[Ifeffit] problems in the current version of Artemis for Windows

Bruce Ravel bravel at anl.gov
Wed Aug 1 09:36:36 CDT 2007



Hi,

I rolled out a new version of Artemis in time for last week's XAFS
Summer School at the APS.  Unsurprisingly, a few bugs cropped up
during the course of the week.  Three of them are serious enough that I
wanted to offer some advice on how to work around them until I manage
to fix them.  All three of these problems affect Windows users and
appear not to affect Mac or linux users.

1. The most serious bug is a scenario where Artemis simply hangs when
   you start it.  The symptom is that the console window appears,
   followed by the splash screen.  Then Artemis' main windows fails to
   appear.  The bug involves how I attempt to clean up when Artemis
   finds evidence of a large number of abandoned projects.
  
   In normal operation, Artemis uses disk space in a special folder to
   organize the data, feff, and other files associated with a
   project.  When you exit Artemis normally, that folder is zipped up
   into a project file and removed from disk.  When Artemis exits
   abnormally, the folder can be left in place.  When Artemis notices
   four such apparently abandoned folders, it posts a dialog box
   offering to clean up the mess before continuing.

   In the current version, there is bug in the place where Artemis
   checks for abandoned projects, resulting in the behavior described
   above.  For now, the work-around is to close the Artemis console
   window then, using your file manager, look at this folder:
       C:\Program Files\Ifeffit\horae\stash\
   In that folder you should find several folders with names like
       artemis.project.0
       artemis.project.1
   and so on.  Toss each of those folders into the recycling bin and
   try starting Artemis.  It should work now.

2. A problem with similar symptoms might happen on Vista.  If you do
   not have sufficient privilege to write files to 
       C:\Program Files\Ifeffit\
   then Artemis' splashscreen will appear then disappear without
   Artemis' main window appearing.  For the Vista user, the solution
   to this problem is either to run Artemis with higher privilege
   (which may be frowned upon by the people who administer your
   computer) or to reinstall Ifeffit into a location where you have
   write privilege.

3. Many people have noticed that, after using the "Write special
   output" item in the Theory menu (which can be used to save an
   atoms.inp file, a feff.inp file, or other kinds of files), you are
   unable to save the file by clicking the "Save" button.  The work
   around is to select the entire contents of the palette using the
   mouse or Control-a and then to cut-and-paste the contents into
   Notepad or Wordpad.

I am hard at work on these and many other problems (see
http://cars9.uchicago.edu/iffwiki/HoraeToDoList) and am hoping to make
an update of the windows package and a new release of the tarball next
week.  Until then, hopefully this message will help you work around
the most serious problems in the current version of Artemis.

Regards,
B




-- 
 Bruce Ravel  ---------------------------------------------- bravel at anl.gov

 Molecular Environmental Science Group, Building 203, Room E-165
 MRCAT, Sector 10, Advanced Photon Source, Building 433, Room B007

 Argonne National Laboratory         phone and voice mail: (1) 630 252 5033
 Argonne IL 60439, USA                                fax: (1) 630 252 9793

 My homepage:    http://cars9.uchicago.edu/~ravel 
 EXAFS software: http://cars9.uchicago.edu/~ravel/software/






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