rmp@inducer.uucp (Robert M. Pecherer) (05/09/89)
Thanks to all who responded to my request for information on IDL, David Lamb, etc. What follows is a summary. (Please note that I am passing this information on as a service -- I'm neither advertising any product, nor endorsing its use -- in the case of the 2 commercial products, I recommend you request information directly.) (1.) The IDL concept was extended and implemented at UNC; it was originally available for only a license fee, but the overhead became prohibitive and the sw is now actively marketed by UniPress Software 2025 Lincoln Highway Edison, NJ 08817 (201) 985-8000 (800)-222-0550 This company seems to be in the early stages of marketing IDL. The product is described as "substantially improved" over the former, UNC version. Ask for educational discounts (if appropriate). (2.) John Nestor was one of the originators of IDL (David Lamb and William Wulf were the others) and has formed a company to to sell 2 products: (quote) "Yes, my company, Persistent Data Systems is now selling two IDL Products, Mini IDL and Professional IDL. Professional IDL supports a superset of Mini IDL. Both are targetted to C and run on a wide variety of personal computers and Unix machines." John Nestor may be reached at nestor@sei.cmu.edu or (412)-963-1842. (3.) dplatt@coherent.com (Dave Platt) thinks that ' ... there is a C-based IDL translator available from a university in Kentucky (?).' He further recommends: " comp.lang.idl - there has been some limited activity there recently." (4.) For more information on IDL, consider the following references. (The first is David A. Lamb's <dalamb@qucis.queensu.ca. CMU dissertation; the second is by Rick Snodgrass <rts@cs.unc.edu> who directed the work at UNC that produced the product sold by UniPress; the third is by (with) John Nestor <nestor@sei.cmu.edu>, one of the IDL originators.) a.) Lamb, David A., "Sharing intermediate representations," available from Carnegie-Mellon, Department of Computer Science (CMU-CS-83 129), 1983. b.) Snodgrass, Richard, "The Interface Description Language: Definition and Use", Computer Science Press, ISBN 0-7167-8198-0, 615+xv pages. c.) J. R. Nestor, J.M. Newcomer, P. Giannini and D. L. Stone, IDL: The Language and Its Implementation. Prentice-Hall, 1989. (5.) In addition to comp.lang.idl (usenet news), there is also an IDL mailing list: send email to info-idl-request@sei.cmu.edu THIS INFORMATION IS TO THE BEST OF MY KNOWLEDGE CORRECT AS OF 5/8/89. IF YOU WISH TO ADD ANYTHING, EMAIL ME AT rmp@inducer.lanl.gov. I WILL ADD IT TO THE ABOVE AND REISSUE IT TO comp.compilers IN A WEEK. Thanks again, Rob Pecherer Los Alamos National Laboratory Center for Human Genome Studies Division T-10 ms K710 Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545 [Another note pointed out that the UNC comp sci department has moved, so if you want to write to them they're in Sitterson Hall, not New West Hall. -John] -- Send compilers articles to compilers@ima.isc.com or, perhaps, Levine@YALE.EDU Plausible paths are { decvax | harvard | yale | bbn}!ima Please send responses to the originator of the message -- I cannot forward mail accidentally sent back to compilers. Meta-mail to ima!compilers-request