Fear of Learning

Last week I wrote that people generally don't like to learn new software. It must be a tedious job indeed. This week was opened by a small and incredible event that is also an example of opposite attitude. It has nothing to do with NMR, although the main character of the story is reach enough to buy and maintain a couple 900 MHz, privately. Jose Mourinho came in Italy and spoke in public, for the first time, in Italian. He explained that had been studying the new language for only a month, but he spoke so fluently that nobody, here, believes him. If he had learned Latin in 1 year, than I would have really been impressed! FIY, he already spoke Portoguese, Spanish, English and I don't know how many other languages. Isn't it simpler to learn to use a program than to learn so many languages? Of course, but if you could afford to hire the best teachers all for yourself, as Mourinho has certainly done, many things become easy.


The expression of Mourinho after having been informed that, before you can use an NMR spectrometer, you must learn the software.

(photo taken from www.settimanasportiva.it)

NMR software, alas, is never easy enough. Even when it is, you refuse to learn it. It's... scaring, that's the problem. It's not like driving a car. Once you have learned to drive your first car, which is not immediate, it takes very little to learn driving another car. In principle the same is true for NMR programs: they must have many things in common. In practice they are like different languages: when you switch language you should adapt yourself to a different syntax and even a different mentality. (OK, that's exactly what I am NOT doing when blogging, that's why this blog sucks!).
If you still think in the way dictated by your old software, switching to a new one is frustrating, I know. You'll soon be wasting time to search, into the new program, for all the "equivalent actions" that some times are completely absent, but you don't know and you keep searching.
Although it's conceptually wrong, it's in the human nature, it's hard to defeat the instincts developed in the past. The same mechanism that makes so natural to switch to a new car, makes so difficult to switch to a new NMR program.
This in the fundamental reason for the success of the software created for the spectrometer that is also abundantly sold and bought for the PCs.
Advantage: you don't have to learn anything new, you are productive from day one. Disadvantages: (1) the higher price, certainly; (2) the ugliness, quite often. The best programs are those that perform a single task and do it perfectly. It's feasible to write a program that manages acquisition, processing and analysis at the same time, but when you put so many tasks into a single product, the interface and the usability suffer. A program that performs a single task, like processing or analysis, has more chances to be elegant, pleasant, accurate and flexible.
For a prolonged period I have been happily using 3 different programs for acquisition and a fourth one (SwaN-MR) for processing. It was wonderful because I could also modify the latter whenever I wanted anything more. Of course you are not supposed to be a programmer. The best you can do is to choose a single program and learn it very well, both by studying the manual and by using it daily. After a couple of years, only if you are bored and can afford it, change program or job or town and start again.

DISPArecido

Who remembers eDispa? On April 15, 2007 I wrote: "I suspect that eDispa will disappear into oblivion". On April 16 I added: "That poster says so many implicit things than demolishing it point by point would be easy and funny".
I haven't heard of it again. Did you? Are you longing for eDispa?

Manual

Today I am free write the most outrageous ideas that cross my mind. They say that nobody reads the manuals. I have put the title "Manual" and now anything I write will be read by myself only. Yes, I read the manuals and sometimes I even read them twice. I don't like doing it, yet it's a precious activity. If I am going to use a program, I know I can't learn it by trial and error, it's only a waste of time. I look for the manual and study it.
A well-written manual it's hard to find today. If people were to choose program on the clearness of their manuals, the documentation writers would be as rich as Bill Gates and our kids would aspire to become doc writers instead of football players. That's not the case. I myself have maintained, for years, that programmers can't neither be the testers nor the doc writers of their own programs. Today I have changed opinion, not because my idea was bad, but just because a bad manual is better than no manual.
Let's hope that, at least, the manuals are up-to-date. Have you ever found a manual that refers to an old version of the program? It easily happen that they change the program, even drastically, but forget to update the manual. That's the worst thing that can happen. A less sad situation, yet still annoying, is when you buy the Mac version of a program and all the figures of the manual refer to the Windows version.
Are they to blame? They are not, because they have been told that nobody reads the manuals, so why should they invest time into the job of writing manuals? Why? WHY?
After years I have found the answer. I had to. I was writing pages over pages, and receiving the confirmation, day after day, year after year, that nobody was reading them. They still use to call me and ask: "where can I found the manual?". They keep printing it, losing it and printing it again, but never finding the time to read it. I stopped and told to myself: "Either you find valid a reason, in the next 5 minutes, for doing it, or cease writing manuals forever". In the next 2 minutes I realized that, quite often, I consult my own manuals because I forgot how my programs are supposed to work. Consulting the manual is simpler and faster than reading the code of the program
Now I write manuals for myself. I attach the manual to the product because you can't sell a program without any manual (and there's even the risk that somebody checks if the manual actually describes the enclosed program or a different one), but I write the manual for myself. I am not proud of it but, hey, you don't know how difficult it can be to write a good manual.
After years of frustration I finally have a thing in common with Scaruffi. (I seem to remember that he once stated, in an interview, that he writes a lot because his memory has always been week; but being my memory week too, I may be confusing him with another person...).

Beyond blogging: the NMR wiki

While yours truly gets more and more bored of blogging, new blogs on the same subject have appeared, all better looking. The only record remaining to my blog is that of being the oldest blog dedicated to NMR software.
Now it's the time for the NMR wiki. In the intentions of the founder, Evgeny Fadeev, it will be a cooperative effort to share information. At this moment it is still an inferior substitute of the long established NMR information server or the more professional NMR knowledge base.
I admire the efforts of Evgeny and would like to do my best to help him. Unfortunately, the best that I can do is simply to link him from here and elsewhere. Please consider doing the same: let's give a chance to the NMR wiki!

Spring Cleaning

• iNMR (Mac)
• MestreNova
• NMRnotebook
• NPNMR (Windows, Linux)
• NMRView (Java)
• Nuts (Windows, Mac)

Discovering the price of the other programs can't be easier. Just contact their sales representatives.
Every year the list gets shorter. This time I have eliminated the lite and free alternatives. The purpose of the list is simply to compare the official prices, when declared. Perhaps I will create a new list for freeware. In this moment I am not very excited by the idea. I am deeply convinced, instead, that the best freeware available is still SwaN-MR. It's not terribly old, but it doesn't run on any computer currently for sale. I am saying that the situation is terribly worse that it used to be 10 years ago. I understand that it can be a problem for a student, but let's face the reality: is hardware free? Why should software? If you already believe that commercial software is evil, then you are mentally well prepared and happy to survive without ANY software or to write it by yourself (I am open to collaboration!). In case you think that it's fine to spend for software up to the half of what you are spending in hardware, you will find, following the links, something as cheap as €50.
Generally speaking, I think that commercial NMR software outsmarts the corresponding freeware, yet there is no correlation between price and value. For example, I prefer the free SpinWorks over the futureless Nuts. Even if TopSpin offers more value for money than VNMRJ, they are both clearly out of market. Those prices cannot be justified by brand value alone. Historically Bruker has been a weak competitor until recently (TopSpin was their first truly quality product), while the reputation of Varian has been declining markedly. They used to have the best software, but it was so long ago that it's only a cause for regret, today. The high prices can be justified only because there's a lot of money circulating in the NMR field. A few people, I suspect, buy the ultra-expensive products (those not listed) without even considering the cheaper alternatives here below. I don't want to hide the luxury. The list points to all the web sites that report a price. If you pass me more links, I will insert them. My personal advice is, however, to buy an expensive program only if it contains a vital feature that can't be found elsewhere. Even in this case, first contact the other makers and verify if they plan to implement the missing feature. It's more likely, however, that you'll ask this question the other way round: the less expensive programs are normally richer in functionality.
I understand that people are so frightened by the idea of learning something new that they are ready to pay whichever figure for the program they already know. What they don't realize is that their future needs can grow. What if tomorrow they need 20 or 30 licenses? Will they still afford them?

who reads who

How many file formats exist? It's not easy to count all the variants. It's diifficult to associate a name to a format, unless you have a direct experience with the corresponding files, of course. Many instruments and programs are no more in production. How can we quantify the archives of data they have produced? Should we mind? I think we should not, unless the file format has been publicly defined.
The first column, in the table below, contains the links to my sources of information (the web pages of the makers). I have refused to report some formats, however supported, when I question the real existence or relevance of them in 2008. The classic example is the GE/Nicolet file format. For each brand, more formats can exist:
var = Varian = XL, VNMR.
bru = Bruker = AM, XWin-NMR, Win-NMR.
jeol = Delta, GX, Alice, Alpha, Lambda, Generic v.1 and Generic v.2.
tec = Tecmag = MacFID, NTNMR, MacNMR
che = Chemagnetic - Spinsight.
jdx = JCAMP-DX.
felix = Felix = Felix, Win-Felix, Felix .mat.
pipe = NMRPipe.
Nuts = Acorn Nuts = type 1, type 2 and type 3.
mest = MestReLab Research = MestRe-C (.mrc), MestReNova (.mnova).
swan = SwaN-MR.
.txt = ASCII, which means a different thing for each program and nothing in particular (JCAMP is also ASCII, for example).
NMRi = I am not sure what it means. I know about GE scanners and Siemens scanners and consider them as two distinct formats ("GE_MED_NMR" and .rda). With the single exception of iNMR, nobody mentions them. Does their "NMRi" correspond to one of the two mentioned scanners?
Thumbs down for Jeol, who created way too many file formats, a clear sign of confusion.

Prog\file	var	bru	jeol	che	tec	jdx	felix	pipe	nuts	mest	swan	.txt	NMRi
ACD	1	3	7	1	2	1	-	-	1	-	-	1	-
Delta	1	2	7	1	-	1	2	-	1	-	-	-	-
iNMR	1	3	3	1	3	1	-	1	-	1	1	1	2
MestReNova	2	3	4	1	-	1	-	-	1	2	1	-	-
NPNMR	1	1	1	-	-	1		1	2	-	-	-	1
Nuts	1	3	7	1	3	-	-	-	3	-	-	-	1
Spin Works	1	1	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
SwaN-MR	2	2	1	-	2	-	1	-	1	-	1	1	-

you don't need me

Apart from being a blog, this is the only web site (and the only font of information, in general) on NMR software. Before it, there have been lists of links only, and they will always abound, but without any useful comment. I have tried to change the situation, but blogging has become less funny that it was supposed to be.
The blog has been accused of being marketing in disguise. First I have been accused of promoting Bruker and then I have been accused of passing false information to discredit Bruker.
Believe it or not, this blog has never given me any economical advantage. I have always been open to collaborations and the only comments I have removed were either spam or trash.
Currently I have no information to pass because I have no information at all. In the last couple of months I have been working on my own software, I think with great results, but no trace of my work appeared here because I feel it's of no interest for the general public.
Anyway: what's the public? People that don't want to read the manuals, don't want to pay for software, don't want to change their minds. People like me that can waste 4 or 5 hours per day surfing the internet in search of nothing.
The spring is coming and there's a wonderful world out there.