Coyote's Guide to IDL Programming

	IDL Programming Tips IDL Programming Articles IDL Programming Libraries Coyote Gallery and Code Examples		What's New? Fast Distance Calculation Algorithms Create Multiple Plots on Page Extract Circular ROIs from Image
	IDL Consulting IDL Consulting Services David Fanning's Résumé Contact Information		IDL Training Ask Coyote an IDL Question IDL Training Courses from Coyote Coyote Library On-Line Documentation
	Other IDL Resources The Coyote Store Annotated IDL Links IDL Powerpoint Presentations		IDL Books IDL Programming Books Recommended IDL Books What’s Coyote Reading Now?
	Coyote's Adventures Synopsis of Adventures Munich Adventures Arctic Adventures Creighton School Reunion		Most Popular Articles Using the Coyote Graphics System What If My Coyote Program Doesn't Work? Do You Have IDL Example Programs? Can I Use Greek Symbols in IDL?

David Fanning

Coyote's Guide to IDL Programming is the personal web page for IDL consultant and trainer David Fanning and his alter ego, Coyote. You are never sure what you are going to find here, but it is always guaranteed to be fun, interesting, or vaguely related to IDL^*. The site is especially well known for its IDL Programming Tips, and for its well-written and documented IDL programs, including the programs in the powerful Coyote Graphics System. You can also find the most important article ever written about IDL, JD Smith’s famous explanation of the all-powerful Histogram command: “Histogram: The Breathless Horror and Disgust”.

Coyote

David is the author of several books on IDL programming, including Coyote's Guide to Traditional IDL Graphics and IDL Programming Techniques. Coyote is a poet and ne'er-do-well who has been associated with Fanning for over 20 years. He is the past Chairman of the IDL Expert Programmer's Association, a once famous, but now debauched, association of lecherous programmers known as the “dinosaurs.”

Coyote's Guide to IDL Programming is a resource for people who want to learn more about IDL. I appreciate your comment, suggestions and questions. This is what Mark Hadfield, an IDL user in New Zealand, had to say after he spent some time poking around here:

Your IDL programming site is a BLOODY TREASURE, what we call in New Zealand a "taonga". Excelis should pay you a great deal of money for turning their powerful but cranky data analysis system into something useful, approaching elegance.

Alas, there's no money in it. But I do enjoy hearing from people who read it. Enjoy!

* IDL® is a registered trademark of Exelis Visual Information Systems, Inc. for their Interactive Data Language software. The coyote is a trickster figure in many of the stories David tells to illuminate points in his IDL training courses.