The GUI INPUT Command

Most interfaces contain the INPUT command, and usually this will be the first command to be used on entering an interface. After pressing the INPUT command the file selection tool will appear, and help the user to find and select the file containing the required data. See Section 4.4, Page  for general guidelines on file selection.

Depending on the extension of the file selected and type of file format the data may be automatically input, or a file format menu, or an input form may appear.

The following file extensions and corresponding formats are automatically recognised as are upper case, or mixed case versions⁸:

bin: BINARY user specified format

bsl: BSL (Daresbury) / OTOKO (Hamburg) format

chi: CHIPLOT ASCII 1-D X/Y graph format

cor: BINARY user specified format

cor2: BINARY user specified format

corr: BINARY user specified format

edf: ``Klora'' format or BINARY user specified format. The ``Klora'' format is a subset of the ``ESRF Data format''. The ``ESRF Data format'' is too general and wrongly specified to be usable. The ``Klora'' format has a header section of 1024 bytes, stores one image, and does not use any data compression. This is the default data format on many of the beam-lines at the ESRF.

f2d: FIT2D format

final: BINARY user specified format

gel: Molecular Dynamics IMAGEQUANT (tiff) format

inf: FUJI BAS-2000 (BAS-1500) format

info: BINARY user specified format

image: MarResearch IP scanner format

img: FUJI BAS-2000 (BAS-1500) format or HAMAMATSU CCD format. The file type is recognised from the start of the file.

mar1200: MarResearch IP scanner format

mar1600: MarResearch IP scanner format

mar2000: MarResearch IP scanner format

mar2300: MarResearch IP scanner format

mar3450: MarResearch IP scanner format

pck: Old compressed MarResearch format

pmi: PHOTOMETRICS CCD format

spe: PRINCETON INSTRUMENTS CCD format

tif: Adobe TIFF format

tiff: Adobe TIFF format

If the file has an unrecognised extension, then the UNKNOWN EXTENSION: SELECT FILE FORMAT: menu will appear. This menu is shown in Figure 9.

Figure 9: The UNKNOWN EXTENSION: SELECT FILE FORMAT: Menu

Most file formats are automatically input, but some do not have headers which fully define the necessary information to input the data. The BINARY format is the best explain of this. This is a very flexible input option which allows the user to define all the information concerning the formats and allows almost any non-compressed binary data to be input provided the user knows the details of the format, or finds them by trail and error. The BINARY format input parameter form is shown in Figure 10.

Figure 10: The BINARY Format Input Parameter Form

The form buttons allow the following input parameters to be controlled:

X-PIXELS: The number of pixels to be defined and input in the fastest changing direction

Y-PIXELS: The number of pixels to be defined and input in the more slowly changing direction

DATA TYPE: The data type used to store a pixel value. Presently the following types are supported:

BYTE VALUES: Single byte per pixel integers

4-BYTE INTEGER: 4-bytes per pixel integers

INTEGER (2-BYTE): 2-bytes per pixel integers

REAL (4-BYTE IEEE): 4-byte per pixel IEEE floating point reals.

SIGNED: For integers data types, whether or not the values are signed or unsigned.

BYTE SWAP: For multiple byte per pixel data types, this sets whether or not the bytes are to be reversed in their ordering on input. This is necessary for data written on a little-endian machine and read in on a big-endian machine, or vice versa.

STARTING BYTE: This allows the possibility of ignoring header sections at the start of binary files. If, for example, a file has a fixed length header of 1024 bytes, so that the image data starts at byte number 1025 (numbering from 1), then this value can be set to 1025.

When the form has been set, the O.K. button can be clicked and the data will be input.

Even with unknown formats trail and error can be used to find the correct parameters of the format provided the correctly input data can be recognised.

Since some of the formats are often used with very large files, a sub-region input menu can also appear.

Further information on the available file formats for input may be found in Section 15.51, Page .