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What's New?
Recent Changes to SCRC Data Capture and Analysis Software
(From April 1998 to July 2000)

G. R. Detillieux

Spinal Cord Research Centre,
The University of Manitoba,
Winnipeg, Canada R3E 0J9

Capture

• The random channel list parameter is now parsed as a list first, and taken as a file name only if it doesn't make sense as a channel list. It used to be taken as a file name first which caused problems when you had files whose name was just a number.
• QNX version of capture programs now allow 31 channels in list, which is the largest list the WIN-30D can support. This limit is now checked during parameter setting.
• Extra numbers that were used to pad the channel list and divisor lists are now stripped out when the channel table is edited. Previously, these sometimes remained and caused problems later on.
• New trace or waveform entries can now be quickly inserted into the channel table with a double click. Channel table error checking was also improved, and repeated channels are now handled much better.

Analysis

• Trace amplitude graphs that use the integration option now show the scale of results correctly as a product of voltage and time. Prior to this fix (Aug. 27/98) trace amplitude graphs scaled the data incorrectly when using the integration option. The values displayed were too large, by a factor of how many points were used in the integration. E.g. if your sample window included 23 data points to be integrated, the displayed result was 23 times too large.
• Requesting help, with "?" key, at "Go" menu item now shows description of selected analysis method, or "Initial actions" page if none selected.
• At the main menu, pressing the "<" or ">" key now turns on the Cursors display option and runs the analysis, to quickly get cursor readings.
• Manual cycle selection now avoids any pairs of markers previously set outside of the current analysis range. These used to cause problems.
• Improvements were made to manual selection of single-unit spikes to better handle spikes outside of the current analysis range.
• Saving deleted section information in analysis parameters now works correctly on QNX and Linux. A byte-ordering problem used to cause the analysis program to crash or fail to save the deleted sections.
• There is a new "Overlay-W.F." option to get two waveforms superimposed during waveform parameter setting, to aid in setting times. The waveform selected by this parameter will be shown using the marker colour, while the waveform for which you are setting waveform parameters will appear in the usual axes colour.
• A View/Required operation for the Raw W.F. display analysis now shows the cycle parameters when the Display crossings or Display cycle length option is set.
• The Raw W.F. display analysis now properly shows deleted sections that are partially outside of the analysis range.

Miscellaneous

• Fixed a buffer overflow problem in the raster program that was caused by long lines in the .frd file. These should no longer cause the program to crash.
• Marker settings in the raster program now work correctly on QNX and Linux systems.
• The peel program now makes markers smaller after they're set, and uses different sizes for markers in the first and second peel, to clearly distinguish them.
• On X Window displays, the peel program now plots data points using a small diamond symbol, rather than a single dot, for better visibility.
• The axon2run program now handles episodes larger than 16K samples. It also now allows .abf file name extensions, as well as .dat (in lower or upper case) and avoids invalid file comments (strings of control characters) which occur in some files. This program still does not fully support the newer Axon Instruments ABF file format, so if you can still save down to their DOS binary format (.dat) that is still preferable.
• A small Y2K bug in the genman program was fixed. This program now also correctly handles the new date format that recent versions of GNU tar use.
• Software ported to Red Hat Linux 6.x, using glibc 2.1.

SCRC WWW administrator: www@scrc.umanitoba.ca