[fitsbits] [ANN] IGOR Pro 4

[Larry Hutchinson]

The following announcement of IGOR Pro 4 may be of interest to readers of this
newsgroup because many in the astrophysics community use IGOR to process data
stored in fits files. 

In this release of IGOR, I have extended the fits loader to handle at least a
subset of the BINTABLE type. Also, it is now easier to automate the loading and
processing of a directory full of files. 

Those unfamiliar with IGOR may wish to download the demo version and then run
the "FITS Loader Demo" example. 



*******************************************
WaveMetrics is proud to announce the immediate availability of the next major
revision to its graphing and data analysis program. IGOR Pro 4 is the
latest in a long line of enhancements dating back to IGOR 1.0 in Jan 1989. 

IGOR Pro runs on Macintosh and Windows and is used by tens of thousands of
scientists and engineers world-wide. For general information on IGOR, pricing
or to download a demo version, please visit our web site:  
http://www.wavemetrics.com/


The remainder of this note is meant for people already familiar with IGOR Pro
3.1 and describes the new features along with ordering information.


IMPORTANT MACINTOSH NOTE: As of IGOR Pro 4, the minimum requirement is a
PowerPC running MacOS 8.5 or later. 68K machines are no longer supported.

ADDITIONAL MACINTOSH NOTE: IGOR Pro 4 has not yet been "carbonized", but
we plan on starting that task soon.


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*NEW FEATURES*
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The full list of new features and changes is quite long. It is provided in the
Igor4 release as a help file titled "What's new In Igor Pro 4." The following
list is just the highlights. Also, visit:
http://www.wavemetrics.com/Products/IGORPro/IP4newfeatures.html


Curve Fitting:
The curve fitting user interface has been thoroughly revamped and provides
"one-stop shopping" for virtually all curve fitting features. For example, the
curve fit dialog can assist in creating or editing user-defined functions,
specifying initial guesses, and setting simple constraints. New built-in
fitting functions include HillEquation, Sigmoid, Power, lognormal, Gauss2D
and Poly2D. You can command IGOR to calculate confidence bands and
coefficient confidence intervals.

User Interface
The various axis related dialogs have all been combined into a single revamped
dialog that also supports features that previously had to be executed on the
command line. Likewise, the annotation dialog has been modernized and made
simpler to use. 

Packages Feature
A new mechanism provides easy access to user or WaveMetrics written procedure
packages. Most notable is the completely revised and downright spiffy Polar
Plot package along with the very useful Transform Axes, Global Fitting and
ANOVA packages.  

Graphing Improvements
You can now cause axes to be drawn with purely user-defined tick mark positions
and labels. Date/Time axes have been greatly improved. IGOR can now create
true waterfall plots. You can create and edit color scales using the revamped
annotation dialog. You can now attach tags and cursors to images. You can now
have crosshair cursors instead of icon cursors and cursors can now be "free
roaming." A new arrow marker mode eases creation of vector plots. In most cases
image plots will print much faster. You can now export graphics in various
bitmap formats such as JPEG and TIFF (requires QuickTime 4).  

Page Layout Improvements
You can now select and operate on multiple objects in the layout layer. The new
Align submenu in the Layout menu allows you to align objects in the layout
layer. New commands are provided to make it easier to format objects on
the page and to ease the creation of stacked graphs.

Table Improvements
You can display date data using a wide variety of date formats. You can display
and edit elapsed time, fractional seconds and negative time in time-formatted
columns. You can view and edit dimension labels and can display data in
hexadecimal and octal. 

Data Browser Improvements
The new Data Browser allows you to preview your data graphically, to view and
edit properties of waves and variables, to sort objects alphabetically, and to
focus on deeply buried data folders.

Help System Improvements
The new Help Browser includes the ability to search all help files, procedure
files and notebooks. Modeless help is provided for functions and
operations. The Help Browser provides a display of all shortcuts and one-click
access to online manual.  

Notebook Improvements
You can do a find across multiple windows. You can now export a notebook as HTML.

Programming Improvements
IGOR's user-level programming environment has been greatly extended. New flow
control techniques include for-loops, numeric and string switch statements and
the elseif statement along with ||, && and the ?: constructs borrowed from C.
Functions can now be private to a given procedure file and symbolic constants
can be defined for use in a procedure file. You can now send results in one
function back to the calling function using pass-by-reference and you can pass
a function to another function. Text in procedure windows is displayed with
Syntax Coloring. You can set breakpoints and can command IGOR to break on error
to bring up the new symbolic debugger which allows you to single step your code
and view (and even change) variables. 

Control Improvements
You can create professional user-interfaces to your code using the new ListBox,
GroupBox, TitleBox, Slider and TabControls. You can now select multiple
controls and then align, distribute, move or cut copy and paste. Controls can
be made invisible or disabled. You can create a PopupMenu control that displays
colors or dashed-line styles. It is now easier to make control panels that look
and work properly when transferred between Mac and Win.

Data Import And Export Improvements
The LoadWave operation supports "fixed-field" (FORTRAN-style) files and allows
you to specify parameters on a column-by-column basis. LoadWave can now handle
a wide variety of date formats and now supports elapsed time, fractional
seconds and negative time in time-formatted data. The new ImageLoad and
ImageFileInfo operations handle various graphics file formats including GIF,
JPEG and TIFF while the new ImageSave operation saves waves in various graphics
formats. Some of these formats require QuickTime 3.0 or later.   

New Analysis operations and functions:
WaveMeanStdv ConvexHull FindRoots FindValue FindSequence FastOp IntegrateODE
poly2D Optimize 

New Matrix operations and functions:
MatrixDet (determinant) MatrixTrace MatrixRank MatrixEigenV MatrixLLS
MatrixLinearSolve MatrixSchur MatrixDot 

New Image Processing operations:
ImageRemoveBackground ImageStats ImageBoundaryToMask ImageWindow ImageSeedFill

New 3D Analysis operations and functions:
BoundingBall Interp3DPath SphericalTriangulate SphericalInterpolate Project
Triangulate3D 

New Installer
We are now using a new installer that permits much easier web-based updating
to the latest version of IGOR. You can simply double-click on an Icon to
initiate an automatic download of any new or changed files. 


*******************************************
*POLICY CHANGE*
*******************************************
As of IGOR Pro 4, we no longer differentiate between Mac and Win products. 
You get a single activation key which can be used on either platform.
We do still want to know which platform you are using, however.

In 3.1 we warned that image processing might be split out as a separate
extra-cost package. We have decided against this and image processing is still
included in IGOR Pro 4. 

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*ORDERING INFO*
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As of IGOR Pro 4, we now have a secure web page for ordering with a
credit card (Master Card and VISA only). Also new is the ability to
receive your copy of IGOR via electronic download with the CD being
optional (perhaps as a backup).


For pricing or to order, please visit:
http://www.wavemetrics.com/Order/index.html

We also accept orders via email, phone or fax:
Sales email: sales at WaveMetrics.com
Phone: (503) 620-3001
Fax:   (503) 620-6754

Support email: support at WaveMetrics.com


*******************************************
-Larry Hutchinson
-WaveMetrics
-- 
larryh at teleport.com  Public Access User --- Not affiliated with TECHbooks
Public Access UNIX and Internet at (503) 220-1016 (2400-14400, N81)