Fanning Software Consulting

Ask an IDL Question

The best way to ask an IDL question is to ask it on the IDL Newsgroup, where everyone can benefit from the answer. Not only that, but there are IDL users there who are experts in far more areas than I am. It is a fun, friendly community that welcomes new members and newby questions. You will not get flamed there. There are various ways to access the newsgroup. I think you will like it. I hang out there a lot!

If you feel uncomfortable with the newsgroup, I am more than happy to answer IDL questions. I love to do it and I find it is a great way for me to learn more about IDL. But I am an IDL consultant and I write IDL programs for a living. Please do not ask me to:

  1. Write a program for you.
  2. Do your homework.
  3. Look at more than short sections of IDL code (unless I ask to see it).
  4. Explain a complicated topic in three paragraphs.

Unless, of course, you are prepared to purchase consulting. If you send an unsolicited e-mail with a 1 MByte attachment, you will probably never hear from me again and will certainly never make it out of my spam filter in the future.

I probably answer most e-mail questions on the day I receive them. Occasionally I am traveling and/or busy with my own projects and cannot take the time to answer immediately. I answer 99.9 percent of the e-mail that reaches me, eventually. (Sometimes e-mail gets caught by my spam filter and doesn't reach me. Having an informative subject line and including your signature block in the e-mail will help it get through.) Demanding an immediate answer (without including your credit card details) usually gets you pushed back to the end of the line and may delay an answer indefinitely.

If this is the first time you have asked an IDL question, please read the this article carefully. The quality of the answer you get may well depend on it.

You can send me e-mail here: david at idlcoyote dot com. Please put IDL QUESTION in the subject header, or it is extremely likely it will be caught in my spam filter and go unseen.

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Web Coyote's Guide to IDL Programming