Frequently Asked Questions about IDL

The following are questions that have been submitted to the ITC Research Computing Support Group email address res-consult@virginia.edu concerning the technical computing software IDL.

  1. Is there anything I should do to prepare IDL for cross-platform development? I can't seem to get color tables to work.
  2. I ran idl_setup but but when I run idl I keep getting the following error:
    Unable to open validation file: /common/rsi/idl_5.3/idl.genver. No such file or directory
  3. My IDL code crashes and dumps core, apparently when it calls a widget like DIALOG_PICKFILE or XLOADCT on the Sun Ultra 60 and Orange workstations in the unixlab. I noticed that when loading up idlde (the development environment), it gives an error like:
    Warning: Cannot convert string "-dt-interface system-medium-r-normal-m*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*" to type FontSet
    Warning: Unable to load any usable fontset
    Warning:
    Name: FONTLIST_DEFAULT_TAG_STRING
    Class: XmRendition
    Conversion failed. Cannot load font.

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  1. Is there anything I should do to prepare IDL for cross-platform development? I can't seem to get color tables to work.
    Create a text file called "startup.pro" in the main IDL directory 
(usually "C:\Program Files\IDL**" where "**" indicates the version number)
Add the following text to the file and then save and close the file:
    DEVICE, RETAIN=2, DECOMPOSED=0
    Click on File | Preferences... from the menu.  Once the Preference window opens, 
click on the "Startup" tab and find and select the startup.pro file under 
"Startup file:" by clicking on the "Browse..." button.

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  2. I ran idl_setup but but when I run idl I keep getting the following error:
    Unable to open validation file: /common/rsi/idl_5.3/idl.genver. No such file or directory 

    Its most likely because you have the variable LM_LICENSE_FILE set to
point someplace other that the IDL license file. You can see if this
is the case by typing

  echo $LM_LICENSE_FILE

You then need to remove the variable definition.

For C shell:

  unsetenv LM_LICENSE_FILE

For K shell

  unset LM_LICENSE_FILE

Then IDL should work.

DATE: 10/13/00

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  3. My IDL code crashes and dumps core, apparently when it calls a widget like DIALOG_PICKFILE or XLOADCT on the Sun Ultra 60 and Orange workstations in the unixlab.
    This happens because Solaris 8 has changed how it handles font substitution when
executing 64-bit programs like idlde.  There is an immediate workaround found in
Research Systems Article 3091.

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