Re: [ferret_users] Re: ferret into the future

[Ryo Furue <furue@xxxxxxxxxx>]

John and ferret users,

| [...] but that there are major issues with
| user-friendliness. Those who know ferret "backwards and
| forwards" are probably happy with it as it is and that I'm
| crazy to suggest it needs a major overhaul in that respect.  

I'm not sure what you meant by "user-friendliness", but I kind
of agree that ferret is a bit weak on that front.  I'm not
particularly a fan of GUI interfaces, so I'll leave that
subject to other people.  What I find to be a bit weak is
ferret's scripting language, which is---how should I put it---arcane.
I wish it were simpler _and_ more powerful.

I think to change the language would be a huge work, which
I'm not sure can be done at all.  But, anyway---What I have
in mind is a "normal" programming language:  For example,

   view = {"topleft", "topright", "bottomleft", "bottomright"}
   do i = 1, $n
      set viewport $view($i)
      if ($label == "velocity")
         vector u[d=$i],v[d=$i]
      elseif ($label == "temperature")
         fill average(temp[d=$i], dim = "z") !! vertical average
      else
         print "unknown label."; stop 1
      endif
   enddo

That is, if the language were more regular and straightforward
and similar to other popular computer languages
(Fortran, C, Matlab, etc.), it would be more readily accessible
to users.

Ryo