Re: I for Interactive Programming? (was: widget_control and group_leader)

[Vapuser <vapuser(at)catspaw.jpl.nasa.gov>]

  For those willing to learn emacs and Carsten Dominik's marvelous
idlwave_shell mode, you would have no more problems with saving the
results of your 'tappling' at the keyboard. Just start up an instance
of idlwave_shell in emacs and tapple to your hearts delight, then
write the idlwave-shell buffer out to a file. Or, kill/yank
(i.e. cut/paste) it to another buffer, edit it and write that out to a
file.

This is almost the *only* way I develop code anymore, I try stuff
out in emacs/idlwave-shell and then cut/paste it to the 'work in
progress' file. (doesn't work for widgets programming, of course, but
in this area it's the debugging capabilities, which are totally
awesome *d00d* that recommend it)


No more need to remember to turn journalling on or to set
variables to assure that you save enough of your work.

  It does have a steep learning curve, especially if you're not used to
emacs or you're on a Windows/Mac system. If that's the case,
journalling is probably the best bet. But if you're moderately used to
emacs and on a unix system, emacs/idlwave-shell mode simply can't be
beat (IMHO) and it's well worth the effort!

Kudo's to Carsten for his fine work!

William Daffer


Ray Sterner SRO <sterner@tesla.jhuapl.edu> writes:

> Jaco van Gorkom wrote:
> > 
> > Richard G. French wrote:
> > >         ... I used to approach IDL as though
> > > the I in Interactive meant 'interactive programming' - I'd start
> > > a journal file, fiddle with the observations and analysis and display,
> > > edit the journal file, and call it a program. I still take this approach
> > > for rush projects, but taking the few minutes to annotate the code
> > > and reorganize it so that it can be used again is now a high priority
> > > for me.
> > >         Although I have written some widget programs over the years,
> > > I still find myself quite often using IDL in this seat-of-the-pants
> > > mode when I start a new project. I'd be curious to know how many
> > > other readers of this news group use IDL primarily in this way.
> > > Dick French
> > 
> > Hi Dick,
> > 
> > Count me in, I do this all the time. Usually forgetting to start a
> > journal
> > in time and thus cutting and pasting from the log window. I find that it
> > often leads to faster and more 'creative' data analysis, although it is
> > sometimes hard to really take those minutes at the end of the day for
> > reorganizing and annotating the code.
> > 
> >   Jaco
> > 
> >  ------------------------------
> > Jaco van Gorkom            gorkom@rijnh.nl
> > FOM-Instituut voor Plasmafysica Rijnhuizen
> 
>   I work that way a lot too, and never remember to turn on journal.  So
> I wrote a routine
>   called grab_commands.pro that I can call at any point to grab all the
> commands I've
>   used and put them in a file, like turning journal on and getting all
> the previous
>   commands.  It grabs commands from the recall buffer, which by default
> only keeps a few
>   commands.  In my IDL startup file I set !EDIT_INPUT=1000 which should
> cover most cases.
> 
>   It's been awhile since I've updated my public IDL library, but for now
> I've put this
>   routine at http://fermi.jhuapl.edu/temp/grab_commands.pro
>   It should work for any version that has the IDL recall_commands
> routine (not sure when that
>   came in, maybe IDL 5?).  Once you get it just do grab_commands,/help
> for all the deatils.
> 
> -- 
> 
>   Ray Sterner                     ray.sterner@jhuapl.edu 
>   The Johns Hopkins University    North latitude 39.16 degrees.
>   Applied Physics Laboratory      West longitude 76.90 degrees.
>   Laurel, MD 20723-6099

-- 
William Daffer: 818-354-0161: William.Daffer@jpl.nasa.gov