IDL 8.2.2 is now available for download from our website, exelisvis.com. Although it’s primarily a maintenance release (including 104 bugs fixed), it also has some meat, with updates in, primarily, the categories of (New) Graphics, language and file access.
Here’s a more detailed listing of new and improved features:
Graphics
- Improved multiplot and large data performance
- New BOXPLOT, SCATTERPLOT and SCATTERPLOT3D functions
- New SCALE_FACTOR and SCALE_CENTER properties for the IMAGE function
- New properties for displaying the horizon line with MAPGRID
- CURRENT keyword now accepts a window reference
- POSITION property is get/set for all Graphics objects
Language
- Improved random number generator in RANDOMU/RANDOMN
- New TIMESTAMP function constructs ISO 8601 dates/times
- New TIC and TOC routines for timing code
- New !CONST system variable provides values for physical constants
- ROUTINE_FILEPATH, called with no argument, returns path to currently scoped routine
File Access
- CDF library updated to 3.4.1
- HDF4 library updated to 4.2r8
- HDF-EOS library updated to 2.18
Analysis
- New IMAGE_THRESHOLD function provides several automatic image thresholding techniques
- IDL Math & Stats module is now supported on 64-bit Windows and Linux
Workbench
- Editor autocompletes BEGIN-END blocks
- Code is autoindented when pasted into Editor
I’ve prepared a set of programmatic examples that demonstrate several of these improvements; please grab them here [ZIP, 660 KB] and experiment with them!
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Mark,
I have just installed IDL 8.2.2 and… well… I cannot use hashes! I can create them… but they seemingly accept no arguments…
IDL> h=hash()
IDL> h['1']=1
% HASH::VALIDATE: Incorrect number of arguments.
Quite serious stuff
Hi Marc,
This works for me on my Windows & Linux laptops:
IDL> print, !version { x86_64 Win32 Windows Microsoft Windows 8.2.2 Jan 23 2013 64 64} IDL> h = hash() IDL> h['1'] = 1 IDL> print, h 1: 1I’m reaching here, but is there a variable named “hash” used in your session? I’m not sure what else would cause this problem. If you can’t track it down, please contact Tech Support (support@exelisvis.com), and if you would, please post the resolution here in case someone else encounters this problem.
OK, I will send a message our systems are different…
Thanks for your quick reply Mark,
IDL> print, !version
{ x86 Win32 Windows Microsoft Windows 8.2 Apr 10 2012 32 64}
IDL> .reset_session
IDL> h = hash(’1′,1)
% HASH: HASH::VALIDATE: Incorrect number of arguments.
% Execution halted at: $MAIN$
IDL>
So I will contact support!
Mark,
as you can see I messed up with the version I was using, so no problem… my fault. Thks for your time!
No worries, Marc — thank you for reading this blog!
Mark,
I’m working on IDL for my study. But recently, I found that I can’t use function to plot figure, but can use procedure.such as this example which from IDL help :
; Create data representing the sine wave
theory = SIN(2.0*FINDGEN(200)*!PI/25.0)*EXP(-0.02*FINDGEN(200))
; Create the plot
plot = PLOT(theory, “r4D-”, TITLE=”Sine Wave”)
This will produce an error which says’% Keyword PROXY not allowed in call to: _IDLITCONTAINER::SETPROPERTY’,I don’t know why?
Hi Mark,
great blog! You are in the top list of my technical blog in my RSS reader
I want t let you know that I packed the IDL 8.1,8.2 ENVI 5.0 and PostGIS2 documentation in handy docset file to use with Dash (http://kapeli.com/dash/).
There is also a IDLdoc-to-docset script (thanks to Michael Galloy) to create your own IDL library docset. Take a look on my blog here > http://bit.ly/Tzlr55.
Cheers!
Mark:
I am still unsatisfied with the speed of the new plot:
I a newly started IDLDE session:
IDL> print, !version
{ x86_64 Win32 Windows Microsoft Windows 8.2.2 Jan 23 2013 64 64}
IDL> x = DINDGEN(100) & y = x^2
IDL> tic & p = PLOT(x,y, SYMBOL=’+') & toc
% Time elapsed: 799.92300 seconds.
IDL> tic & p = PLOT(x,y, SYMBOL=’+') & toc
% Time elapsed: 12.388000 seconds.
IDL> tic & p = PLOT(x,y, SYMBOL=’+') & toc
% Time elapsed: 10.079000 seconds.
What’s wrong here ?
Hi Theo,
NG are hardware dependent. If you have an older machine, or a machine without a dedicated graphics card, you won’t get good performance. Actually, the graphics card is more important. Here’s the result of running your example on my 6 year old ThinkPad T61:
IDL> print, !version { x86_64 linux unix linux 8.2.2 Jan 23 2013 64 64} IDL> x = dindgen(100) & y = x^2 IDL> tic & p = plot(x,y, SYMBOL='+') & toc % Loaded DLM: XML. % Time elapsed: 2.3488359 seconds. IDL> tic & p = plot(x,y, SYMBOL='+') & toc % Time elapsed: 0.34314108 seconds. IDL> tic & p = plot(x,y, SYMBOL='+') & toc % Time elapsed: 0.34963512 seconds.Though old, this laptop does have a business-class graphics card: a Quadro 140M.
My laptop is 1 yr old Thinkpad X220 with grafic card = “Intel(R) HD Graphics Family” using an Intel driver released 2012-May-25. I also use a second monitor … Thanks for fast response, I will try on other machines with different graphic cards.
Yup, that’s it! “Intel(R) HD Graphics Family” = graphics capability integrated into the CPU, which is slow.
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