Wish List for PFE Features

[John Donovan]

Would it be possible to sort the standards in the interference standards drop-down menus in a similar way to the primary standards, i.e. by standard number, or alternatively alphabetically? We tend to have quite a few standards in the runs so it can take a while to find them in there at the moment.

Hi Karsten,
I didn't realize that they were loaded differently from the primary standards.  I will look into it.

OK, I remember now. You (and Dave Adams) wanted me to increase the number of standards to 132 per run. That is a lot of standards to scroll through!
john

[John Donovan]

Excellent suggestion there with the PHA parameters in Drift.

Would it be possible to sort the standards in the interference standards drop-down menus in a similar way to the primary standards, i.e. by standard number, or alternatively alphabetically? We tend to have quite a few standards in the runs so it can take a while to find them in there at the moment.

Hi Karsten,
We changed the interference standard combo controls to sorted and re-wrote the indexing code, so now these controls should be sorted just like the primary standard combo control.

Good suggestion for when there are many standards in your run!   What's your record standard count now?
john

[Karsten Goemann]

Great, thanks John. We've definitely cracked the old maximum limit for some of the method development stuff.
Our split holder with standards that are permanently in the instrument in the JEOL also now has 111 standards installed. So setting up and maintaining the position file for that gets us close to that new limit. And there is some potential to increase the number of standards in that split holder...

[Anette von der Handt]

I noticed that the "Plot Digitized Positions" option is active in the Imaging window that is accessible through the Acquire! window but not when I go through the Automate! window. Would it be possible to have it also working in the latter? That would be incredibly helpful for certain applications.

Thanks!

[John Donovan]

I noticed that the "Plot Digitized Positions" option is active in the Imaging window that is accessible through the Acquire! window but not when I go through the Automate! window. Would it be possible to have it also working in the latter? That would be incredibly helpful for certain applications.

Thanks!

Excellent idea!

I had to add additional shape controls to handle the currently digitized points separate from the previously digitized points, but it all works now.

You'll be able to download the update in about 6 hours.
john

Edit by John: OK, ready to download now.

[SXFiveFEJohn]

We have a long list of elements (could be 8 or 15) and after 2 days find that we need add another element--C -- to the list. So we know that C is not going to interfere with Fe or Ni or Co or Cr....etc,but we know there are possible n>1 overlaps of Fe Ni Co Cr etc upon C Ka...so we want to do wavescans on the metals ONLY for C Ka. But then we have to DA disable acquisition of all 8 or 15 elements....so wouldn't it be nice if there were a button which one could check saying "Disable ALL elements" that would put DA for each element. Then you only have to click ONE box (C) and away you go, rather than have to click 8 or 15 DA boxes. (Of course, you would all supply an "Enable ALL elements" button. ...just saying.... wouldn't it be nice...

[John Donovan]

We have a long list of elements (could be 8 or 15) and after 2 days find that we need add another element--C -- to the list. So we know that C is not going to interfere with Fe or Ni or Co or Cr....etc,but we know there are possible n>1 overlaps of Fe Ni Co Cr etc upon C Ka...so we want to do wavescans on the metals ONLY for C Ka. But then we have to DA disable acquisition of all 8 or 15 elements....so wouldn't it be nice if there were a button which one could check saying "Disable ALL elements" that would put DA for each element. Then you only have to click ONE box (C) and away you go, rather than have to click 8 or 15 DA boxes. (Of course, you would all supply an "Enable ALL elements" button. ...just saying.... wouldn't it be nice...

Hi John,
Your wish is my command.   

No seriously, that's a good idea.  I could use this feature myself.

The latest version has these new buttons in the Elements/Cations dialog:



Ready to update now.
john

[SXFiveFEJohn]

Periodically we have material scientists who ONLY look at atomic % data (which is always perfect, always 100%). I try to keep them on the straight and narrow by always verifying that the analytical wt% total is "correct", say between 98 and 102 wt%. But I'm not always around.  So here is a suggestion. You currently show in the Analysis window, the wt% total, but it is amongst many other smallish windows and doesn't really stand out if you are singlemindedly looking at the perfect data below. Suggestion: have in the ini flle a min and max range for "realitywarning" keyword, say 3 and 3, i.e. between 97 and 103, nothing happens. But if the analytical total is say 93 or 103.5, then change the small window with the analytical total: make the background red, and the numbers white to stand out. That shouldn't be too hard to program?

[John Donovan]

We have a long list of elements (could be 8 or 15) and after 2 days find that we need add another element--C -- to the list. So we know that C is not going to interfere with Fe or Ni or Co or Cr....etc,but we know there are possible n>1 overlaps of Fe Ni Co Cr etc upon C Ka...so we want to do wavescans on the metals ONLY for C Ka. But then we have to DA disable acquisition of all 8 or 15 elements....so wouldn't it be nice if there were a button which one could check saying "Disable ALL elements" that would put DA for each element. Then you only have to click ONE box (C) and away you go, rather than have to click 8 or 15 DA boxes. (Of course, you would all supply an "Enable ALL elements" button. ...just saying.... wouldn't it be nice...

Hi John,
I just realized this morning that you wrote above "disable acquisition", not "disable quant"!   

OK, so I changed it for both flags in the Elements/Cations form.  Even better!   

PFE update is ready now.
john

[Anette von der Handt]

Hi,

could you also add raw intensities as an option for export as slice/polygon/etc to Surfer?

Thanks!

[Probeman]

Hi,

could you also add raw intensities as an option for export as slice/polygon/etc to Surfer?

Thanks!

(Almost) everything is possible, but I have to ask: why would anyone want to look at raw intensity maps anymore?  I mean now that we can get full quant x-ray maps with almost no extra effort?

Is there a special application you are thinking of?

[John Donovan]

Hi,

could you also add raw intensities as an option for export as slice/polygon/etc to Surfer?

Thanks!

Hi Anette,
I went to look into this and found the reason one can output x-ray maps of raw intensities, but not for the slice, polygon, etc outputs.  It's because there are 256 menus and sub menus in CalcImage (there a lot of output types!) and that is the maximum number of menus allowed in one window, so I would have to re-design things a bit before I can add any new menus to CalcImage.

In the meantime I have a practical suggestion: simply output a slice script for one of the quant types for the project you are working on, and copy that script to another file name. For example, let's say you output a quant script named:

Fe-Mo-Cr-Ni_04-20-2012_Fe-Mo-Cr-1_00451__Quant_Slice.bas

So rename it to something like:

Fe-Mo-Cr-Ni_04-20-2012_Fe-Mo-Cr-1_00451__Raw_Int_Slice.bas

Then open the script in Scripter (or any text editor) and edit the section near the top, to utilize the raw intensity GRD files. So edit this section:

Dim Sample As String
Sample$ = "Fe-Mo-Cr-Ni_04-20-2012_Fe-Mo-Cr-1_00451__Quant_Slice"
Dim SampleTitle As String
SampleTitle$ = "Fe-Mo-Cr-Ni_04-20-2012_Fe-Mo-Cr-1_00451_, Elemental Wt.%"

Dim iMax As Integer
iMax% = 6

XInvert% = -1
YInvert% = -1

XLabel$ = "X (mm)   [0.381 mm]"
YLabel$ = "Y (mm)   [0.381 mm]"

ReDim FileArray(1 To iMax%) As String

FileArray$(1) = "Fe-Mo-Cr-1_00451_SP1_O_PC1__Quant"
FileArray$(2) = "Fe-Mo-Cr-1_00451_SP2_Mo_LPET__Quant"
FileArray$(3) = "Fe-Mo-Cr-1_00451_SP3_Ni_LLIF__Quant"
FileArray$(4) = "Fe-Mo-Cr-1_00451_SP4_Cr_PET__Quant"
FileArray$(5) = "Fe-Mo-Cr-1_00451_SP5_Fe_LIF__Quant"
FileArray$(6) = "Fe-Mo-Cr-Ni_04-20-2012_Fe-Mo-Cr-1_00451__Total_Quant"

ReDim ZLabel(1 To iMax%) As String

ZLabel$(1) = "O Wt%"
ZLabel$(2) = "Mo Wt%"
ZLabel$(3) = "Ni Wt%"
ZLabel$(4) = "Cr Wt%"
ZLabel$(5) = "Fe Wt%"
ZLabel$(6) = "Total Wt%"

to something like this:

Dim Sample As String
Sample$ = "Fe-Mo-Cr-Ni_04-20-2012_Fe-Mo-Cr-1_00451__Raw_Int_Slice"
Dim SampleTitle As String
SampleTitle$ = "Fe-Mo-Cr-Ni_04-20-2012_Fe-Mo-Cr-1_00451_, Raw Intensity (cps)"

Dim iMax As Integer
iMax% = 5

XInvert% = -1
YInvert% = -1

XLabel$ = "X (mm)   [0.381 mm]"
YLabel$ = "Y (mm)   [0.381 mm]"

ReDim FileArray(1 To iMax%) As String

FileArray$(1) = "Fe-Mo-Cr-1_00451_SP1_O_PC1_"
FileArray$(2) = "Fe-Mo-Cr-1_00451_SP2_Mo_LPET_"
FileArray$(3) = "Fe-Mo-Cr-1_00451_SP3_Ni_LLIF_"
FileArray$(4) = "Fe-Mo-Cr-1_00451_SP4_Cr_PET_"
FileArray$(5) = "Fe-Mo-Cr-1_00451_SP5_Fe_LIF_"

ReDim ZLabel(1 To iMax%) As String

ZLabel$(1) = "O Intensity (cps)"
ZLabel$(2) = "Mo Intensity (cps)"
ZLabel$(3) = "Ni Intensity (cps)"
ZLabel$(4) = "Cr Intensity (cps)"
ZLabel$(5) = "Fe Intensity (cps)"


Note that I edited (highlighted in red), the sample type and the sample title, and the GRD file names and the label for each raw intensity GRD file and most importantly, changed the number of files to 5 since there is no such thing as a "total" raw intensity file!

I hope this helps whatever you are trying to accomplish.  The same technique could be used to output raw intensities using the polygon and strip scripts.

The only useful thing I can think of (though I'm sure there are other useful things one could do) with slices of the raw intensities,  is to compare the differences between raw x-ray intensities with the quant values to demonstrate the importance of the background correction, matrix correction and interference corrections, etc. for quantitative maps.

Sort of what you did here (but not using slices through the data):



Hope this works for you until I can re-design the CalcImage menus.

Note that if you have version 13 or higher of Surfer, the XInvert and YInvert flags tells Surfer to automatically utilize an anti-Cartesian stage orientation so the slice image will appear in the correct orientation for JEOL instruments!

See attached below, my attempt at modifying a quant slice to use raw intensity GRD files.
john

[John Donovan]

Periodically we have material scientists who ONLY look at atomic % data (which is always perfect, always 100%). I try to keep them on the straight and narrow by always verifying that the analytical wt% total is "correct", say between 98 and 102 wt%. But I'm not always around.  So here is a suggestion. You currently show in the Analysis window, the wt% total, but it is amongst many other smallish windows and doesn't really stand out if you are singlemindedly looking at the perfect data below. Suggestion: have in the ini flle a min and max range for "realitywarning" keyword, say 3 and 3, i.e. between 97 and 103, nothing happens. But if the analytical total is say 93 or 103.5, then change the small window with the analytical total: make the background red, and the numbers white to stand out. That shouldn't be too hard to program?

Hi John,
Version 12.0.9 has this implemented.  It's not blinkin' blinking, but should be more noticeable!

I guess I could also add text warning output to the log window...

Please update PFE from the Help menu and let me know what you think.
john

PS The new default keywords for the probewin.ini file are:

[software]
AnalyticalTotalMinimum=95
AnalyticalTotalMaximum=105

[JohnF]

Wish Item for Xmas 2017: For the EPMA lab that doesn't always "do it the same way every day".
    We maybe are one of the few labs who doesn't always run their samples at the same column conditions (like we used to in the good ol' days). Now we run some samples 'the old fashioned way, 15 kV" but there are an increasing number of samples we run at 7 or 10 kV. In PfE, there is one default column condition. However, it happens more often than not, we will set up the probe for 7 kV, finish a run, and close the file. Then have the next project also at 7 kV, but if the old brain cells aren't firing quickly enough, I forget to immediately reset the operating conditions in the new file before I start peaking, and the PfE does what you've programmed it to do, it changes the column back to 15 kV, and we have to then spend many minutes realigning the instrument.
   So a Holiday Wish: Could you install an option, (which a user can turn off easily), say a key word "AskFirstBeforeDoing". If yes, then when in the code at the first instance of where you check the column kV and see that it is NOT the default, you put up a message on the screen "Do you really want to change from (7) kV to your default (15) kV?" Then if no, the user can remember to go reset the column conditions.
   Would make our probing more funner....

[Probeman]

   So a Holiday Wish: Could you install an option, (which a user can turn off easily), say a key word "AskFirstBeforeDoing". If yes, then when in the code at the first instance of where you check the column kV and see that it is NOT the default, you put up a message on the screen "Do you really want to change from (7) kV to your default (15) kV?" Then if no, the user can remember to go reset the column conditions.
   Would make our probing more funner....

Hi John,
Sounds like you are fighting with yourself for no good reason!   

Why don't you simply save your column conditions to a .PCC file, once you've got everything tuned up the way you like it (e.g., 7 keV). And then even if a previous user (or yourself) changed everything later on, you just go to the Windows menu in Probe for EPMA and select the Load Column Conditions From File menu, select the previously saved column condition, and let the software re-load your "tuned up" column settings for you?

Wouldn't that work for you?
john