I realize the response from Adrian Land was intended for you and not the
entire ABRF membership, but I was disturbed by Adrian's comment "how
sensitive the ABRF list is to 'filthy commercial instrument vendors'
posting anything on the bulletin board,". I found the information he
provided particularly helpful; this is exactly the type of discourse
from which we can all benefit. I'm discouraged that he feels he is
unwelcome and wonder if other vendors have the same perception. It
should again be clarified that input from all vendors on technical
issues is valuable to our membership and should be encouraged and
welcomed. Hawking one's wares on this forum is the only activity that
we should discourage.
Clayton
Clayton W. Naeve
Center for Biotechnology
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
332 N. Lauderdale
Memphis, TN 38105
-----Original Message-----
From: Richard S. Johnson [mailto:rjohnson@immunex.com]
Sent: Wednesday, July 29, 1998 8:02 PM
To: Recipients of ABRF List
Subject: Re: lcq zoom scan
With respect to my complaints about inaccessible data files
produced
using the Finnigan LCQ ion trap, I thought out of fairness it might
be
appropriate to post an official company response (not that its
entirely agreeable to me).
Rich Johnson (rjohnson@immunex.com)
-------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Rich,
Knowing how sensitive the ABRF list is to 'filthy commercial
instrument vendors' posting anything on the bulletin board, I
thought
it best that I respond to you directly.
>
> There seem to be very few people to which Finnigan will
reveal
> the secret Ion Trap Control Language; I've heard that this
is
> because the LCQ is easier to break via the misuse of ITCL
compared > to the misuse of ICL on the TSQ's.
>
ITCL is an internal development tool used by our R&D staff. There
are
several reasons why we have never "productized" this tool.:
- Yes, you can 'break' the LCQ with ITCL; that is, create data
which
is false or misleading, which raises rather interesting liability
issues.
- ITCL has never been documented to the user level that ICL has
(this
took many years on the XSQ).
- Supporting a complex development programming environment in the
field would be a nightmare. With over 800 LCQs already out there,
we
could bring Tech Support to its knees really quickly!
- I doubt that making ITCL available would help sell any more
systems
- do HP, Sciex, Micromass make their internal development tools
available?
- We have almost always found that the open-ended request for ITCL
is
driven by the need to perform a very specific experiment.
Frequently
we have been able to meet such requests with the standard system -
which probably means that we could do a better job documenting the
system, and training users.
When the standard system can not perform a user requested
experiment,
we will try to meet this need by developing the experiment
in-house,
and making it a standard part of the next LCQ release. The Xcalibur
LCQ release due out in the Fall will accomodate several nice new
experiments that have been developed using this approach - I'll
have
Phil Tiller (LCQ Product Manager) send you a list of new features
for
Xcalibur LCQ.
> More annoying for me is how secretive Finnigan is regarding
the
> LCQ data file structures; I would like to be able to have
> my home-built computer programs be able to directly read an
LCQ
> file w/o having to convert to a text or netCDF file. Its a
> mystery to me why its necessary to hamper the efforts of
users
> of ThermoQuest equipment in their attempts to extend the
utility > and value of their product within the context of
their
> individual uses and interests. I think that their reasoning
is
> along the lines that this is necessary for some sort of
ISO9000
> bull----.
>
- Again, this largely boils down to a support issue. The file
formats
are complex binaries, with version control built in (the current
file
I/O supports something like 26 versions of LCQ format...)
- As with ITCL, in the world of finite resources, if we chose to
support a small number of users with this stuff, we would not be
doing
development work to improve the current product for everyone, or
developing new systems.
- With Xcalibur, we will create a "raw file OCX" which should allow
relatively straightforward access to the Xcalibur data files. This
will be officiallly released and supported shortly after the
official
release of Xcalibur in the Fall.
- I can assure you that working in an ISO-regulated environment can
at
times be tediously constraining, but our customer base have defined
that they will not buy systems from a vendor that is not
ISO-certified!
I hope this clarifies Finnigan's current position on ITCL and data
file formats. Please do send specific requests to Phil
(tiller@finnigan.com), and we'll see what we can do to support you
going forward.
Regards
Adrian Land
_____________________________________________________________
Adrian
Land Tel. (408) 433 4828 Ext. 2222 Product
Marketing
Manager Main:(408) 433 4800
Finnigan MAT
355 River Oaks Parkway Fax. (408) 433 0127 San Jose CA 95134
U.S.A.
http://www.finnigan.com/
LCQ: Why Settle For Less?
************************************************************ If we
knew what we were doing,
it wouldn't be research, would it?
Albert Einstein
*************************************************************