On Wednesday, February 20, 2013 11:56:25 AM John Hayes wrote:
Thank you for your reply. I find your lack of faith...disturbing,
I'd like to take this opportunity to emphasize two points I've made several times before. John, I apologize if it sounds like I'm picking on you. I don't mean to be, and I might be willing to guess that you meant this in a joking way, but I also agree fully with Bruce that the easiest action (simply ignoring you as if you were an ingrate) is worth resisting. First, it's not about faith. John sent files. Bruce responded to the question with the facts available. I can tell you that Bruce and I just barely have time to even read messages like yours, and it is very hard for us to respond to all of them. There have been several recent questions to the mailing list that I just ignored because the questions are too vague or outside my immediate interest, and I don't have time to write "that question is too vague, please be more specific" to every question. if you don't like the response based of the files you sent, and expect an answer based on files you didn't send, then let me remind you that you are free to solve the problem yourself. In fact, and quite seriously, you and anyone else are free to solve the problem yourself. The code is available and documented, and you can investigate what it is doing, find a solution, and change the code. If you do, please send a patch back to us. Second, while the files from HXMA (not unlike some of the files from my own beamline) are ASCII files, they have enough non-trivial structure to them that they can not be treated as "plain", un-structured files for Athena/Artemis/Ifeffit to read. If you don't like the way Athena reads the file, write a plugin, or alter an existing one. The essential issue is entirely with the expectation that Athena will read whatever data files you give it in the complex ways you want (for example, extracting two separate spectra from a single file and knowing that one is "reference", but also knowing how you want it use the different columns to average data or do deadtime corrections). If it doesn't do what you want, fix it: change the HXMA plugin or pre-parse the HXMA files. Or, wait for someone else to fix your problem for you. That seems like a crowded part of Hell to me. --Matt PS: I've made similar appeals for more people to get involved several time over the past year. The results are not good. My sense is that we really need new people involved, and have reached a good time to think about changes to the way we operate. If you're interested in the future of this software suite (like, should development continue?), this is the time to get involved.