SUmmary: Searching for Interface Description Language (IDL) Processor

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]
--

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