Macs in Chemistry

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pro Fit 7 released

 

pro Fit has been updated to version 7, it is a Mac OS X application for data/function analysis, plotting, and curve fitting. This is a complete rebuilding of pro Fit from the ground up to complete the transition to cocoa and the latest Mac OS X technologies.

The release notes give full details but a couple of notable features are

  • 64 bit architecture: pro Fit comes as a universal binary and runs in 64 bit mode by default. If you need to run pro Fit under 32 bit (e.g. because you want to link to a 32 bit plug-in or Python module), you can set it to run under 32 bit mode by choosing Get Info in the Finder.
  • Global search: It is now possible to search for a text string simultaneously in all text, data, and drawing windows.
  • Sandboxing: pro Fit 7 is a sandboxed application, supporting all standard security features offered by the OS. As a side effect, the location of the plug-in folder has changed. To locate it, choose "Open user's plug-in folder" from the "Customize" menu.
  • Scripting: pro Fit 7 changed the interfaces to some commands, which sometimes required that some of the programming interfaces be modified, too. In addition, we harmonized some naming conventions in our programming interfaces. Please see the "programming" read me file for more details.
  • The fitting engine now can (optionally) use long-double precision for enhanced accuracy.
  • pro Fit now supports high-resolution images on retina displays.

Sandboxing does of course mean a few changes.

pro Fit cannot access files outside its application container without explicit user permission. The application container is found under "~/Library/Containers/com.quansoft.profit". Therefore:

If you are running a script that accesses files outside pro Fit's containers, e.g. in your Documents folder, you must grant pro Fit explicit permission to do so: Choose Preferences form the pro Fit menu, and navigate to the tab Security. Then, add the desired directory to the list of accessible directories. The permission will be permanently stored, i.e. it will persist even if you restart pro Fit.

The "pro Fit plug-ins" folder, which contains scripts and plug-ins to be automatically loaded during start-up, is now placed in pro Fit's container (under ~/Library/Containers/com.quansoft.profit/Data/Library/Application Support/com.quansoft.profit/pro Fit plug-ins). To navigate to that folder, choose "Open User's Plug-in folder" from the cutomize menu.

There is a list of data analysis tools for Mac OS X here.

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