DESCRIPTION

These notes summarize the modifications made for spec release 2.5, as finalized on May 11, 1988.

CHANGES

Each motor now has three levels of security: 1) no protection, 2) limits cannot be changed and 3) motor cannot be moved.

When using edconf to alter the configuration file, limits no longer track changes to the accumulator, however they still follow changes to the dial setting.

The name of the standard macro file has been changed from /usr/lib/spec.d/spec.mac to /usr/lib/spec.d/standard.mac.

The DSP CAMAC driver has been fixed to enable slot 16 to work. In addition, each time a process opens the driver when no other process has it open, a CAMAC Z (initialization command) is issued.

A new macro wm, "where motor", prints positions and limits for up to six motors.

A new macro vi invokes the editor called vi.

A new macro mail invokes the mailer called mailx.

A new macro bug lets the user enter a message that is then mailed to the administrator, spec_adm.

A new macro splot plots the current data on the video screen.

The geometry status macros wh, ca, ci, etc., will now only print the positions of the four-circle motors.

MOTORS is now a built-in symbol, automatically set to the number of configured motors when the config file is read.

On first reading of the standard macros, if the four-circle motors are not configured in the standard positions (0-3), the motor indirection array (_A[]) is automatically initialized.

The four-circle diffractometer macro set and C code has been improved, including better diagnostics when trying to go to unreachable positions and bug fixes. The Reference Manual now contains a complete description of the four-circle interface. Among the new four-circle macros to set geometry parameters (each will prompt if invoked without arguments) are setmode to set the mode, setsector to set the sector, setlat to set the crystal lattice parameters and setaz to set the azimuthal reference vector.

The state file is no longer saved if the user exits using ^Z.

The plotting interface has been revised. Consult the Reference Manual for details.

The wait() function can now be invoked to return a value indicating if any asynchronous activity is going on.

New built-in functions exp10(x) and pow(x, y) are available. The former returns 10 to the x, the latter, x to the y.