The Marks menu

Save...

Marks Save... writes all the marks in the current file to a marks file. The dialog is a typical file selection box. See below for a description of the format of this file.

Read...

Marks Read... reads a marks file, placing the marks in it on the current data file. The dialog is a typical file selection box. See below for a description of the format of the file.

Filter...

A common operation is to write out marks, process them through some program, then read them back in. Marks Filter does all these steps in one operation. This is what the dialog box looks like the first time you bring it up:

To use it, just type the name of the program you want to process the marks through, then click OK. In this example the program is called edinout. This is meant to be a simple shell script that brings up the marks in your favorite editor and allows you to make changes. Here's the edinout script we use:

    #!/bin/csh
    #
    set tf=edinout.$$
    onintr quit

    cat $* - >! $tf
    $EDITOR $tf
    cat $tf

    quit:
    rm -f $tf
The next time you select Marks Filter, it looks like this:

The only difference is that now edinout (or whatever filter you just ran) is now in the list box at the top. If you want to run edinout again, you can just double-click it. If you use any other filter, xdatplot will add that to the list.

Mark format

This is what an actual marks file looks like:
0 632 t = 0.316, V = -3.32148
p 2247 t = 1.1235, V = 107.117, area = 0.704956, height = 76.5991
t 2680 t = 1.34, V = -204.468, area = 0.936508, height = 162.811
t 2771 t = 1.3855, V = -62.561, area = 0.133362, height = 21.9727
p 6026 t = 3.013, V = 100.708, area = 0.736237, height = 74.7681
t 6435 t = 3.2175, V = -210.266, area = 0.912323, height = 180.054
1 7384 t = 3.692, V = 2.01308
Every mark is one line, in three parts. First, there is a single character (0, 1, p, or t in this case) that identifies the mark. Next there is an integer telling which point in the datafile the mark is set on. Finally there is the mark comment. It gives the t and V values at the point in whatever units you have set in the units dialog. Marks that were found in a peaks search also give the area and height of the peak. The except format of the comments is configurable (the markCommentFormat2 and markCommentFormat3 resources).

xdatplot sets the comments when you set a mark, but pays no attention to them thereafter. Therefore you can use them however you want.

Leon Avery (leon@eatworms.swmed.edu)