Operator overloading is the feature in IDL 8.0 that I have been testing the most; I am already using it in a couple of my projects. The behavior of objects when used in expressions containing nearly any of IDL’s operators can be defined through special methods of the object.
Continue reading “IDL 8.0: Operator overloading.”
I watched this “New Features and Functionality in IDL 8.0″ webinar live, but if you missed it, the recorded version is now available. It’s a great overview of the new features in IDL 8.0 by Mark Piper of ITT VIS.
IDL 8.0 introduces yet another help system. The help system inside the Workbench and the web server to view HTML pages are gone. This is welcome for me, as I did not like the 7.x help system and was wondering how long I could reasonably use the IDL Assistant from IDL 6.4. But I primarily use IDL form the command line; Workbench users with only a single monitor may not be as thrilled that they have to have two separate applications open.
Continue reading “IDL 8.0: Help.”
Fundamental data structures like lists and hashes have been needed in IDL for some time, but IDL 8.0 introduces them along with some related features/syntax for object-oriented programming to make them even more useful.
Continue reading “IDL 8.0: Lists and hashes.”
IDL 8.0 is out! Download here (the normally long download was quite fast for me). Stay tuned for a sequence of articles here highlighting features I am excited about in IDL 8.0: lists and hashes, the new graphics routines, operator overloading, language changes, new help system, and Workbench changes.
MetaOptimize has a forum for asking and answering questions about data visualization, like comp.lang.idl-pvwave for visualization issues:
Where data geeks ask and answer questions on machine learning, natural language processing, artificial intelligence, text analysis, information retrieval, search, data mining, statistical modeling, and data visualization!
Haven’t asked/answered a question yet, but it looks like a good resource.
Link via FlowingData.
The site will be down for routine maintenance this evening, July 1, around 10 pm MDT for approximately 6 hours.
Presentations from VISualize 2010 are now on the ITT VIS website. (The PDF file for Paulo Penteado’s presentation looks corrupted to me, but you can download a good version from here.)
Overall, I thought that the talks were great and I learned something interesting and/or useful from each one. I’m particularly excited about the code for producing perceptually uniform color maps that Paulo Penteado promised to release. It is also great to learn a few new facts about IDL 8.0 at each ITT VIS presentation.
