Re: IDL/Wave alternatives

[hcp(at)newsread.ed.ac.uk (H C Pumphrey)]

Hi Jarle and everyone,

Firstly, thanks to Jarle for some comments about PerlDL  -- it is good to have
these from closer to the horses mouth than I am!

In article <woblmvdrpqn.fsf@opsay.physics.ox.ac.uk>, Jarle Brinchmann <jarle@astro.ox.ac.uk> writes:
|> hcp@newsread.ed.ac.uk (H C Pumphrey) writes:
|> > 
|> > (5) PerlDL
|> > ----------
|> > PROS: It _is_ perl, with add-ons.
|> > CONS: It _is_ perl, with add-ons. 2-D graphics done via pgplot, which is 
|> > not true free software. No geographical maps.
|>  [snip]
|> Re: Graphics
|> - A package to do geographical maps was just created for PDL.

Ooooh, I'm glad to stand corrected here! Is that going to be distributed
with PDL iteself or does it come from elsewhere?

|> In addition for many IDL users it might be of interest that there is
|> no interface to HDF (although I am writing one), but there is one for
|> netCDF.

That puts PerlDL in the same boat as Yorick, more or less. Yorick has some 
NetCDF support, but no HDF support. (David Munro had a good go at this a 
while back and I have spent a few hours trying to get his code to work
before deciding that I don't know enough about HDF.)

.. Which brings me to another question -- Jarle, Is the HDF interface you 
are working on support for HDF4.1rX or HDF5 ? These appear to be
humongously different.  And _that_ puts me right back on topic for 
this newsfroup: The HDF support in IDL looks like it is for  HDF4.1rX. 
Does anyone know if and when RSI plan to support HDF5 in IDL? The project
I work on is threatening to go over to HDF5 on some unspecified timescale.


All the best

Hugh

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