IDL 5.4 and gifs

[Craig Markwardt <craigmnet(at)cow.physics.wisc.edu>]

I was visiting someone with IDL 5.4 on Linux today.  I mentioned the
lack of GIF support, and my friend was surprised.  We confirmed that
when we tried to open a GIF, we got an error message.  However there
is an idl_gif.so library file, and WRITE_GIF, READ_GIF, etc still
exists as procedures in the standard library.

We tried the simple experiment of replacing the IDL 5.4 idl_gif.so
library and DLM files with the ones from IDL 5.3.

It worked!  We were able at least to read old GIFs into IDL with no
problem.  I didn't try writing any GIFs however.

Has anybody else tried this and got it to work?  For previous
purchasers of IDL, this at least is a good sign.  :-)

Craig

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Craig B. Markwardt, Ph.D.         EMAIL:    craigmnet@cow.physics.wisc.edu
Astrophysics, IDL, Finance, Derivatives | Remove "net" for better response
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