Some guidelines for the XDS interface

XDSi is a crude interface for running the XDS crystallographic data processing program and analysing the output. I wrote it as I wanted to get from the data to an mtz reflection data file without too much extra work. It is a collection of Tcl/Tk scripts, and should run according to the instructions below.

Current version: 1.6 (August 31st, 2007)

Getting started (depends on local setup):

• FOLLOW the instructions in 'installation.txt'!
• Set up the environment (the file xdsistart in the program directory contains the necessary variables, modify it according to you setup and run it to start the interface)
• the interface should start and look something like this...
  
  
  
  
• From here on, you should be able to manage by pressing the "Help" and "Manual" buttons. Of course, I can always help.

At the moment, the interface runs:

• XDS-Indexing, planning, data processing, post-refinement, etc.
• XSCALE-Scaling, various corrections
• XDSCONV-Converting between data formats, all the way to an mtz file with Free R flags (possibly inherited from a previous dataset)
• CELLPARM-Estimate cell parameters from XDS runs
• VIEW-look at output
• phenix.xtriage to analyse the dataset
• ang2xds to get input parameters when using e.g. the Proteum2 system
• ANG-to estimate a suitable oscillation angle/image
• the full XDS manual available in a separate lynx window
• numbers for 'Table 1' when writing a paper can be automatically extracted

Known issues:

• If you have an input file already, and you press the button for a new input file, your old file will be OVERWRITTEN! Nice :)
• There are currently only buttons for getting 5 different detector-specific input files for XDS. Tell me if you need more (or find the input file manually).
• The input files must have less than 80 characters/line. This may be a problem in case you have a long path to your images, for example. In this case, make a soft link:
  

  ln -s /your/path/is/too/long images

Most recent info can be found in the README file.

Note...every now and then I try to make it better...

Last modified August 31st, 2007

Petri Kursula