[IPython-dev] IDL/GDL kernel

[Luke Stagner]

Hello All,

I am a graduate student studying plasma physics. I have made a mostly 
functional IDL/GDL(just GDL for now) kernel 
<https://github.com/lstagner/idl_kernel> using the new wrapper kernel 
feature. I borrowed heavily from the bash_kernel 
<https://github.com/takluyver/bash_kernel> example. If it is not too 
much trouble I need some help with two things.

1. IPython doesn't kill GDL process when shutting down or restarting the 
kernel. I have defined the do_shutdown 
<https://github.com/lstagner/idl_kernel/blob/master/gdl_kernel.py#L130> 
to kill the process but that doesn't seem to do anything.
2. Inline Plots: My current method 
<https://github.com/lstagner/idl_kernel/blob/master/gdl_kernel.py#L91> 
is to have GDL make pngs of the plots and then publishing them. 
Unfortunately this is not working and I am not sure why.

Plasma physics is very much stuck using IDL because of all the legacy 
software. My hope is that this kernel will act as a gateway drug towards 
more open programming languages. When IPython 3/Jupyter comes out I am 
going to try to convince the computer staff at the DIII-D National 
Ignition Facility to install the multi-user notebook server with many 
different kernels installed.

Thanks for your time

-Luke Stagner
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