CHAPTER 1

The IDL Development Environment(IDLDE) 1

What is the IDLDE? 1

Development Environment

(DE) layout 1

Command Line 2

Editor Window 4

Project Window 6

Variable Watch Window 7

Help 7

IDL path 8

Important Command Line

commands 8

CHAPTER 2 IDL Syntax and Operators 13

IDL is a comma based

syntax 13

IDL is case insensitive 13

IDL variable names 13

IDL is Array Based 14

IDL has all data types 15

IDL maintains the the

highest precision 16

Data Type is determined

upon variable creation 16

IDL is loosely typed 18

Advanced Data Types. 18

IDL keywords 21

Flexible Parameter List 23

Operators 23

Mathematical

Operators 23

Relational Operators 25

Bitwise Operators 25

Logical Operators 26

CHAPTER 3 Matrices and Matrix Operations 29

Building Arrays By

Hand 29

Matrix Creation 30

Indexing Array

Creation 31

Working with Arrays 31

Addition 31

Subtraction 32

Division 32

The # Operator 33

CHAPTER 4 Program Flow 39

Procedures or

Functions? 39

If Then Else statement 40

For loops 42

While Loops 43

CHAPTER 5 2 DimensionalGraphics 51

Graphic Systems 51

Types of 2D plots 51

CHAPTER 6 3 Dimensional Graphics 59

Types of 3D plots 59

CHAPTER 7 ImageProcessing 63

Basic Image

Processing 63

How to Read In Images 63

Image Manipulation 67

Image Enhancement 69

CHAPTER 8 ObjectGraphics 75

What is Object

Graphics? 75

IPLOT 76

iContour77

iSurface77

CHAPTER 9 Reading and WritingData 81

Opening a File 81

Writing out IDL

variables 82

Reading in Data 85

Reading and Writing Binary

Data 86

CHAPTER 10 Mapping 89

map_set90

map_continents93

map_grid94

Overlaying Images on

Maps 94

Advanced Mapping 96

CHAPTER 11 Animation 97

Built In Animation

Routines 98

Screen Capture 101

CHAPTER 12 Important Routinesby Function 103

Animation 103

Array Creation 103

Array Manipulation 105

Color Table

Manipulation 106

Date and Time 107

Direct Graphics 107

Error Handling 110

File Access 110

Help Routines 111

Image Contrast

Enhancement and

Filtering 112

Image Feature Extraction/

Image Segmentation 112

Image Display 113

Image Geometry

Transformations 114

Image Morphological

Operators 115

Regions of Interest 115

Image File Access 116

Input/Output 117

Miscellaneous Math

Routines 119

Plotting 119

Query Routines 121

Saving/Restoring a

Session 121

String Processing 122

Surfaces and Contours 123

Type Conversion 123

Vector Field

Visualization 124

Volume Visualization 124

Window Routines 125

ROI information

Printing the Image and ROIs

Example 2. Selecting and Moving with Object Graphics

Base Resizing

Dragging Objects

Motion events

Release Event

Using the Transparent View

Example 3. Object Rotation and Widgets as Objects.

Base Resizing

Rotation and Translation Events.

Cleaning Everything Up

Summary