Re: The day of a typical Ferret-user

[Ansley Manke <ansley@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Siegfried,
I'm sure there are as many answers to this as there are users, and it'd
be great to see others' replies to your question.  There's certainly more
Ferret can do than simply produce graphics from your program output,
though that's a common use.

To get started, read the introductory sections -- Chapter 1 of the Users'
Guide is a reasonable chunk of reading without having to tackle the whole
manual at once.  It gives an overview of working with Ferret.

I'd also like to mention a couple more topics to look at in the Users Guide.
DODS, the Distributed Oceanographic Data System, allows users to
access data anywhere from the internet using Ferret.  Multiple data sets
from your local computer and elsewhere can be brought together and
analyzed within a Ferret session.  And the External Functions capability
lets you put existing C or Fortran code to work as a Ferret function.

You've already seen the demos; browse through the FAQ's for more
examples of some of the things Ferret can do.

Anyone else like take a moment to send a few lines about how you
use Ferret in conjunction with data management, analysis, and graphics?

Ansley Manke

Siegfried Gonzi wrote:

> A few weeks ago I got interested in Ferret, but didn't really dive in,
> thus far (okay, I have printed out a few hundret of user manual pages).
>
> The demos have been impressive, but only for my enlightenment: Am I
> heading in the right direction with my following assumption about a
> Ferret user:
>
> a) I do my programming in C or Fortran or in any other obscure language
> (I personally prefer the language Clean).
>
> b)  I use Ferret only for representing the datas.
>
> c) There are guys out there, who are not happy with the typical hatred
> Matlab cycle: a little bit testing and programming and an immediate
> result in form of a graphical display.
>
> I am not a troll, but I want to know how people try to manage to cope
> with data. I am young and in my neighborhood the only tool I see with my
> colleagues is the" Interactive Data Language IDL". In scientific
> publications one does not see how they managed their data (generally
> this is good so and should never become a topic in papers; but sometimes
> I am a little bit curious about).
>
> Is there a trick to compile lets say C or Fortran (I assume Ferret will
> not communicate with any other language? --e.g. Clean) code and get an
> immediate output to a graphic with the help of Ferret? What about if I
> insit not using C or Fortran but something others instead?
>
> Regards,
> S. Gonzi

--
Ansley Manke  Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory  Seattle WA  (206)526-6246