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Date: Wed, 18 Oct 1995 22:48:17 -0600
From: Nate Williams <nate@rocky.sri.MT.net>
Message-Id: <199510190448.WAA12096@rocky.sri.MT.net>
To: current@FreeBSD.org
Subject: IDL and FreeBSD
Sender: owner-current@FreeBSD.org
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I can now say with assurance that FreeBSD can indeed run the Linux
version of IDL.  I installed it this afternoon, and finally tonight
tracked down a bug where the IDL libraries routines weren't being found
and was able to run all of the demos and run a little program of my own.

For those who want a quick overview on what IDL is, I make the
following, and apologize to RSI Inc. for any mis-representation, and
encourage users of IDL to speak up and help me out here.

IDL is a high-level language that allows one to write programs very
quickly and easily, including GUI's and the works.  It also lets one
integrate in C, Fortran, and other languages code.  It some ways it's a
lot like TCL/TK, except that it's at a much higher level.  Building a
GUI in IDL is very easy once you get past the initial learning curve.

However, IDL requires run-time royalties, and it's quite expensive.

But, it's used by quite a few folks, and SRI is using it now so I
thought I'd give it a shot under the Linux emulator.  The pentium box
running Linux-emulation under FreeBSD runs IDL about 2-3x faster than
the SPARC 5 I would normally use, so you can understand my interest.

If folks are interested, I could write-up a HOW-TO sheet to explain how
to get it running, but I'm not going to take the time if no one is
interested.  It took a bit of time to track down a couple bugs, and one
was quite strange to say the least but is easily fixed once one
understands the problem.

In any case, congratulations to S'ren for a great emulation package.
The only NO-OP is get is from syslog, and although I'd like to fix it I
don't know where to begin.

Thanks!


Nate