What's New in IDL 8.8.1
This article contains release notes for IDL 8.8.1.
See the following sections:
For system requirements, see Platform Support for ENVI 5.6.1 and IDL 8.8.1.
New Features
.PRO Files Ported to Native C/C++ Code
For improved performance, the following classes were ported from PRO code in the lib/datatypes folder to C/C++ code in idl.dll:
- DICTIONARY
- HASH
- LIST
- ORDEREDHASH
- REVERSE
Additionally, the new procedure SAVEFILE_CLEANUP was added. This procedure inspects the given routine save files and removes any routines that could cause problems in modern IDL. See the SAVEFILE_CLEANUP topic in IDL Help for details and usage.
Macintosh M1 Support
Support for Macintosh M1 platforms has been added.
MKL_FFT Routine
The MKL_FFT routine (Math Kernel Library Fast Fourier Transform) was added to upgrade FFT performance. MKL_FFT returns a result equal to the complex, discrete Fourier transform of Array.
Updates
QUERY_PNG
QUERY_PNG has been updated to return more metadata from a PNG file, including custom fields.
H5_PARSE
H5_PARSE has been updated to read in UTM8 encoded string data.
JSON_PARSE
JSON_PARSE has been updated to improve parsing speed. In comparison tests between IDL 8.7.3 and 8.8.1, speed was 3 - 9 times faster, depending on the size of the JSON files being parsed.
Updated Windows File Selector
The Windows file selector user interface for the DIALOG_PICKFILE() function has been updated. For details, see DIALOG_PICKFILE.
OpenGL Hardware Rendering Support
OpenGL hardware rendering is not fully supported on Linux VMs with the VMWare SVGA device driver. For full OpenGL hardware support on a VM, switch to using an nVidia driver.
To identify which driver is being used, run this compound command:
w = IDLgrWindow(Renderer=0) & w.GetDeviceInfo, All=all & print, all, /Implied
If the driver is VMWare SVGA, you will see properties such as this:
"NAME" : "SVGA3D; build: RELEASE; LLVM;"
"VENDOR" : "VMWare, Inc."
"VERSION" : "3.0 Mesa 17.2.3"
Library Updates
The 3rd party libraries listed below have been updated to new these versions:
- AdoptOpenJDK JDK and JRE, 11.0.11
- Chromium Embedded Framework, 91.1.22
- cURL, 7.77.0
- Eclipse CVS Client, 1.4.1700.v20210303-1800
- Eclipse Git, 5.12.0.202106070339-r
- Eclipse Platform, 4.20.0.v20210612-2011
- FreeType, 2.10.4
- GDAL, 3.2.2
- GEOS, 3.8.1
- JasPer, 2.0.32
- libHaru, 2.3.0
- libjpeg-turbo, 2.1.0
- libpng, 1.6.37
- libxml2, 2.9.11
- OpenSSL, 1.1.1k
- python, 3.7.10, 3.8.10, 3.9.5
- Spatialite, 5.0.0
The following 3rd party libraries have been added in this release: