iNMR news #90

[GB, author of iNMR]

Back to Basics

Like the planets rotate around the sun, the processing model of iNMR
rotates around the command Reload. It is there since the very
beginning (May 2005), everything else was built upon it and it's the
only command that appears twice under the menus. The twin command,
called Repeat, most of the times is perfectly equivalent to Reload.
You find both commands under the File menu.

A practical example shows why Reloading is the way to go. Let's say
that you started your processing suppressing the solvent signal with
the command Process > Suppress, then proceeded with another 4 or 5
processing operations. At the end, you are not satisfied, either
because the solvent signal is still too strong or because other
signals nearby have also been suppressed. You would like to try with a
more (or less) selective suppression. Just because you have forgotten
the manual, or because you have never grasped the internal logic of
iNMR, you are tempted to use the command Undo. Fortunately it does not
work with processing. Let's imagine what could happen IF processing
was undoable instead. You would have to call the Undo command 4 or 5
times. Every operation would be quite lengthy. Some operations would
actually corrupt the spectrum (just think at applying the inverse of
an exponential weighting). You risk to call the Undo command more
times that it's needed. Summarizing: the Undo command is
inappropriate. The only great thing about it is that it's easy to
remember. In our example, the correct solution is to reload the FID
with File > Reload, then to repeat the whole processing. The good
thing is that all the processing parameters are preserved. If you
don't want to change them, just click on "OK" in all dialogs.

NMR processing is not the only computer activity that is impossible to
undo or where the command Undo is called with a different name. After
you have sent an email you can't undo. When navigating an hypertext
you use the command "Go Back", not the command "Undo". Those things
are already familiar to kids. I hope that NMR processing is (or will
soon be) just as familiar to you.

To continue with analogies, just as the first thing you ask before
driving a new kind of vehicle is: "where are the brakes?", you need to
be familiar with the command "Reload" if you want to use iNMR
comfortably for processing. The command Repeat is even more
appropriate. Normally they are equivalent. There is a difference when
you are working on a single column (or row) of a 2-D matrix. In this
case, "Repeat" will repeat the extraction of the sub-spectrum from its
parent matrix, while Reload will reload the whole thing, unprocessed,
from disc.

The command File > Extract is also very useful if you want to
experiment many different kinds of processing in nD-spectroscopy. You
extract a single row and you have more options, like "Live FT" (not
available in the 2-D case) and interactive baseline correction. When
even these options are not enough, you have the command File > Repeat
for starting a different experiment.

What happens when you want to undo the very last operation? For
example, you want to undo the symmetrization. In this case, reloading
the FID seems too lengthy. The solution to speed up the process comes
through the keyboard shortcuts, or the palette buttons. I prefer the
former (there is no palette equivalent for Reload, I am sorry): Cmd-
L, then Alt-Cmd-R (as many times as the number of dimensions), then
Alt-Cmd-B perform the following operations:

- Reloading;
- Weighting;
- Zero-filling;
- Fourier Transform;
- Phase Correction;
- Baseline Correction

Just remember 3 words and their initials: Load, Run, (Run), Baseline.
My fingers remember where to hit, so it takes a couple of seconds to
repeat all these things.
Incidentally, the palette button for FT is not equivalent to the menu
command. The button shortcut also includes Signal Suppression, if and
only if the relevant parameters have already been set before.

Campus Licenses, Industrial or Academic, nothing changes

A license for 100 users still costs € 11 per user per year. If the
users are only 20, the price is € 35. There is an explicit clause to
renew at the same price after the first year.

http://www.inmr.net/annual.html

If you are less than 20, what kind of Campus is yours?