Locating a (bitmap) file

[Dave Greenwood <greenwoodde(at)ornl.gov>]

Using IDL 5.3 and Windows NT I've created an IDL windows application
(thanks to the kind folks who responded to my recent posting on the
subject).  My application uses a couple of color bitmap labels which
are stored as .bmp files.  The application will be used on multiple
systems, possibly in a separate location on each system.  I'd prefer
not to hard code the location of the .bmp files.  The question is how?

I suppose I could use findfile to search candidate locations, but
that still requires advance knowledge of each system where the
application is used.

I wouldn't mind requiring the .bmp and .sav files to be in the same
directory if I could somehow find out from within my application
where the .sav file is located.  Is that possible?  (I tried !DIR but
it points to some place in the RSI distribution.)

Is there a way to return a color bitmap from an IDL function like you
can with a b/w bitmap?  That way I could compile the function and
store it in the save file.

Since I'm not particularly experienced with IDL, I'm hoping that I've
missed some (potentially obvious) way of dealing with this.

Thanks,
Dave
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Dave Greenwood                Email: Greenwoodde@ORNL.GOV
Oak Ridge National Lab        %STD-W-DISCLAIMER, I only speak for myself