In order to use the SSW software, these changes require that you always
start an IDL session by double clicking on the sswidl icon found on your
desktop. First, however, you must configure your IDL preferences.
1. Start IDL by using the "Start" menu at
the lower left corner of your screen.
2. In IDL, from the "File" pull down menu
select "Preferences...".
3. Open the "Startup" tab and write down the contents
of the "Startup file:" entry.
4. Delete the "Startup file:" entry. Do not
delete the "IDL Main directory:" entry.
5. Click "Apply" and "OK" then exit from IDL.
(Optional) If you want to customize your own IDL startup configuration:
6. Create a separate folder
somewhere outside of the ssw directory (e.g. c:\idl_ssw).
7. Open the Notepad text editor and use it to create and
customize a new IDL startup file.
8. Save the file (e.g.
idl_startup.pro) in the folder you
created in step #6. Exit Notepad.
9. On your desktop, locate the sswidl icon. Right
click on it and choose "Properties".
10. In the "sswidl Properties" panel that appears, select the
"Shortcut" tab. Click "Find Target...".
11. Open the file named "sswidl" (or "sswidl.pl") for editing in Notepad. You will see the following
text:
rem A personal
startup can be defined by editing the following statement
rem set
SSW_PERSONAL_STARTUP=c:\idl_ssw\idl_startup.pro
(The path and file names are arbitrary.)
12. Remove the rem
statement from the second line and modify the path and/or the idl startup file
name appropriately.
13. Save the changes and exit Notepad.
Windows 98 users may experience an "Out of environment
space" error when launching SSW using the sswidl desktop icon.
To prevent this problem Windows 98 users should follow these additional
steps:
14. On your desktop, right click on the sswidl icon and choose
"Properties".
15. Click the "Memory" tab at the top of the "Shortcut" panel.
16. Change the "Initial Environment" setting to 2560.
17. Click "Apply" then click "OK".
Reminder: Always start an SSW IDL session by double clicking on
the sswidl icon located on your desktop.