New book: "Practical IDL Programming"

["Liam Gumley" <Liam.Gumley(at)ssec.wisc.edu>]

Dear Colleagues,

I am pleased to announce that my book "Practical IDL Programming" will be
published by Morgan Kaufmann on July 6, 2001. Here are the details:

Practical IDL Programming: Creating Effective Data Analysis and
Visualization Applications
by Liam E. Gumley

Foreword by David Stern
Founder and Chief Technologist, Research Systems Inc.

508 pages, Paperback
ISBN 1-55860-700-5
Morgan Kaufmann Publishers

For more information about the book, including an extended table of
contents; links to my favorite IDL resources on the Web; a list of other
recommended books; and a growing collection of IDL software, visit the
accompanying web site:

http://www.gumley.com/

My philosophy in writing the book was to start with the fundamentals of
procedural programming in IDL (syntax, program construction, I/O, direct
graphics), followed by application of the fundamentals to real world
problems (plotting, imaging, creating graphical output, graphical user
interfaces). At every stage in the book, I have augmented the text with
figures, command-line examples, non-trivial sample programs, and tables that
list the most useful information about a particular topic (e.g., commonly
used keywords). I have also highlighted 'Notes' that deserve extra
consideration, and 'Tips' that are only discovered after many years of IDL
programming.

The book has been in development for almost three years and has benefited
greatly from external reviews by experts in the field. The reviewers and the
editorial staff of the High Performance Computing division at Morgan
Kaufmann Publishers have made the book a much stronger and better organized
reference on IDL. I am confident that programmers at all levels will find
the book informative and useful. Please let me know if you have any
questions or comments about the book.

Regards,
Liam E. Gumley.
http://www.gumley.com/