Links to Other IDL Resources
It seems the amount of information about IDL on the World Wide Web is
increasing exponentially these days. Here are a few of my favorite links.
Each site listed here has links to other related sites. If you would like
to have your site listed here, send me an e-mail
and I will include it.
The place to start any search for any IDL-related material is the ITTVIS homepage.
Other Interesting Sites
Here are a few other sites you might also wish to look at.
|
|
|
This site contains some of the best examples of IDL programs, in a variety
of categories. I wouldn't think of writing a new IDL program unless I checked
here to see if it had already been written. Be sure to download the catalog
of one-line program descriptions. |
|
|
|
This site is a general repository of general purpose IDL astronomy routines.
If you are looking for a routine to read FITS files, this is the place to
start. You can browse through a list of one-line descriptions and download
the files directly. |
|
|
|
This site is fast becoming my "go to" site when I am looking for interesting code.
The curve fitting routines Craig offers are superiour to the ones that come with
IDL, and there is an excellent curve fitting tutorial here, as well. In addition,
you will find some of the best array manipulation routines to be found anywhere on
the web. The routine CMSET_OP for performing set operations (intersection, union,
and exclusive OR) is great, as is CMAPPLY, a program that can
flexibly perform almost any mathematical
operation on an array or a portion of an array. You owe yourself a look at this site.
|
|
|
|
This extensive library at ForschungsZentrum Jülich contains over 900 useful routines.
Each is extremely well documented and tested. Perhaps the easiest way to access these routines
if via their handy
catalog. Select a routine of interest, then select the database icon for the routine to
learn more about the library dependencies for each routine. If you select the Get Source button now, you
get a compressed tarball containing the source for all the library routines you need. Very nice. The
library routines are released under the GNU Library General Public License.
|
|
|
|
In addition to being a place to purchase Ronn's three fine IDL books, you will
find a variety of shareware and freeware. For example, you can find an IDL implementation
of a genetic algorithm (e.g., for solving the traveling salesman problem), code for implementing
a sun-clock on a map, dynamic link modules for working with WAV and AVI files, and much more.
Definitely worth having a look.
|
|
|
|
Liam is another person who has become a major programming resource in the
IDL community. You will find a number of useful screen capture and color handling
programs on this site. But I often send folks here for his satellite image
mapping tool, IMAGEMAP. This is the only program I know that takes
satellite image pixel data, with corresponding latitude and longitude coordinates,
and places them on a map projection. You will also find a nice HDF browser for
looking as SDS data sets. Have a look. |
|
|
|
Ken has written an introductory book about IDL. You can
find information about the book and the programs that go with it on his web page. Ken is also a Macintosh
user and his web page has become a wonderful source of Macintosh tips for those of us using Macintosh
computers for scientific research. |
|
|
|
Rick has done a lot of work in 3D object graphics. His camera object is absolutely terrific.
It serves as a replacement for the IDLgrView object and gives you the opportunity to look at
a scene from your point of view, whereas normally the graphics scene looks at you.
(Folks, I didn't write the original code! But I can tell you this is a much more natural way to work with data.) Also, if you are looking for quaternions, here is the place. This site is a must for working with 3D object graphics. And if you have an older version of IDL for Windows and you need
more user interactivity, look at Rick's directInput.dlm. Now you, too, can have a joy
stick to navigate your 3D objects!
|
|
|
|
J.D. Smith created the GNU
Emacs modes for editing IDL files and
running IDL as an inferior shell. This IDLWAVE mode is now bundled into EMACS itself. You can find the latest release, tutorials, etc.
here. Everyone who uses this mode swears by it.
|
|
|
|
Robert da Silva started this Wiki to collect a great deal of information about
IDL in one centralized location. I like the spirit and intention of this site, although
I cringe from time to time at the graphics advice offered to new IDL users. It
seems to me most of it is ten years out of date! (I would start everyone with the
Coyote Graphics System (CGS) commands
and just let them avoid all the ancient pitfalls of the normal IDL graphics
routines.)
|
|
|
|
Mark has been doing some interesting work with IDL object programming.
You can find some of his utility routines as well as some nifty object
classes on this site. In particular, have a look at his MGHgrGraph code
for a simple X-Y graph object. There are methods for for adding axes,
plots, annotations etc. The most
convenient thing about it is that atoms added to the graph automatically
have their scaling adjusted to fit the axes. Check out his MGHgrAnimator
object for animating a sequence of object graphics pictures. You will also find
tools for working with netCDF files among the programs in this excellent collection.
|
|
|
|
This site is notable for containing on-line help for over 3000 IDL procedures
and functions written by users all over the world. In addition, you will
find an excellent tutorial by Eric Deutsch on how to produce pretty PostScript
output. |
|
|
|
Rob is an excellent IDL programmer who understands curve fitting inside and out.
Here you can find DAVE (Data Analysis and Visualization Environment), an
integrated environment for the reduction, visualization and analysis of
inelastic neutron scattering data. One of the most interesting pieces of DAVE
is a general purpose curve fitting program with a graphical user interface, named PAN,
which can be downloaded separately. You can also find a neat little widget program
that allows you to solve the Schrodinger equation in one dimension using the
discrete variable approximation. Well worth having a look. |
|
|
|
Robert is a long-time IDL user at the Bureau of Meteorology in Melborne, Australia. He
has been instrumental in organizing IDL user groups in Australia. Robert has done an excellent
job of organizing extensive IDL web resources, especially those of interest to
meteorologists. His Resources page is a must-read for those looking for coast
and shoreline data sets. |
|
|
|
Mike is a former senior instructor and consultant for Research Systems.
He is especially familiar with iTools and has a number of excellent articles
and example programs on this site that deal with this subject. You will be
especially interested in his IDLdoc code for generating nicely formatted and
informative HTML documentation files of your own programs.
|
|
|
|
Matt Craig maintains the TeXtoIDL package that allows users to use TeX style text formatting
from within IDL. Users already familiar with LaTeX will find this package extremely familiar. |
|
|
|
This site contains a number of IDL objects Oliver has written for working with MR images. The documentation is first-rate, and includes a number of example programs and data to get you up to speed quickly. |
|
|
|
Robert is medical imaging programmer at Westmead Hospital in Sydney. His site includes software for working with DICOM images and Remote Procedure Calls (RPC). He has written an IDL object-oriented framework for creating medical imaging applications (Designed to work on E.Soft acquisition workstations). Current packages include software for renal and shunt analysis, gastric emptying, and gated heart pool.
|
Version of IDL used to prepare this article: IDL 7.0.1.
Copyright ©
1996–2018 Fanning Software Consulting, Inc.
Last Updated: 21 March 2011
