Re: IDL i/o on G4

[dima(at)cholla.phys.unm.edu (Dmitri A. Sergatskov)]

On Thu, 15 Mar 2001 18:40:38 -0500, JD Smith <jdsmith@astro.cornell.edu> wrote:
>"Dmitri A. Sergatskov" wrote:
>
>> 
...<deleted>...

>
>Since RSI and Apple seem so chummy lately (reading that press release),
>I'm sure Steve mentioned their new little OS project on the horizon. 
>Time will tell.

Well, long time ago I was hoping that PPC will free us from Intel
misery... Now I am old and not that optimistic.

>
>And not to proselytize, but you could get two of them for that price:
>
>New! Titanium PowerBook G4 400MHz
>400MHz G4, 128MB SDRAM, 10GB Hard Drive, Slot Load DVD, 56K Modem, 15.2"
>Mega Wide Screen.
>Extra 128MB RAM FREE!*
>Only $2,594! 
>

Well. Configuration I had in mind had 500MHz and 512Meg. It was over $4500.

>
>I have used almost exclusively Linux IDL.  I find it very stable.  The

When did you start? The last time I played around with IDL on Linux
was more then 2 years ago. I manged to crash it more then once not
doing anything radical (in terms of memory allocation etc...).
The graphics problem was extreamly irritating as well. It just did not
feel like a finished product. The Matlab that we used at the same time 
looked much more mature. In fact I do not remember Matlab _ever_ crashing 
on either me or anyone in our group in the last 4+ years we are using it
(on Linux).

>problem you refer to has to do with hardware and the free X display
>servers, not IDL, and has been (partially) alleviated with XFree86
>v4.0.  It's the inability to simultaneously *overlay* an 8-bit
>pseudo-color visual on a native 24-bit Truecolor session.  Usually you
>want to do this to accomodate a program written in a color-depth
>specific way (yes David, it is a crime).  Overlay functionality has been
>typical of most unix workstation video hardware for a long time, but has
>only recently been catching on among standard PC components.  The Matrox
>cards are a good example.
>
I heard that Matrox G450 supports overlays, is it true?

Soon after my last evaluation of IDL I read a news that XiG (or whatever
it was called back then) released AcceleratedX X11 server that
emulated overlays in software.

>
>JD

Regards,

Dmitri.