Re: OPLOT fails intermittently, any ideas?

[bleau(at)umtof.umd.edu (Lawrence Bleau)]

In article <3B558E4C.15326C2C@fz-juelich.de>, Reimar Bauer <r.bauer@fz-juelich.de> writes:
>If you are able to make sav files of the data when it happens,
>some of us in this news group probably could see if it will be a problem
>in idl5.4 /idl5.4.1 too.
>
>We need for this test a small programm script and the sav data.

Done.  Go to umtof.umd.edu, anonymous ftp, and get the files bug.pro and
oplot_saveall.sav .  Do a .run bug.pro, it'll do the restore and the plot/oplot
pair.

I'm using Z-buffer, btw.

>And you should give this to technical support at rsinc too.

I already did.  Actually, I just received a reply from them this morning, not
good.  Here's what Doug Loucks, Technical Support Engineer for RSI, said:

>Thank you for helping out with a test case.
>
>We verified that this is a bug and it appears in IDL 5.5 as well, so it
>isn't restricted to the VMS platform.
>
>Unfortunately, we don't know of a way to work around the problem at this
>time. You might try removing the PSYM; we found that the problem did not
>occur if PSYM is not used. If you can find another approach that doesn't use
>the Z Buffer, that might help.
>
>This bug may be very difficult to track down, since it seems to be related
>to combinations of OPLOT, PSYM, and the Z Buffer.
>
>Apologies for any inconveniences ths may have caused. The information and
>test case you have provided are valuable and we appreciate your efforts in
>putting them together.

My thanks to Doug for confirming this is a problem elsewhere.  Now to fix
it....  If any of you comes up with a combo that works around the bug, please
inform this group and I'll test it on my system.  I use the Z-buffer to have
IDL prepare - in a noninteractive session - a plot to be written to a disk file
in GIF format.


Lawrence Bleau
University of Maryland
Physics Dept., Space Physics Group
301-405-6223
bleau@umtof.umd.edu