Denis' IDL Ressources Page

May, 10 2004: still under consruction.

There are a GYNORMOUS amount of IDL ressources on the web. First, IDL is a commercial software available from RSI. For the Gravity Group we have a site license, talk to Mike Nolta to get access to it, or Norm, or Lyman, if Mike is not there.
This site links to many of the ones I found useful in the process of coding in IDL during my thesis. I will also try to organize my own routines in a way that others can find and use them.

In order to run many of my personal IDL routines, I have downloaded the full libraries from the other people's IDl ressources

Other People's IDL Ressources

Probably the most useful site for IDL is David Fanning's Consulting site. We call him the Coyote. You should read his tips, buy his awsome book :IDL Programming Techniques, 2nd, Edition, and download his library. To find other people's IDL programs, one place to start is David Fanning's Annoted Links. Pretty much all the sites below are also listed there.
On-line search of over 3000 IDL procedures and functions written by users all over the world: University of Washington Astronomy IDL page.
Craig Markwardt library: Very nice library with pleanty of useful tools. Mostly I've used for all my curve fitting needs. It is also there that I found the JPL ephemeris IDL routines.
IDL Astronomy Library. Necessary; it has a lot of low-level astronomy-related code, which you will want if you are doing, image analysis, time-series analysis, curve fitting, and pretty much anthing that is related to astronomical data analysis. They have a useful searchable index, and a one-line description.
David Windt's Library: His general purpose library "windt" has many routines which I have once wanted to write, with the one advantage that they are already written by him
Johns Hopkins University JHU IDL Library: contains over 600 IDL routines. plus various tutorials.
WMAP software library: To use the WMAP software, You must have the IDL Astronomy Library and the Healpix Library installed
HEALpix library
Peak Analysis Graphical Utility
IDL Web discussion Group: very useful for asking the questions no one around you knows how to answer.

My Favorite Plotting Routines

Two dimensionnal images and arrays display.

These first two are very complex, GUI, image display and manipulations programs.

ATV: An interactive Image Display Tool. Insanely full of features. Very nice for displaying 2D images and changing contrasts and luminosity easily, and saving the images in any format. Similar to SAOimage. requires a few other libraries. Developped by Aaron Barth
IDP3 stands for Image Display Paradigm #3.It is a very useful tool for image manipulation. Requires a few other libraries.
FSC_SURFACE: One of D. Fanning's nicest graphic display program to display a 2D surface, with color coded height. I love it beause you can rotate the whole display around to look at it from various angles. If you try it you'll be hooked.
XIMAGE: another of D. Fanning's routine. This is a simple image plot program that displays an image with axes around it.
XCONTOUR: again D. Fanning. A simple program to display contour plots,and save them as jpg or gifs.

Some simpler, command line commands for displaying contour plots and 2D images.

SURFACE: native IDl code. Displays a 2D functions as a surface.
SHADE_SURF: native IDl code. Same as SURFACE, but with shades.
CONTOUR: native IDl code. DISPLAY a contour plot of a 2D function. Unlike the GUIs, it allows you to customize everything and make nice publishable plots
SHOW3: native IDl code. A combination of contour, surface, and filled contour plots.
VERI, CROSSI: JHU library. gives a 1D and 2D cross hair with the position in the plot. A plot must be opened already.

One dimensionnal arrays and time-series plotting

PLOT: native IDL code. You know this one, no comment.
ZPLOT: Coyote library. A nifty routine to plot a 1D time-series and the zoom onto parts of it with the mouse.
XPLOT: Coyote library. A simple 1D GUI plotting routine.
MPI_PLOT: Coyote library. A wrapper for PLOT and OPLOT commands that allows interactive configuration of keywords.

My Personal IDL routines

** WARNING** , most of these routines are badly or not commented at all. Use it at your own risk. Your computer might self destruct. I will only provide help regarding these routines for the people whose names appear below: STS, JJM, PCF, JOG, BW, DS, and other CAPMAPers.
All routines are as I left them on May 2004.

last updated by dB, May 10, 2004