ScanRead Ver. 3.51 Copyright (C) 1999 by Ken Ritley. All rights reserved. Release date: October 10, 1999 Contents 1. What is ScanRead? 2. ScanRead is unguaranteed 3. Known Limitations 4. Modifications or to report bugs 5. What files come with ScanRead? 6. More information 7. Recent modifications WHAT IS SCANREAD? ScanRead is a Windows95 program to provide quick-and-dirty scientific plots of Spec scans stored in a Spec data file. It also allows the user to export individual scans to single ASCII files. It can also plot data contained in ASCII files and Tascom files. Limited support is provided for PSD (position-sensitive detector data embedded in Spec files). Although it can be used alone, ScanRead is also designed to work with - not replace - outstanding, professional, high-level graphics packages, such as Microcal Origin. A useful note about how to bind these programs together seamlessly appears in the file README2.TXT. In addition to scientific plotting, ScanRead performs simple statistical analysis of the data and has capabilities for simple linear fitting (eventually nonlinear fitting will be supported). SCANREAD IS UNGUARANTEED ScanRead comes with no warranties or guarantees at all, written or implied, neither as to fitness or suitability for a particular purpose. I developed it for myself, for my own purposes, but you may also use it as long as you don't try to sell it or make money with it. It is free software. Use it at your own risk. I am a scientist, not a programmer, therefore I cannot guarantee that it won't make your computer explode or make your hard disk soft. I can only say that it performs what fairly well, and it is fairly idiot-proof and error-protected. ScanRead was written with Microsoft Visual Basic ver. 6.0. To properly work, ScanRead requires that certain DLL files required by the Visual Basic code be installed into whatever directory it is that contains your DLL files. The install program takes care of all this for you. KNOWN LIMITATIONS 1. Printing is not yet supported. 2. Only linear least squares fitting is supported. 3. The Spec data files must have records which are terminated with line breaks. This means Spec files should be ported to Windows95 with care. For example, when using FTP, make sure that the ASCII flag is set. (To repair files improperly transferred, one option is to use Microsoft Word, opening the file as a "Text" file and saving it again as "MS-DOS Text with Line Breaks." 4. INTERNATIONAL CONVENTION: ScanRead works well when your computer it set up to use the comma (",") as a numerical separator and the period (".") as the numerical decimal indicator, which is the defacto INTERNATIONAL STANDARD. For example, if your computer represents the number "five-and-a-quarter" as "5,25" then you are likely to run into problems. MODIFICATIONS OR TO REPORT BUGS ScanRead is easily modified to read, extract and plot data contained in other file formats. Contact the author for details. The author is eager to repair bugs. Contact the author at k-ritley@dxray.mpi-stuttgart.mpg.de. ScanRead may or may not complain about a missing DLL file during installation; this seems to have something to do with Microsoft and in no way causes problems for ScanRead. WHAT FILES COME WITH SCANREAD? When the distribution ZIP file is unzipped, the following files will appear: scanre1.cab These six files are used to scanre2.cab install ScanRead. Once scanre3.cab installed, the program scanre4.cab ScanRead.exe can be located setup.exe anywhere on your harddisk. Setup.lst scanread.ico This is an icon file, for anyone who wants a fancy icon for this program. readme1.txt This file readme2.txt Information about using ScanRead with Microcal Origin fullmenu.add Append this to Origin FULLMENU.CNF scripts.ogs Store this in the Origin directory test.spc Sample Spec file for testing purposes testpsd.spc Sample Spec file which contains PSD data. (This is an example of the PSD file format which ScanRead can currently read.) MORE INFORMATION For more information about ScanRead, contact the author at k-ritley@dxray.mpi-stuttgart.mpg.de. For more information about the program Spec, see the official website at www.certif.com. RECENT MODIFICATIONS October 5, 1999 Thanks to a suggestion by J. Fossum, ScanRead can now freeze the plot window, so that multiple plots may be overlaid in order to compare scans. October 1, 1999 Thanks to a suggestion by A. Duerr, ScanRead now can handle scans up to 5000 lines long. May 21, 1999 Thanks to a suggestion by Reinhard Streitel, ScanRead now resizes the list boxes when the window is resized, to permit viewing of long scan lines. May 18, 1999 Thanks to a suggestion by Baerbel Krause, ScanRead now provides limited support for extracting PSD (position-sensitive detector) data which is stored in a SPEC file. Contact the author for more information. May 1, 1999 Thanks to a suggestion by Gerry Swislow, ScanRead now employs a more user-friendly interface for selecting the columns of data to plot (i.e., the column labels are used rather than the numerical column positions).