Other Resources
This manual provides examples that will give you a glimpse of the many ways IDL can speed your data analysis, visualization, and cross-platform development tasks. The following are some additional resources that can help you continue learning about IDL.
IDL Documentation
The IDL documentation set is installed along with IDL in hypertext format. To view the documentation, enter "?" at the IDL> prompt or select Help Contents from the Help menu of the IDL Workbench.
IDL's online help system is fully hyperlinked and indexed, and includes a powerful full-text searching mechanism. See Getting Help and the Using IDL Help topic in the IDL Online Help system for information on using the help system itself.
In addition, Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) versions of most books in the IDL documentation set are included in the info/docs directory of the IDL distribution disk.
ITT Visual Information Solutions Web Site
The ITT Visual Information Solutions web site (www.ittvis.com) provides additional information about IDL and other ITT Visual Information Solutions products. On our web site you will find:
- User forums, which allow you to correspond directly with other users of IDL to discuss problems, solutions, and techniques.
- The ITT Visual Information Solutions Code Contribution Library, which allows you to share source code, images, data, and more with other IDL users.
- Tips and Tricks for using IDL.
- Technical Support resources, including a database of common IDL questions and answers.
- Stories about customers' innovative uses of IDL.
IDL Workbench Welcome Page
Numerous local and web-based resources are available within the IDL Workbench interface. Select Welcome from the Help menu to display the Welcome screen, then click on What's New to gain access to up-to-date information from ITT Visual Information Solutions, including news and announcements of new downloadable modules for IDL. Click on Web Resources to get quick access to developer news items, user forums, and other network resources. Click on Tutorials to access short lessons describing how to accomplish common tasks in IDL and the IDL Workbench.
IDL Newsgroup
The IDL newsgroup is an independent forum for IDL users to discuss problems and solutions in IDL. Point your news reading software at the comp.lang.idl-pvwave USENET newsgroup, or use a web-based reader such as
to read and join in the discussion.
