Release notes 10 July 2000

This release is based on the latest stable release of TclTk (8.3.1).


Spectrum Directory Browser

1. Saves as a preference the current directory for each server (resource).

2. For the resource "direct" only (that is local files or files accessed via a network drive) you can choose to "Scan for spectra" (the spectrum access code will look in each file for the correct "magic" number when searching directories for spectra files) or "Use msf file suffix" (all files with the suffix "msf" will be assumed to be spectra files).
   Under the "Actions" menu you will find items which append or remove the suffix "msf" from all files in the current directory.
   Using the msf suffix greatly reduces spectra search times for large directories.

Spectrum Display

1. Maximum number of overlap spectra is now 16 and the number of overlap colours is also increased to 16.

2. Maximum number of 2D spectum contour levels is now 32 and the number of 2D colours is also increased to 32.

3. See the menu View => Preferences for setting 1d and 2d colours; 2d colours and spectrum view options.
   For setting 2d colours a selection of Colour Palettes are built in.

4. The spectrum expand, contract, zoom and view icon buttons now all have an autorepeat feature. Clicking button 1 applies one action of the button. Clicking and holding down button 3 applies a repeated action of the button with (by default) a step of 1/10 the button 1 size. The autorepeat frequency and step factor can be choosen using View => Preferences => View. 
   Adjusting the contour levels of a 2d spectrum using the autorepeat feature is particularly useful. 

5. When displaying a number of spectra in a gallery the current spectrum is displayed with its bounding box in a different colour. The default is white for the current spectrum and grey for all others (on a black background). The text colour is by default the same as the box colour but this can be selected. See the items boxcolour, textcolour, activeboxcolour and activetextcolour. (Select component colours from Main Menu => Preferences => Colours and window type "spectrum".

6. The current spectrum only can be deleted from the gallery. See Arrange menu.
   Overlaps can be removed one at a time but (at present) only in the inverse order to creation. That is the most recently created overlap will be deleted. See Arrange menu
   Since a fit is 2 overlap spectra you can now remove a fit (Tags & Fits => clear fit) but only as long as you do it before adding any further overlaps. Since fits can be removed in this manner the "peakfit" analysis function does not automatically remove the previous fit. So you can now apply peakfit to both peaks in a Co60 spectrum for example.

7. 2d displays are now available on 8, 24 and 32 bit colour visuals. Where the OS and hardware supports it 8 bit colour overlays are used by preference on 24 and 32 bit colour maps but if this is possible 24/32 bit colour images are used. Note 16 bit colour is not supported.

Preferences

   A new method for holding user preferences has been introduced which is able to handle unlimited number of options. Most (but not quite all) of the old options are now handled by the new method and many new preferences have been created by the new features and extensions to existing features. The old options method will be phased out in the next release. In some menus you will find a "Save Preferences" option. Also you can save all current preferences from the Preferences menu in the Main menu. (The "Edit Preferences" option is not available in this release). 
  When you Quit a session you will offered the choice "Terminate normally" which will save all preferences and "Terminate immediately" which will do exactly that without saving preferences or shuting down any internal applications.

Hard Copy

  The window and screen dump functions now use the xwd and xwd2ps programs (all UNIX versions). xwd2ps supports 8, 24 and 32 bit colour images.

These release notes can also be seen at http://npg.dl.ac.uk/MIDAS/download/rlse100700.html