Compatibility of IDL 8.5 and ENVI 5.3 with Mac 10.11 (El Capitan)

Installation

Although Mac OS X 10.11 (El Capitan) is not an officially supported platform for IDL 8.5/8.5.1 and ENVI 5.3/5.3 SP1, IDL and ENVI users have reported successfully installing and using the products on this platform. Here are some tips for successfully installing on ENVI and/or IDL on El Capitan:

"IDL Workbench on Mac OS X Dependency On Java 6"
http://harrisgeospatial.com/Support/SelfHelpTools/HelpArticles/HelpArticles-Detail/TabId/2718/ArtMID/10220/ArticleID/16070/IDL-Workbench-on-Mac-OS-X-Dependency-On-Java-6.aspx

"Using IDL and ENVI on Mac OS X Requires X11/XQuartz"
http://harrisgeospatial.com/Support/SelfHelpTools/HelpArticles/HelpArticles-Detail/TabId/2718/ArtMID/10220/ArticleID/15782/Using-IDL-and-ENVI-on-Mac-OS-X-Requires-X11XQuartz.aspx

"XQuartz/X11 failing to launch automatically when running ENVI or IDL"
http://harrisgeospatial.com/Support/SelfHelpTools/HelpArticles/HelpArticles-Detail/TabId/2718/ArtMID/10220/ArticleID/15775/XQuartzX11-failing-to-launch-automatically-when-running-ENVI-or-IDL.aspx

Using Direct Graphics

When using direct graphics you may notice that images are drawn extremely slowly to the direct graphics window. In order to solve this problem you will need to use IDL for the backing store with Direct Graphics windows or switch to function graphics. To do this, change the IDL preference "Backing store method for window contents" to IDL(2). This preference can be found in IDL Workbench Preferences dialog under Window > Preferences > IDL > Graphics. To modify this from a command line or in code you can type:

pref_set, 'IDL_GR_X_RETAIN', 2, /COMMIT

You may need to restart XQuartz and IDL for the changes to take effect.

( For more information about the IDL_GR_X_RETAIN preference, see also http://www.harrisgeospatial.com/docs/prefs_gr_x.html )

If you are looking for information about installing IDL on Mac 10.10 (Yosemite) see the following link:

http://harrisgeospatial.com/Support/SelfHelpTools/HelpArticles/HelpArticles-Detail/TabId/2718/ArtMID/10220/ArticleID/15772/Are-ENVI-and-IDL-compatible-with-Mac-OS-X-1010-Yosemite--System-dependencies.aspx

Reviewed by ZN 11/17/2015, JU 3/14/2016