[Ifeffit] Importing Multiple Data Sets into Athena

[Matt Newville]

Hi Dan,

On Fri, Sep 7, 2012 at 7:53 AM, Daniel Whittaker
<daniel.whittaker at postgrad.manchester.ac.uk> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I think that the issue that Bruce is referring to is due to a difference of
> operating system and programs. The data i receive, as Kathy points out, is
> absolutely fine and i have had no issue whatsoever with the beamline or the
> files it produces. So, i think it might be an idea from now for all issues
> posted to the list to be preceded with OS/programs (and potentially
> computer) details so that such problems aren't misassigned and blame (or
> problem) pointed in the wrong direction?

Except that the problem you had is actually not related to which
operating system is used. Athena and the other programs are (very
intentially) as independent of OS as possible.   We do see some
OS-dependent problems, and being clear about what OS and versions of
the software you're using are always helpful,  but I wouldn't want to
put too much emphasis on how to format an issue to the mailing list.

> So in the interests of clarity and practicing my own suggestion:
>
> Windows XP SP3, Using native Wordpad (not native Notepad - as this removes
> formatting).
> NB: it would seem that other software does something similar to what Bruce
> is reporting (Win7 perhaps?).

The files that you had problems with are **different** from the ones
that are read correctly.  It doesn't matter what OS is used, if the
files are changed they may not work.   In particular, randomly
inserting newlines into files that are read as line-delimited is
probably going to cause failures on all OSes.

I'm no fan of Windows Notepad, but it does *not* change or remove the
formatting of files for me.  On the other hand, opening these files
with Wordpad and then saving it *will* change the formatting.  For me
at least, Wordpad changes the formatting of the original files by
adding carriage return (\r) to every linefeed (\n), but Athena (on any
OS) can still read thes files just fine.

> The issue had already been overcome by the methodology as Kathy suggested.
> So thanks for that. However, i was merely pointing out the fact that group
> importing did not work as a point for 'looking at' before future releases in
> the interests of software development and improvement. That being said i
> appreciate the effort put in by the people on the lists, so thanks for the
> hard work and perseverance.

But the group importing didn't work because importing those individual
files didn't work.  And that was because those files had randomly
inserted newline characters.  It's hard for me to see this a problem
with Group Importing or Importing Data at all.

--Matt