File specifications

The applicaction supports three file formats:

• XYZ text file: This files conains the data of the image arranged in three columns giving the X, Y, and Z coordinates of the point in each raw. It also must have the following headers:
  • "WSxM ASCII XYZ file" in one of the first two lines.
  • "X[unit] Y[unit] Z[unit]" in the last header line, where unit is the unit of the corresponding coordinate.
  The values of X and Y will change in each raw, starting from X and then Y as the following example:

          
  WSxM file copyright UAM
  WSxM ASCII XYZ file
  X[a.u.]		Y[a.u.]		Z[a.u.]
  
  0	0	0
  1	0	2
  2	0	3
  0	1	5
  1	1	8
  2	1	0
          

• Matrix text file: This format will contain only the data for the Z value, arranged in rows in ascending order of the Y coordinate and in columns in descending order respecting the X coordinate. It must also contain the following headers:
  • "WSxM ASCII Matrix file" in one of the first two rows.
  • "X Amplitude: N unit" where "N" is the amplitude number and "unit" the unit of the X coordinate.
  • "Y Amplitude: N unit" where "N" is the amplitude number and "unit" the unit of the Y coordinate.
  • "Z Amplitude: N unit" where "N" is the amplitude number and "unit" the unit of the Z coordinate.
  An example of this file could be the following:

  
  WSxM file copyright UAM
  WSxM ASCII Matrix file
  X Amplitude: 1 a.u.
  Y Amplitude: 1 a.u.
  Z Amplitude: 1 a.u.
  
  3   2   0
  0   8   5
          

• STP binary file: This will be the standard format. It must contain at least the following headers:

  WSxM file copyright UAM
  SxM Image file
  Image header size: {header_size}
  
  [Control]
  
      X Amplitude: {} {unit}
      Y Amplitude: {} {unit}
      Z Gain: {}
  
  [General Info]
  
      Acquisition channel: {}
      Acquisition primary channel: {}
      Head type: {}
      Image Data Type: {data_type}
      Number of columns: {}
      Number of rows: {}
      X starting offset: {} {unit}
      Y starting offset: {} {unit}
      Z Amplitude: {} {unit}
  
  [Header end]
          

  The curly brackets represents the correspondign value of the parameter, the "unit" is its unit and the "header_size" the size of the whole header. It may contain other fields as well. The data will be arranged the same way as the Matrix text file but codified in binary where each value has the size of the data type given by "data_type", which can be "double" (8 bytes), "simple" (4 bytes) or "short" (2 bytes).

If your files don't correspond to any of the previous one, we recommend you to use the sowtware WSxM that you can download here, which functionality is much more extensive.