Can't select file information in DataTool's window

Hi!

Is there any particular reason, why the selection of file information is disabled in the main window of DataTool? Actually, it would be quite convenient to save an info file alongside with exported ASCII data, so it might turn out to be a useful option to add.

Further on, actually, the DataTool would be most useful as a cross-platform console program without messy GUI, which makes it impossible to run it from a script. In fact, it would be much more convenient to carry one fat static binary rather than writing NeuroShare wrapper and messing with platform specific libraries to get the data out of the MCD container.

Finally, it's not quite clear to me why a native (say, Python) reader can't be provided, which would eliminate the need to compile for every single platform.

Best,

Z.

We will consider a possibility of pasting the file information into the clipboard in one of our next versions of MC_DataTool.

On Windows MC_DataTool can already be used on the console (see documentation). For other platforms we put your proposal on our project list.

Neuroshare is particular useful, if you want to include the reading routines in your own software

The MCD format is quite complicated and changed from version to version. It would be quite complicated to provide a compatible native reader written in Python. One can think about a Python wrapper around Neuroshare libraries or the MC_Stream Libraries, which would allow at least Windows, Linux (Intel) and Mac (Intel).

Jens

Hi!

Jens wrote:We will consider a possibility of pasting the file information into the clipboard in one of our next versions of MC_DataTool.

Well, I guess, most useful would be to add a checkbox to save this information exactly as it is displayed in a file with the same name as the output file, but different extension (dsc, nfo, info, or whatever).

Jens wrote:On Windows MC_DataTool can already be used on the console (see documentation). For other platforms we put your proposal on our project list.

Aha, I'm sorry for this. Wine's CHM viewer leaves much to be desired. For instance, the illustrations are not shown, and some sections (such as ReadMe) fail to load. I am not sure, whether it's a bug in Wine or it has something to do with the way your CHM is constructed.

I have tried to make it work with wineconsole --backend=curses and it kind of works, but still not very useful for the reason, that it needs a pseudo-tty to initialize, so you can't just run it in the detached mode as one would do with the other console programs.

Jens wrote:The MCD format is quite complicated and changed from version to version. It would be quite complicated to provide a compatible native reader written in Python.

I realize that it's a lot of extra work for you with uncertain number of people that would benefit. However, a native reader is, obviously, not so hard to implement and maintain as a full read/write format support which nobody really needs anyway. Backward / forward compatibility shouldn't be such a big problem if the container format is properly designed. It's just a question of keeping lists of constants up to date...

Recently a native reader for TDT binary formats has been implemented and it turned out to not to be so hard on the basis of the headers that they supplied. Is there any chances for such headers to be provided to the third parties to implement a BSD-licenced native reader?

Jens wrote:One can think about a Python wrapper around Neuroshare libraries or the MC_Stream Libraries, which would allow at least Windows, Linux (Intel) and Mac (Intel).

Such wrapper is already being developed as a part of a larger library, mostly consisting of native readers, but it's not much fun to use, because shared objects loading is not portable and you have to carry binary libraries etc.

Best,
Z.