Welcome to IFEFFIT:  Interactive XAFS Analysis Library
Copyright (c) 2000-2003 Matt Newville, The University of Chicago

Ifeffit is free software. The majority of the software here is
distributed under a BSD-like license. Some of the code in this
distribution is distributed under the GNU Public License (GPL).  
See the file COPYING for details.

Overview
--------
Ifeffit provides a nearly-complete library of algorithms for XAFS
Analysis, and a simple-to-use interface to that library.  The library
builds on the Autobk and Feffit programs from the UWXAFS Package, and
adds considerable flexibility, graphics, and a command-based interface.
The library is designed to work inside other programming and scripting
languages, so that more complex programs (including GUIs) can be built
with the library.

More information about Ifeffit can be found at:
  http://cars9.uchicago.edu/ifeffit/

Installation
------------
Complete installation instructions are in the INSTALL file.

Ifeffit requires a working Fortran77 compiler.  If you're using a very old
linux system, there is a chance that the fortran compiler supplied with
your system is broken and needs to be re-installed.  I recommend using
gcc with the built-in g77 compiler or later.

Documentation
-------------
The documentation should be taken from the Ifeffit web site.  The latex
source for the Ifeffit reference manual and tutorial are included under 
the doc/ directory tree, but it is not expected that these source files 
can be converted into usable forms on all systems. 

If you're interested in contributing to the Ifeffit documentation,
contact the authors.

Contributing
------------
Ifeffit works well, but may have some bugs.  There is still plenty of work
to be done on improving the algorithms, fixing the documentation, and
making the system as user-friendly as possible.

Please keep these thoughts in mind when using Ifeffit, and let us know
what you think should be added, what is broken, and what is unclear.
Chances are if you can think of an improvement, it would help other
people too.

If you are interested in contributing, please let us know. There's a lot of
work that can be done on the core algorithms, the documentation, wrappers,
and examples.  If you know Perl or Python (or are willing to learn), there
is a wide range of work to do in implementing GUIs and other wrappers in
these languages.   If you know VisualBasic, AppleScript, or any other
language and are interested in building extensions for these languages, 
please let us know how we can help you do this. 

If you prefer to contribute in some other way contact us.

Additional Information
----------------------
More information can be found at the ifeffit web site
 http://cars9.uchicago.edu/ifeffit/

Thanks,

Matt Newville <newville@cars.uchicago.edu>
Consortium for Advanced Radiation Sources
University of Chicago
Chicago, IL

Last update Aug-25-2003









