Mark:
Thanks for the reply, and "gift horse" and all that but...
All us users no doubt appreciate the value that suites such as FSL present,
and thus are probably not predisposed to squawk about rough edges.
That said, for released software it seems to me a basic principle is to
check for needed inputs (including environment variables), and take
appropriate action (like an accurate error message) if not available or
silly. Particularly for standard environment variables and file types,
validity check code only needs to be written once and incorporated in all
programs.
The various neuro suites don't manage this very consistently at all, and
it's a substantial time-waster, not to mention compromising data in some
situations.
I am guessing that centralized input scrutiny was the intent of runavw in
the first place -- one module to check the input data and redirect
processing to the application suited to that data type. That would seem
like a good place for checking inputs for actual availability.
Yes we should have been up-to-speed on the installation requirements, and
fell down there -- a lapse in mental vigilance for sure.
FWIW, the README file mentions only the following as requirements:
export FSLDIR=/usr/local/fsl; export PATH=$PATH:$FSLDIR/bin; $FSLDIR/bin/fsl
... and there is no $FSLDIR/etc/fslconf. This could be that we are not on
the very latest version of FSL. I'm not sure how to tell the version
(README is undated and unversioned, but there is a fsl/doc/index.htm which
says 3.1 July 2003).
Bottom line for today -- we're unstuck and more awake at the wheel. And
any encouragement you could give to your vast team of programmers to be
more scrupulous on the requirements-checking and error messages would be
appreciated!
Graham
At 8/10/2005 12:30 AM, you wrote:
>Dear Graham,
>
>It is *really* important that you set your environment
>up correctly. The FSLDIR variable is used by *many*
>scripts and commands in fsl. The reason it gave you
>this unhelpful error message was because it could not
>find the correct program to run,
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