Re: IDL/Wave alternatives

[Randall Smith <rsmith(at)kracko.harvard.edu>]

<aaron@boofura.swcp.com> writes:

> I am looking for an IDL, PV-Wave, MatLab, -like product,
> free and open source.
> 
> Does anybody know of any suggestions?
> 
> I have run into scilab, which seems to be the front-runner to me.
> I once saw a graphing package mentioned in LINUX journal, from
> one of the USA National labs... but it seemed too minimal.
> 
> I'm looking for something to do image processing.
> Writing new algorithms.
> If it has a nice interpreted command language, and open arhitecture,
> I'm willing to add c-modules to do things like import/export of
> various file formats.
> 
> I just want to get images into data arrays that I can then play with.
> 
> Thanks for any help....  including pointers to FAQ's.

Another possibility (although it doesn't have any built-in graphics
per-se) is S-lang (http://space.mit.edu/%7Edavis/slang.html) or ISIS 
(http://space.mit.edu/ASC/ISIS/) which is built on top of S-lang and
does have graphics via pgplot.  It's IDL-like but built with a
stack-based model.  It's quite lightweight, and we've been using it as
a command language built inside our X-ray spectral analysis code. 

Without any built-in graphics, S-lang can't be a drop-in replacement
for IDL, but if you've got a project that could really use a small,
powerful, and IDL-like scripting language, S-lang might be useful to
you.