xdatplot -- An X11 electrophysiology data viewer ************************************************ Copyright (c) 1993 Leon Avery ============================= xdatplot allows viewing of large sequential sampled datasets, such as are generated by electrophysiological recording. The data can be filtered, printed on Postscript printers, or saved as MIF files that can be imported into FrameMaker. Some simple analysis ( peak detection, mainly) is built in. There is complete documentation: hypertext files that can be viewed with NCSA Mosaic. Here's how to get it. The most recent version is xdatplot-0.2. This is a beta release for SunOS4.1.3 sun4. If you build on any other platform, you'd better consider it an alpha release, or pre-alpha (i.e., completely untested.) Send questions or comments on xdatplot to: Leon Avery Department of Biochemistry University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center 5323 Harry Hines Blvd Dallas, TX 75235-9038 leon@eatworms.swmed.edu Really. Seriously. I want feedback, positive or negative. xdatplot installation ********************* How to install xdatplot ======================= o On SunOS4.1.3, sun4 o Building from source o Additonal things you might want to install On SunOS4.1.3, sun4 =================== 1. Get the files xdatplot.gz, asc2bin.gz, and print_big.gz by anonymous FTP to eatworms.swmed.edu from the Software/SunOS4.1.3_binaries directory. 2. Execute the command gunzip xdatplot.gz asc2bin.gz print_big.gz to uncompress the programs. (Note: gunzip is the GNU uncompression program. If you don't have gunzip, pick up the binary when you pick up xdatplot. You can get source code for gzip and gunzip from GNU.) 3. Execute the command install xdatplot asc2bin print_big /usr/local/bin to mark the programs executable and place them in your bin directory. (You can substitute in place of /usr/local/bin any directory in your $PATH. If you don't have root permission, you can place these programs wherever you keep your own programs.) Building from source ==================== If your platform is not SunOS4.1.3 sun4, you need to build xdatplot from source. If you successfully build xdatplot on some other platform and are willing to contribute the resulting binaries, please contact me so I can put them on this server. I would also like to hear if anyone successfully runs xdatplot on Solaris 2.x in Binary Compatibility mode. You must have the motif libraries and include files to build xdatplot. There is currently no option to build it with any free widget set. This may change in the future. Then again, it may not. 1. Get the file xdatplot-0.2.tar.gz by anonymous FTP to eatworms.swmed.edu from the Software directory. 2. Get all the files from the Software/patches directory. 3. Execute the following commands: gunzip -c xdatplot-0.2.tar.gz | tar xvf - patch -p /xdatplot-0.2/help". Additional things you might want to install =========================================== The new xdatplot help system is absolutely and utterly dependent on NCSA mosaic. If you don't have NCSA mosaic (how are you reading this document?), get it from ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu. xdatplot expects to find mosaic under the name "mosaic" in the current $PATH. This can be changed with the helpViewer resource. By default (or default default), xdatplot fetches help from Texas over the Internet. The reason is to make installation easy for people who don't want a lot of trouble and never use help anyway. However, this makes it slow, especially if you're a long looong way from Texas. And of course, if you don't have an Internet connection, it won't work at all. So if you think you're going to be using xdatplot for any length of time, you should probably fetch the help tree and install it locally. Fetch xdatplot_help.tar.gz from eatworms.swmed.edu by anonymous FTP, say "gunzip -c xdatplot_help.tar.gz | tar xvf -", which will create a directory called xdatplot_help (or something similar), then point the XDatplot*helpURL resource at "file://localhost//xdatplot_help". There are a few sample data files in Software/Data you can use to find out if xdatplot is more or less working. xdatplot will work without a system application defaults file. But if you're a system manager type and want to set defaults for all your users, you need to get the app-default file Software/XDatplot.ad.gz and edit it. Yes it's huge and horrible, but don't worry about it. Most of the stuff you're interested in changing is near the top. The one thing you must not do is create a tiny little XDatplot file in the system app-defaults directory specifying only the 2 resources you want to change. This will cause xdatplot not to use its fallback resources, and it will break badly. Leon Avery (leon@eatworms.swmed.edu)