wrel3.1.doc

speech signal process tools

waves+ Version 3.1 Release Notes                     page 11


The xspectrum "Window  Limits  From:"  panel  item  has  new
choice  labels to more clearly reflect the semantics of this
control item.
Now: "Cursor +- step/2" and "Markers"
Was: "Local" and "Host"

Xspectrum no longer repositions the  markers  or  recomputes
the  spectrum  if the "Window limits from:" item is changed.
Formerly, if the markers had been  carefully  positioned  in
preparation  for  a  new  spectrum computation, and the user
then switched the limits source, the hand-set window  limits
would be lost.


4.  BUGS FIXED

4.1.  xwaves

Commands added to the xwaves menus by the add_espsf facility
previously  did  not handle multiple output files correctly.
Now, if a process creates several related output time series
as  the  result of operations on an xwaves signal, these may
all be displayed automatically.  (See the discussion of out-
puts under the add_esps command in the xwaves manual.)

Multiple views of the same  signal  in  xwaves  now  display
correctly.   There  was a bug that caused incorrect displays
to be generated if more than one view of the same signal was
generated  in  the  display ensemble.  Now it is possible to
have several views of the same signal displayed correctly at
different scales.

When xwaves was being used to manipulate  headerless  files,
or  files  with  foreign headers, it would eventually use up
all available file descriptors and  refuse  to  display  any
more  files.   This has been corrected.  An unlimited number
of cycles of load and destroy may now be performed  on  such
files.

The verbose startup messages issued by xwaves regarding  the
use  of  DSP  hardware  were  often confusing (or just plain
wrong).  These are now correct.

The xwaves file-browser  windows  did  not  follow  symbolic
directory links correctly.  This has now been corrected.

The xwaves file-browser facility would fail to detect that a
typed  specification  was a directory unless a final "/" was
entered.  As a consequence, xwaves would load such nodes  as
though  they  were  signals!   All  directory  nodes are now
displayed as directories whether entered  with,  or  without
the trailing "/".











waves+ Version 3.1 Release Notes                     page 12


When xwaves exited before a  "play"  command  was  complete,
some types of internal DSP hardware were not reset correctly
and would endlessly repeat fragments  of  the  output.   All
play  operations  in  progress are now stopped before xwaves
exits.

Previously, the SGI Indigo internal "play"  function  locked
out  xwaves  interaction for the duration of the play opera-
tion.  This has now been fixed.  The workaround for this had
been to use the external play program (sgplay) as the defin-
ition for play_prog.  This has  the  disadvantage  of  being
somewhat  slower,  so SGI users that resorted to this should
now comment out the play_prog specifications in their


4.2.  Auxiliary Programs

A/D and D/A conversion on the SGI Indigo is now possible for
all  Indigo  sample rates for stereo and mono files.  Previ-
ously, a bug in our buffer specifications prevented  correct
operation at frequencies over 24kHz.

Dual-channel play on  SURF  from  within  xwaves  now  works
correctly.  Several other play deficiencies in FAB2 and SURF
xwaves play operations were also fixed.

The xwaves-internal play function has been fixed  to  handle
non-ESPS  files  correctly  when the played region is not in
display window.  Formerly this could cause  extreme  distor-
tion due to variances in data type or byte ordering.

Xwaves now  handles  incorrect  colormap  names  gracefully.
Previously,  it  would  load the current directory (!!) as a
colormap if the specified  colormap  didn't  exist,  causing
bizarre spectrogram displays.

Single-record FEA_SPECT files may now be displayed as  spec-
trograms.  Previously, this caused a core dump.

There were several situations which caused  xwaves  to  exit
without freeing the Entropic license.  This prevented subse-
quent use of that license until after a three-minute timeout
period.   This  has  now  been fixed for all cases except an
explicit SIGKILL (e.g. via kill -9 <pid>).  A  new  command,
freewaves, has been added to handle this latter case and the
timeout period has been reduced to 30 seconds.

Xwaves now  uses  the  output_dir  specification  much  more
rationally:  If  the  user  specifies a fully qualified name
(i.e as beginning with a directory, ./ or /)  output_dir  is
ignored.   Output_dir  is only applied to automatically gen-
erated names (e.g. temporary files) and those  output  files
specified as simple base names by the user.










waves+ Version 3.1 Release Notes                     page 13


Simple filenames entered into xwaves  no  longer  have  "./"
automatically  prepended.   This  behavior  caused  subquent
references to files loaded  into  xwaves  to  be  incorrect,
since  the  user had no way of knowing that the name (as far
as xwaves was concerned) had a  leading  "./".   This  fixes
apparent  bugs  in several commands (e.g. align) that refer-
ence specific files.

If the start and end time specifications for  a  spectrogram
command  are  omitted,  the spectrogram will now be computed
over the entire xwaves buffer interval automatically.   Pre-
viously, if these were omitted, no spectrogram was computed.
Users who resorted to the workaround of  setting  start  0.0
and  end  10000  (or  some  such)  may  now revert to a more
rational model if they wish.  In fact, if the file is  10000
seconds long, the new xwaves will compute the whole spectro-
gram, so be careful!

In some cases the temporary files created during computation
of  spectrograms  by  xwaves-external processes were getting
crossed up so  that  the  spectrogram  that  was  eventually
displayed was not of the desired signal.

Formerly, spectrogram segments  saved  using  xwaves'  "save
segment  in  file"  facility,  were  not saved correctly and
could not be used  with  many  Entropic  programs  (such  as
plotsgram).  This has been fixed.

Quantization by xwaves of the start and end  times  sent  to
external spectrogram programs would cause these to fail with
messages about bad start and/or end times.  This was partic-
ularly  troublesome  for  files  with start and/or end times
greater than 99 sec.  The spectrogram programs (e.g.  sgram,
s32csgram)  have relaxed their requirements by simply limit-
ing the spectrogram computation to the file limits if neces-
sary.   Also, the quantization of the time specifications by
xwaves has been made much finer.

Temporary waveform files created by the spectrogram  command
are now placed in output_dir, and are automatically deleted.

Previously, spectrogram computations launched by xwaves, but
executed by an external program (such as sgram) were limited
to signal segments that were buffered in xwaves.   That  is,
if  an  external program is called to compute a spectrogram,
the entire segment upon which it was to be based  needed  to
be  present  in xwaves' display buffer. In Version 3.1, seg-
ments of any size consistent with the  limits  of  the  file
being  analyzed  may  now be specified for the start and end
values to the spectrogram command.  Specifications exceeding
the file limits will be automatically adjusted as necessary.












waves+ Version 3.1 Release Notes                     page 14


4.3.  Attachments

The tendency for xwaves and the attachments to hang  up  the
computer's  mouse  and  display  has  now  been  eliminated.
Xwaves and the attachments can no longer "grab all input".

The tendency for xwaves and the attachments  to  loose  syn-
chronization  has been greatly reduced.  A new inter-process
communication technique  has  been  implemented  that  makes
interactions  faster  and  less error prone.  Problems elim-
inated include: negative times being printed in  the  xlabel
window; failure of label files to load correctly; lock up of
attachments; and failure to execute commands.

Previously, the xlabel and xmarks label displays  positioned
themselves to overlap the signal view and obscured the lower
part of its window.  This has been corrected.

Xlabel now automatically inherits the current display ensem-
ble  name  from xwaves.  This eliminates the "Object doesn't
exist (can't add file ...)" message from xlabel  (unless  it
is really true!).

When  output_dir  is  specified,  xlabel  now   applies   it
correctly.   Previously,  two  bugs  caused  bizarre  things
(including core dumps) when  output_dir  was  specified  and
xlabel was used.  Now, if the label file name is fully qual-
ified (begins with ./ or /), it will be used unchanged.   If
only a basename is specified, output_dir will be prepended.

Xspectrum now responds correctly to the xwaves do_color set-
ting.   When  black-and-white plots are requested by setting
do_color 0, the xspectrum window is rendered accordingly and
can  now  be  dumped  to a hardcopy printer/plotter.  Previ-
ously, some xwaves colormaps caused all-black xspectum hard-
copies.

Xspectrum had a display instability when two or  more  spec-
trum  displays  overlapped.  They could keep sending refresh
messages to one  another  and  alternately  perform  "raise"
operations   (forever!)   if   xspectrum_datwin_forward  was
enabled.  This has been fixed.

Xspectrum  occasionally  crashed  when  the  related  xwaves
display object was killed.  This has been fixed.

Xspectrum now permits computation of extremely  large  FFT's
(limited  only by the user's patience and hardware).  A soft
limit  is  still  implemented  via  the   xspectrum   global
max_fft_size,  which  defaults  to 65536, to protect against
accidents!  To change this, just send a command to xspectrum
like
              send set max_fft_size 1000000".










waves+ Version 3.1 Release Notes                     page 15


The xspectrum manual page had several errors regarding  max-
imum window sizes, and it has also been corrected.


5.  NOTES

Smooth operation of xwaves is dependent upon the  configura-
tion of your operating environment.  For an overview, please
refer to the document $ESPS_BASE/xview/README  (also  avail-
able  under  the  "Other Documents" item on the einfo menu).
In particular, you may need to put the  following  items  in
your $HOME/.Xdefaults file:

        *Foreground:                    black
        *Background:                    white
        window.color.foreground:        black
        window.color.background:        white
        4Dwm*positionIsFrame:           T
        4Dwm*positionOnScreen:          T
        4Dwm*interactivePlacement:      F
        4Dwm*clientAutoPlace:           false
        Mwm*interactivePlacement:       False
        Mwm*clientAutoPlace:            False
        XView.ICCCMCompliant:           False

This release of waves+ comes without a Sunview version.  The
old program waves+, (alias svwaves, waves, svwaves+, ...) no
longer exists.  Entropic no  longer  ships  or  maintains  a
Sunview-compatible  version  of  xwaves.   We  strongly urge
users of waves+ to try the new X version which  has  all  of
the  features you are familiar with, is very robust, and has
many new features never available under Sunview.

Wplay and wrecord have  been  eliminated.   They  have  been
replaced  by  a family of play and record programs with con-
siderably enhanced capabilities.  See "eman play" and  "eman
record".

All programs are now linked "static".  Although this results
in  larger  program  binaries,  it  should  greatly ease the
installation and maintenance problems for xwaves and related
programs.   Previously, it was necessary to either force the
use of the graphics libraries shipped from Entropic  through
use of the LD_LIBRARY_PATH UNIX environment variable, or run
the risk of having version skews in  the  dynamically-loaded
libraries.   These  complications have been eliminated.  All
references to Entropic directories can be removed  from  the
LD_LIBRARY_PATH definition (e.g. in .cshrc files).