What's New?
Recent Changes to SCRC Data Capture and Analysis Software
(From March 1991 to January 1993)

G. R. Detillieux

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

A new analysis method was added: "W.F. L.D.P. level vs cycle duration".
Waveform averages now correctly check the window size for validity. (Too large a window used to trigger an internal error.)
Cycle-based analyses can now treat the whole run as a single cycle, by setting the "Cycle W.F. #" to -1.
The "Raw waveform display" will now simply omit the trace, but still show the frame positions, when the "Mark frame positions on W.F." option is set and the "Amplitude Trace #" selects a non-existent trace. Low-resolution waveforms are now better handled as well, with their data points accurately aligned to the X-axis.
When there are too many bins to display in a trace or waveform average, the program will not attempt to display them. This used to mess up the screen and sometimes trigger an internal error.
The "Extend interpolation" now correctly positions the partial segment for a signal dropping into the displayed range. (It used to start too far to the left.)
The preview of an average now correctly recovers when you select "Quit" from the cursor reading menu, to disable the "Get cursor readings" option.
The "Raw waveform display" will always redisplay on a "Go" with the "Get cursor readings" option enabled.
The "Trace averaging based on W.F. level" now detects when the "# bins- avg" parameter is changed, and recalculates on a "Go".
Minor fixes to visual parameter setting displays.

The Z operator has been added to "Run/Calc", to allow zero-lag filtering of traces.

Added support for the automatic calibration system used at Panum Institute.
The user-specified sampling rate is now adjusted to what the hardware can provide, before it is used in any calculations.
Cap now always takes the default.cap file from the current directory. It used to get confused if "." wasn't in your PATH environment variable.
Added the "C" command to begin capture. (The former "C" command, for conversion rate, is now "Z".)
The parameter editing used to abort when you selected more than 16 channels, due to a bug in the channel information feature added in the last version. This has been fixed, and now indicates an error condition.
An obscure timeout bug involving very large queue buffers has been fixed. This sometimes triggered a false "Buffer overrun" condition, when the "Queue Buffer Length" was set to 5 seconds or more.

A new "Marker" feature has been added to the labelling facility, to add tags to features on the drawing.

The Clip operation gives more headroom for setting the Y range visually. A new "Y" command within this operation allows you to specify the exact range manually.
The Clip and Baseline operations now have "N" and "P" commands, to select the next or previous frame for display.

The corners of panels can now be dragged into place, instead of just clicking into place.
When pasting labels from one panel into a panel of a different size, labels now keep the same actual size, rather than the same proportions relative to the panel sizes.
A new symbol font, special2, has been added.
A shadowing feature has been added to get a filled-in look in large-sized text.
The "m" is now narrowed when the default font (roman) is used in non-proportional mode.
Large B-sized plots are now handled correctly. Layout used to get confused about the page size if you didn't do a "View/Graphics" before a "Plot/Plotter".
HPGL files can be exported to Corel Draw by passing them through the "replot -s" filter.

Support for the X Window System has been added to all the graphics programs in the package. Systems supported so far are: Concurrent 5000, 6000 and 7000 series systems with SP-X11, and, for analysis only, NeXT systems with co-Xist or some other X server.
Two new run file maintenance utilities were added to the package: salvagerun, and trimfrms.
A new command, getsplat, allows you to get spike latency data from multiple traces in a run.
The dashpens command has been added, to substitute pen changes in an HPGL file with line-type changes.