Re: An IDL STRTOK??? Was: TextoIDL Broken and Gone?

[Nick Bower <bowern(at)ses.curtin.edu.au>]

Nice pages - I did look at those originally.  There are a couple of important
problems though.

You are distributing the separate routines, but have a broken link to the
tarball (the preferred method of downloading).  So I missed the little "source
code" links in the separate routine pages, after finding the main download link
didn't work.  How about tarring up those rouintes and providing a local link to
the tarball? :)

Most importantly however, some information is required on your page that states
you are distributing modified versions of the routines - they say v1.2 but they
*aren't*.  I have the original version 1.2 distribution and it isn't the same
(mine has the strtok problem).  Maybe call yours 1.21?

This is kinda important because I (and other new users) who are unfamiliar with
the strtok debacle will not know that the 1.2 distribution floating around is
different to yours, which contains renamed functions.

I didn't know the problem was strtok, so wasted 2 hours trying to read the code
for bugs. :-(

If we're worried about breaking the law here by first asking for Matt's
permission, well as far as i can see, the copyright doesn't belong to Matt
anyway.  So since Joern is already distributing.... ;)

Craig - I saw your offer.  Maybe if Joern doesn't want to fix up the versioning
you could and redistribute on your page?

cheers, nick.


Joern Wilms wrote:

> In article <onbst8eczg.fsf@cow.physics.wisc.edu>,
> Craig Markwardt  <craigmnet@cow.physics.wisc.edu> wrote:
> >
> >davidf@dfanning.com (David Fanning) writes:
> >> Nick Bower (bowern@ses.curtin.edu.au) writes:
> >>
> >> > This really sucks and it's most unfortunate that such a well-known
> >> > package like this has been inadvertently clobbered without a hint of
> >> > documentation.
> >>
>
> [snip]
>
> >
> >Yes, STRTOK was one of the things I mentioned in my rant a few days
> >ago.  As I understand, STRTOK, was and is an undocumented built-in
> >function.  And obviously, is incompatible with the version in
> >TextoIDL.
> >
> >I have done a little research.  It does indeed seem that Mr. Craig's
> >host of TextoIDL, coma.berkeley.edu has gone off-line.  I cannot find
> >him in the on-line UC Berkeley directory, and the Berekely whois
> >server does not respond.  His web page is still up
> >(http://astron.berkeley.edu/~mcraig/).  Apparently he's a real
> >kayaker.
>
> A while back I was in contact with Matthew Craig and we were allowed to host
> textoidl at
>
> http://astro.uni-tuebingen.de/software/idl/textoidl/index.html
>
> I have not heard from him since, but the code on the web-page runs on 5.3
>
> Joern
>
> >
> >I would be glad to host TextoIDL on my web page.  It can be
> >distributed without modifications no problem.  However the terms of
> >redistribution forbid changes, so we couldn't fix the STRTOK problem.
> >
> >Is there anybody here from the UC Berkeley Astronomy department who
> >knows what happened to Mr. Craig?  I have sent a note to his former
> >email address.  We will see what happens.
> >
> >Craig
> >
> >--
> >--------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >Craig B. Markwardt, Ph.D.         EMAIL:    craigmnet@cow.physics.wisc.edu
> >Astrophysics, IDL, Finance, Derivatives | Remove "net" for better response
> >--------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> --
> Dr. Joern Wilms                                       Linsenbergstr. 33
> Univ. Tuebingen, Institute for Astronomy              D-72074 Tuebingen
> Waldhaeuser Str. 64                           (phone) +49 7071 29-76128
> D-72076 Tuebingen, Germany                 wilms@astro.uni-tuebingen.de