Dear Stefan, Thanks for reporting these issues. Some of them are already known to us, but require time for fixing and implementing new features. I take the occasion to say that anybody with Python programming skills is welcome to contribute and help with the development of Larch. Having a community of developers instead of always asking to one single person should be strongly considered. Going back to your specific questions, here my two cents contribution. On 26/10/2022 11:46, Mangold, Stefan (IPS) wrote:

Dear All, dear Matt,

all tests were done on Macs (one M1 & one Intel) with the latest version your software & latest OS.

1. Read-In of spec files works, but only one file at once. Even if multiple files are selected

2. If one tries to load text-files it is possible to load data form multiple files as long as you don’t try to load also the reference spectra. If you load the reference also the read-in stopps at the transmission/fluorescence spectrum of the second file selected.

These are related to: https://github.com/xraypy/xraylarch/issues/367 Furthermore, with respect to an ASCII file, a Spec file may contain multiple scans, so it is impossible to know in advance which scan to select if one selects multiple Spec files to load. To my opinion, when you need to read multiple data from many files, the simplest approach is to write a small python script (or Jupyter notebook) that reads the data and save them in an Athena project file or Larch session that you can then easily read back with xas_viewer. I can further help with that.

3. Trouble, that I sometimes can’t unmount network volumes after reading from them, larch saved on local discs. MacOS claims that python has files open; no other python program running

I let Matt or somebody else reply on this point.

4. unable to save the data of one XAS-viewer while having two xas-viewer open.

This is related to: https://github.com/xraypy/xraylarch/issues/410 Best, Mauro

Hi Stefan, Thanks, that's all very helpful. As Mauro says, some of these might be known already, but I'm not 100% certain of that. On Wed, Oct 26, 2022 at 4:47 AM Mangold, Stefan (IPS) < stefan.mangold@kit.edu> wrote:

Dear All, dear Matt,

all tests were done on Macs (one M1 & one Intel) with the latest version your software & latest OS.

1. Read-In of spec files works, but only one file at once. Even if multiple files are selected

Yes, "read in many" is limited to plain text column files that are expected to hold 1 spectrum and have a uniform layout. Reading in spectra from Spec files, Athena Project files, and other "multi-spectrum files" would potentially be a bit more complicated -- which spectra from which file would you need? I guess we could assume "every spectrum", but with a Spec file, you still need to select columns. Maybe you have more uniform Spec files than the ones I normally see, but I'm not sure I know that "read every scan from multiple spec files" would be reliable. To be clear, I'm completely fine with *trying* to read in as many types of "data directly from beamlines" as possible, while also recognizing that this is a bit of a moving target and admitting that some data formats might have higher priorities than others. For sure, trying to better support HDF5 and NeXuS is a priority.

2. If one tries to load text-files it is possible to load data form multiple files as long as you don’t try to load also the reference spectra. If you load the reference also the read-in stopps at the transmission/fluorescence spectrum of the second file selected.\

Do you get any messages when this happens? I'll investigate. As Mauro says, it might be related to another "known problem", but that doesn't mean it is completely solved ;) .

3. Trouble, that I sometimes can’t unmount network volumes after reading from them, larch saved on local discs. MacOS claims that python has files open; no other python program running

I have not seen this but I'll see if I can reproduce that. Files are generally closed after reading or at least meant to be. ;).

4. unable to save the data of one XAS-viewer while having two xas-viewer open.

As Mauro says, I think we may have seen and solved this one. But, if you have error messages or further information on what you see when this happens, that might be helpful. --Matt