More flexibility with /T flag in OPEN

I would like to have the ability to use a two-character extension with the /T flag of the OPEN operation. For example, /T=".LP"

Charlie DeJoseph
Air Force Research Lab
Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio

Chris: Long file names is on my short list of things to do. I've had trouble getting to it because of other things on the short list though.

I would love Global fit to be able to handle multivariate fits, it only handles 1D data at the moment. Handling multivariate data would allow me to perform resolution smearing. The fitting routines funcfit and gencurvefit can already handle this.

e.g.

 
function myfitfunc(w,yy,xx,dx)
Wave w,yy,xx,dx
//set y as a function of x and dx
//dx cannot be passed in directly at the moment.
end

I sugggest extending the principle of using "one wave designation" for operations on scaled waves to a method of "linking" two (or more) waves via command such as

Link scalewave waveA, .... , [waveN] [as waveset1, ... wavesetN]

A simple example is that

Display wave1 vs scalewave

would work as

Link scalewave wave1 as waveset1
Display waveset1

or even simply

Link scalewave, waveA
Display waveA

This would help streamline code that otherwise requires explicitly branching to different nomenclature in cases of scaled versus unscaled waves.

As a general area where Igor could grow, I would suggest adding to the types of analysis that are supported by analysis-type environments. Currently, some of Igor's analytic capabilities -- FFTs, wavestats, filtering, histograms, image processing, etc -- have such support. But there are many other capabilities -- optimization, ODEs, PCA, wavelets, neuralnets, etc. -- that can be relatively complex and somewhat daunting for a beginner to use.

My sense is that code for advanced algorithms such as those offered within Igor is commonly available and what distinguishes good programs is their ability to make these advanced algorithms available to a less-specialized audience. There is a much larger community of users who would apply these techniques if they had help.

Even for people with more experience, ease of use counts. For example, I almost never use Igor to integrate ODEs "casually" (i.e., just to quickly see what the solution looks like) because it is much faster to do this in Maple. On the other hand, Igor is my first choice for curve fits because it's so fast (even before QuickFit).

Of course, WM has limited resources, and one role a user community can play is in suggesting priorities. Of the capabilities that would best benefit from menu support, my vote for immediate priority would perhaps go to "optimize", as it is a common numerical operation, is complex to set up (requiring external function, specification of tolerances, methods, constraints), and often needs to be done in an exploratory, interactive way.

John Bechhoefer
Department of Physics
Simon Fraser University
Burnaby, BC, Canada

Feature Requests for Edit Windows/Procedure Files

Procedure edit windows have buttons to Show Info, Lock/Unlock, and Magnify Window (in addition to popup menus). Also having a button to Save Procedure would be helpful.

In addition, perhaps procedures could be Password Protected against editing, not just locked.

--
J. J. Weimer
Chemistry / Chemical & Materials Engineering, UAH

+1
Generally speaking, there are a lot of potential improvements to Igor GUI capabilities.
The idea is to be able to develop "applications embedded into the application" (in-app-app).
User development must be perfectly integrated into the Igor environment and one should not be able to say whether or not a panel (or any other piece of GUI) is built-in or programmatically added.

I'm afraid you will need to keep dreaming for some time.

Anything relating to the user interface (all windows) is not happening any time soon.

I've played with this option a bit more. My request still stands for being able to have a #pragma directive within a procedure file itself as a less problematic way to hide the procedure file from showing in the procedure menu list.

--
J. J. Weimer
Chemistry / Chemical & Materials Engineering, UAH

Ricks suggestion is a good one. However, I want to go one step further. I've always been impressed by the layout managers in things like Java. I'm wondering if it would be possible to have such a thing for IGOR? We can already have subpanels, what we need is some way of packing controls into the subpanel, then packing the subpanels together.

This layout manager would control all the resizing aspects, etc.

This would be a hell of a lot of work, but well worth it in the end. I even reckon it would be possible to do something in an IGOR procedure that would achieve this, but one would have to be a smokin' programmer.

Request Change in New:Notebook Dialog Box

I request an improvement be made in the New:Notebook dialog box to include the ability to set Title AND Name, KILL status, and Show/Hide Ruler (when formatted is selected) up front. Additions in the dialog box for setting left, right, top, bottom coordinates (or perhaps just width and height) would also be appreciated.

An IgorMenuHook code segment that shows part of this is here. A package that shows a sample desired format is here.

--
J. J. Weimer
Chemistry / Chemical & Materials Engineering, UAH

Request Features in Data Browser

The following would be useful as settings in the preferences:

1) A checkbox to Show/Hide the Packages folder

2) A way to sort ascending/descending over two or three sequentially selectable options, ie three rows of two popups ...

1st -> [Name/Creation Date/Modification Date/Type] -> [Ascending / Descending]
2nd -> [Name/Creation Date/Modification Date/Type] -> [Ascending / Descending]
3rd -> [Name/Creation Date/Modification Date/Type] -> [Ascending / Descending]

Having these settings remembered across all instances and being able to set/change them programmatically would be great too!

--
J. J. Weimer
Chemistry / Chemical & Materials Engineering, UAH

I am referring to the Data Browser. The second (and third and ...) menu selections would allow sequential sorting, first on names, then on creation dates, then on ...

Now that I think about it for this case, since data folders cannot contain objects of the same name, I am likely thinking of a situation where "hiding" of parent folders is possible, so that a DataFolder structure ...

root
. Set01
.. file01 (2008.May.12)
.. file02 (2008.May.12)
. Set02
.. file01 (2008.May.15)
.. file02 (2008.May.15)

could be "collapsed" to show just the (sequentially sorted) waves ...

.. file01 (2008.May.12)
.. file01 (2008.May.15)
.. file02 (2008.May.12)
.. file02 (2008.May.15)

(perhaps I've been spending too much time at my PDA ToDo list ... :-) )

--
J. J. Weimer
Chemistry / Chemical & Materials Engineering, UAH

Check for Structure

I have a procedure file A that only serves to define a structure GlobalParams. I have another procedure file B that includes a function UseGPStructure to access the structure. The problem is, I also want procedure file B to be able to stand on its own (ie, not have to #include "A").

Most likely, I would like a way to check for a STRUCTURE so as to do ...

#if(StructExists("GlobalParams"))
Function UseGPStructure(gPS)
    STRUCT GlobalParams &gPS
    ...
end
#endif

As a work-around, I might put an empty static function at the top of procedure file A (as a module) and check for its existence.

--
J. J. Weimer
Chemistry / Chemical & Materials Engineering, UAH

A few requests:

1. It would be nice to be able to use the data browser in such a way that it limits which waves it displays based on a user-entered string. I typically have a lot of waves in a given experiment, so browsing through all of them to find the ones I want for graphing or curve-fitting can be tedious, especially since there is no scroll-functionality via the mouse wheel. Instead, I have to click on the arrows and hold it while it scrolls. I'd like to enter the part of my waves' names that is unique to subset of waves so that only those waves are displayed.

2. Curve fitting parameter memory- why is it that in Igor 6, when I curve fit, and want to go back to change a setting (say which function I use, or the fit range) I have to manually reselect my x and y waves, as well as any weighting waves? Igor 4 did not do this, it kept the previous waves in memory. Is there an option that I am somehow missing here?

3. A better/easier way to control font sizes in Annotations. It gets tedious to manually have to enter tags to enlarge or shrink fonts over and over again. Again, maybe I am missing out on already existing functionality.

Hm. It's supposed to remember them. Perhaps you could send me a detailed example illustrating the problem. You would probably need to send me an experiment file with the data, also.

John Weeks
WaveMetrics, Inc.
support@wavemetrics.com

I would like to see Checkboxes be linkable to waves as can be done with SetVariables (e.g. SetVariable mySet variable=myWave[3]). You can sort of get around this with ListBoxes, but they can only be so small, and aren't always appropriate.

I have been moving in the direction of querying my controls directly, especially now that SetVariables can be unattached. The only downside to this is storing the information in the event that the window containing the control is killed. I have been dabbling in StructPut/StructGet to store control information as in the Graph Browser example. In general, I'd like to use Structures more often, especially to facilitate saving and loading preferences, but looping through structure fields in user functions is problematic since structure fields can't be accessed with $ syntax. Is it reasonable to just put all controls of a similar type in an array? e.g.

Structure MyControlPanel
uchar Checkbox[10]
float SetVariable[5]
int reserved[100]
EndStructure

And then access with MyControlPanel.Checkbox[i]. The decision here would be how to determine that array index "i" corresponds to the checkbox for, e.g. "High-Pass Filter". I suppose this information could also be stored in the structure, or possibly in the window user information. Any thoughts?

I would like to be able the option to have layouts track changes in graph names. As far as I know, the current best way to do this is to search (old object name) and replace (new object name) in the layout recreation macro and recreate the layout. I could make this myself if I only I had access to an operation that created a list of recent name changes. Since I always use DoWindow /C for graph name changes, even simpler would be a flag for DoWindow to create S_oldname, S_newname, with I could access with a layout hook function to regenerate the layout with the correct object names.

I am always changing graphs from names like "Figure5A" to "Figure 5C", and I want this to reflect in the layout "Figure5". A huge time-saver for producing figures for journal articles, a process which usually involves changing figure panels and locations a zillion times before submission.

Rick

Well I'm not sure if this is the first item on this wish list to be fulfilled, but in yesterday's mailing list digest I happened across this happy news from a certain Howard Rodstein:

In Igor Pro 6.1, all of the Macintosh file I/O routines have been rewritten and so it will not have this 31 character limit. As this was a massive rewrite, I expect that it will cause some bugs and behavior changes.

The latest pre-beta release includes the new file code. It can be found here:

ftp://ftp.wavemetrics.net/IgorPro/FilesUpdate/WMDevelopment/Mac/IP610B08...

Those who prefer to avoid the bleeding edge should wait for the true beta version of Igor Pro 6.1 which we expect to start beta testing in a few weeks.

To which I say Huzzah ! This is absolutely brilliant news & I would like to sincerely thank Wavemetrics & Howard for doing something that must have been extraordinarily painful. I will be alpha-testing this version immediately & with great joy.

Chris

EPFL/PSI
Swiss Light Source
Switzerland

It will track it if you can remember to recreate the layout before changing the graph name.

Sorry, I don't understand what you are saying here. If I recreate the layout before changing the graph name, I have an identical copy of the layout I had before, which still won't update other than to show an empty placeholder.

SetScale d, 0, 0, "g/cm\\S3\\M", mywave

LabelAxis bottom, "Density [\\U]"

This is now available in the latest pre-beta of 6.1.

This is on my to-do list.