lessons learned from ion-script

[Peter Brooker <ra5589(at)email.sps.mot.com>]

I recently ported an idl program to ion script. It had 5 inputs on the
html page and used these to generate a plot. It is now possible to
execute this program from the web. Those of you who are thinking of
wanting to make an idl program accessible from the web might find the
following information useful.

-Apache web server installed on my NT without problem and seemed to
start fine.
-In order to get apache to work I needed to modify my proxy settings in
Netscape. Once this was done, apache worked fine.
-Paul Sommer took me through the configuration of Ion-Script and sent me
the license for a 30 day free trial. I am not sure I could have done
this step without his help. All ion examples worked.
-I found which html page apache was displaying and modified it line by
line to point to include the link to my program. I think this was
"index_en.html"
-I placed the IDL programs that are to be executed in a sub directory of
"lib" under idl_ion. Ion script was able to find them there.
-Make sure to turn on the debug option. This creates a file that will
give clues as to why the plots are not showing up.
-I wound up putting the *.ion files that I wrote in the same place as
the ion-examples provided with the installation.
-I would up starting with the example "ex1_frame.ion"

hope somebody finds this useful

Peter Brooker