow-up on
> > the customer service issue.
> >
> > Upon investigating the reply, I find that it was simply a
> > miscommunication.  My apologies to David if he felt he was being brushed
> > aside.  The tech support engineer intended to convey that it is beyond
> > the scope of technical support to address a bug when it is presented
> > within a large section of code or an application.  In order to
> > effectively deal with the bug, we need to be presented with the smallest
> > possible case or example which illustrates the bug.  Please refer to
> > this tech tip for details:
> > http://www.researchsystems.com/services/output.cfm?tip_id=2988.
> >
> > I apologize for this misundertanding and am in turn following up with
> > technical support to make sure that we do not cause a similar
> > misunderstanding in the future.
> 
> The misunderstanding was probably entirely my fault.
> I discovered the problem in an IDL graphics objects
> program, which--as anyone who has written one knows--
> can be quite large. However, the suspect code was
> quite small and isolated to just 8-10 lines in the
> larger program. I wrote a small test program to
> illustrate the differences between the object program
> and identical code in a direct graphics contour plot,
> and I offered an explanation of what I thought was the
> problem with the IDLgrContour object.
> 
> But what I probably failed to do was indicate as clearly
> as I could have where the isolated code was in the
> larger program. I frankly don't blame the engineer
> for telling me to spend some more time on it. I think
> I would have done the same thing under the circumstances.
> 
> Subsequent discussions with RSI engineers about the
> problem have, of course, proved once again that nothing
> with computer software is as simple as it seems. But
> I think we have all come to a better understanding of
> what the problem is. I now understand *why* the problem
> occurs and can see that RSI has reasonable arguments
> for how the contour object works. I think I demonstrated
> to their satisfaction that under particular circumstances
> their approach doesn't produce the expected result. I'm
> perfectly satisfied now that we both understand one another.
> 
> 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/
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