Review of IDL

10. Additional Information

10.1 Availability

IDL is available direct form RSI. A version is available to download from their Web site (http://www.rsinc.com). This will run in a demonstration mode for 10 minutes. A student version is also available. This has most of the functionality of the full version with the exceptions that:

array sizes are limited
integration with external programs is disabled
Scientific data formats are not supported
Insight is not included

10.2 Online Resources

There is an active newsgroup, comp.lang.idl-pvwave discussing all aspects of IDL. The newsgroup is named to distinguish it from comp.lang.idl which is concerned with the other IDL, the Interface Definition Language.

There a large number of WWW sites containing IDL information and public-domain IDL functions and procedures. Two of the most useful site are:

http://ww2.sd.cybernex.net/~mgs/idl_faq.html - contains the IDL FAQ with a good list of other FTP and WWW sites containing libraries.
http://nis-www.lanl.gov/~uk2/idl/search_idl.cgi - a searchable index of a large number of IDL routines

10.3 Further Reading

Foley and Van Dam, Fundamentals of Interactive Computer Graphics, Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., 1982.

"Interpolation of Data on the Surface of a Sphere", R. Renka, Oak Ridge National Laboratory Report ORNL/CSD-108, 1982

Review of Visualization Systems. Advisory Group on Computer Graphics Technical Report 1995.

Graphics Multimedia Virtual Environments Visualisation Contents