Cameca .Tiff file outputs

[John Donovan]

I can imagine that your software can do that. But why then You need ability to read impDat?

Mostly intellectual curiosity. We already can read the Cameca image files that have been exported as .txt files for subsequent quantification in CalcImage:

https://probesoftware.com/smf/index.php?topic=1164.0

But there are some minor ambiguities in reading these .TXT  files (depending on how they are saved/named), particularly with regards to duplicate elements, so we are hoping this might be resolved if the format of the ImpDat files was known.  But it's not a big deal and it sounds like the .ImpDat format is not at all straight forward and even worse, changes based on the Cameca version of their software.

The JEOL native mapping image format is much easier!

[sem-geologist]

so we are hoping this might be resolved if the format of the ImpDat files was known

I had done my part, it is up to You in what way (or if at all) you will use that. As I already mentioned above, I highly recommend to not try reinventing the wheel, and just make dll from this ksy. Either compiling ksy into C# code, or C++ (You can do that right from the web_IDE, no installations are required), then grab a free MIT licensed kaitai runtime source and compile those into single dll. Such dll will produce public functions for accessing different parts of these binary files which I believe you could use from VB.
There possible is even 3rd option, generated C# parser code and runtime code could be translated into VB (there are some translators on the internet).
 As far as I had tested this parser works on impDat, wdsDat, qtiDat, calDat files produced with PeakSight 5.1 (or maybe even from 5.0) up to 6.4. Introducing changes for next iteration of files with added/injected binary structures will be very easy. I tried to sanitize attribute names (which kaitai translates into public functions in C++ or C#), if You decide to use it, please be free to suggest alternative attribute names, in case you would find latest attribute naming scheme lacking. I can then consider marking all main attribute names as stable API, so that with future changes, it would require only substituting generated C# or C++ code and recompile. VB code would need no changes to access data from future formats.
 
I opened a repository for this at github https://github.com/sem-geologist/peaksight-binary-parser. And I am stopping flooding this thread.

Also I had opened a new thread dedicated to all the technical details for this new parser topic 1377.

[John Donovan]

OK, thanks.