Reporting problems with ATHENA, ARTEMIS, and HEPHAESTUS

ATHENA, ARTEMIS, and HEPHAESTUS are under active development. This means that, as you use these programs, you may run into problems. While some of these problems may indeed be your misunderstanding how something is meant to work, it is rather more likely that you will uncover actual bugs or find ways in which the performance and behavior of the programs may be improved. This web page is intended to help you communicate with me so that I can address your problem in the quickest and most efficient manner.

First off, I want to say that I welcome and encourage bug reports and suggestions for improving the codes. The programs are much better thanks to the excellent feedback I receive regularly from users.

Second, you should consider posting questions about IFEFFIT to the IFEFFIT mailing list and questions about FEFF to the FEFF mailing list. Questions about FEFF8 should certainly be addresses to its mailing list.

I have organized this page into a list of DOs and DON'Ts. By following these suggestions, you will facilitate my ability to understand and solve the problem. If you follow the DOs and avoid the DON'Ts, I will be able to help you or incorporate bug fixes into the software as quickly as possible.

DO try downloading the latest version of the software. I may already have fixed your problem. DO subscribe to the IFEFFIT mailing list and DO try asking your question there. Your problem may have been discussed there or it may be of interest to other users. DO tell me which program and which version number you are using. DO tell me what operating system you are using. DO provide the crystallographic data and a literature reference to the crystallographic data when reporting a problem with ATOMS. DO explain clearly and concisely how to replicate the problem. DO send a project file that demonstrates a problem with ATHENA, or ARTEMIS. For a problem with ATHENA, you may also need to send raw data. DO send a screenshot of the program in action if that helps explain the problem. PNG is usually the best choice for a screenshot. GIF is good also. JPG and PDF are ok. TIF sucks. Attach this image file to your mail message directly and DON'T embed it in a Word or PowerPoint file before attaching it. DO send any output files that help explain the problem. Bugs reports about ATOMS almost always require the faulty `feff.inp' file. DO use compressed archives if you must send large numbers of files. .zip, .tar.gz, or .tar.bz2 are acceptable formats for compressed archiving. DO drop me a short email if a lot of time has passed without my responding. I may be on travel or I may have set your prior email aside and forgotten to return to it (which would explain but not justify my silence). I want to answer all email I receive, but sometimes I need a reminder. SI, escribe en español -- Bruce puede leer su correo en español OUI, écrivez en français -- Bruce peut lire votre courier en français

T h e D O s

DON'T ask me questions about compiling FEFF8. The only version of FEFF that I support at that level is the version of FEFF6 that comes with IFEFFIT. For questions about FEFF8, contact someone from the FEFF project. DON'T send me any information in the form of a Word or PowerPoint document. It is exceedingly rare that the information conveyed in a bug report requires formatting capabilities that exist in a word processor and that don't exist in plain text email. RTF, WordPerfect, OpenOffice, etc are not an improvement on Word for the purpose of reporting a bug. Indeed, there are situations where using a word processor makes it harder for me to troubleshoot the problem. For example, if I ask you to cut and paste some text displayed by one of the programs, a word processor will change where lines are broken in a way that is confusing for me. On Windows please use WordPad rather than Word for such things. DON'T send me HTML-formatted email. I have a great distaste for email formatted this way. My spam filter is trained to score html-only emails highly (i.e. likely to be spam). DON'T assume that I am using the same email program as you. Specifically DON'T rely upon colored text or fonts in the email message to convey information - my email program may not display it the same way as yours. DON'T send large files that I have not requested. If I need you to generate an image of some sort (other than the screenshot mentioned above) I will ask for it in subsequent email. DON'T ever send anything by fax unless I request that you do so DON'T ever send anything by normal post or overnight express unless I request that you do so DON'T send every file from a FEFF run! It is usually sufficient to send just the `feff.inp' file. If I need to see other files from the FEFF run, I will ask for them.

T h e D O N T s

It is very common for a bug report to require two or more exchanges of email between you and I. If I need more information in order to solve your problem, I will ask you. I may also ask you to test solutions before I release them on my web page. If you are willing to be responsive during these exchanges, that will be a help to me.

DON'T be surprised if I send a copy of your question or bug report and my answer to the the IFEFFIT mailing list. If your question is a good one, then others may benefit by my answer. Because the mailing list is archived, I can then point to my answer should the same question come up again in the future.

I should also mention that some of the DON'Ts really piss me off. It really won't help anyone in any way if you do any of the DON'Ts.

Notes:

My html-formatted email policy:

I have a really good reason for refusing to read html-formatted email. It is very easy for companies to harvest marketing data about the person receiving html-formatted email. This is done by encoding identifying information in a request for a virtually unnoticable, 1-pixel by 1-pixel image. This information can be used to identify the receiver's email address as an active one. By not reading html-formatted email, I have decreased the amount of spam that I receive.

My choice of email readers:

I have good reasons for using the mailer that I use. The corollary is that I have good reasons for not using your email reader. Mine has many features that serve me well. It does not, however, automatically display Word documents, PowerPoint documents, or html-formatted text. That is actually among my reasons for using it!