Re: 'GNU Data Language', a GPL'ed IDL variant

[Carlo Segre <segre@iit.edu>]

Arnd:

On Wed, 4 Jan 2006, Arnd Baecker wrote:

> On Wed, 4 Jan 2006, Carlo Segre wrote:
>
> > Dirk:
> >
> > I had not heard of this but have been looking for an IDL replacement.  If
> > it has a python interface, even better.
>
> You might also consider to go straight to python
> by using Numeric or numarray (soon to be superseeded
> by `numpy`) for Array operations
> together with scipy (http://www.scipy.org) and
> - matplotlib http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/
>  for very nice 2D plotting
> - MayaVi (http://mayavi.sourceforge.net/)
>  or MayaVi2 (http://www.enthought.com/enthought/wiki/MayaVi,
>  under development)
>  for 3D Visualization
> - HDF5: http://pytables.sourceforge.net/
> - wxPython/pyQt/pyGTK
>
> I think that all the above (apart from MayaVi2) is already
> in Quantian (and therefore exists as debian packages ...)

Yes, we do this already but some of the users at our beamline want to use 
IDL macros and this might give us the opportunity to support them, to 
allow other users to use the same interfaces at home without the heavy 
licensing costs of IDL.  Any new software we write for the purpose is 
already in python with matplotlib but thsi has a place too.

Carlo


--
Carlo U. Segre -- Professor of Physics
Associate Dean for Special Projects, Graduate College
Illinois Institute of Technology
Voice: 312.567.3498            Fax: 312.567.3494
Carlo.Segre@iit.edu    http://www.iit.edu/~segre