[Ifeffit] Larch 0.9.31

[Matt Newville]

Hi Folks,

Version 0.9.31 of Larch has been released.  It can be installed using
Anaconda Python 2.7 (the recommended approach on Windows and Mac OSX, and a
fine choice on Linux too) with
    conda upgrade xraylarch

The source kit can be downloaded from PyPI (
https://pypi.python.org/pypi/xraylarch/0.9.31) or installed on systems that
already have Python installed with
    pip install --upgrade xraylarch

Larch is in active development (at https://github.com/xraypy/xraylarch) and
this release includes several important new features and capabilities.
Some of these are still "in progress" and could greatly benefit from
community inputs and comments at every level.

In no particular order, some of the highlights include:

> Larch server (bin/larch_server) is now much improved and more ready for
Athena/Artemis to use. There are still some issues getting Larch Server +
Athena working on Mac OSX, but Windows and Linux seem to be working.  Using
Athena/Artemis with Larch should still be considered experimental, but
we're hoping that Larch will soon be the normal backend for Athena and
Artemis.

> Autobk background removal now calculates arrays for the uncertainty in
chi (delta_chi) and mu_0 (delta_bkg) at each k or energy point.  These are
derived from the uncertainties in the fitted spline coefficients.  It has
long been argued that uncertainties from the background removal should
dominate the uncertainties in chi(k), and so should be used included as the
uncertainty in the fits to EXAFS data.  Indeed, preliminary tests show that
using these uncertainties in the fits does bring reduced chi-square much
closer to 1.

> Much better support for Python3.  Larch is still only supported for
Python2.7, mainly due to the dependency on wxPython which is not yet
officially supported for Python3.  Still, most parts of Larch are Python3
compatible, including the GUIs.   If Python3 is a priority for you, let us
know (here or on Github), and we'll try to make that happen sooner rather
than later.

> Support for dealing some X-ray Diffraction data has been added especially
for the X-ray Fluorescence maps supported in the Larch XRF MapViewer.   New
GUI apps for viewing and working with 2D and 1D diffraction images are
included in this release.  These are the work of Margaret Koker, and are
the beginning of support for XRD visualization and analysis in Larch.

> XYFit, a GUI for XANES peak fitting has been begun, and can be used for
simple sum-of-line-shapes.  The abilities of XYFit are currently similar to
Athena's peak fitting panel.  There are missing important features, but
development of this is very active with many features expected to be added
over the next few months.

The new GUI components should definitely be considered as experimental and
ready for friendly comments, suggestions, and bug reports.  These are not
quite ready for production use yet, but we're hoping that you can help with
feedback and suggestions.  So, please consider giving these tools a try,
and let us know what you think.

--Matt Newville
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