The ASCII Output window provides a convenient way to save ASCII-based event information to file. This can be a very useful tool when manually classifying or recording information about a large number of events.
The Filename field is used to enter the full pathname of the output file. If the specified file already exists, new entries will be appended. Otherwise a new file will be created. The filename field may be left blank, in which case output is written only to the console.
Special feature: Adding a plus sign (+) before the filename causes the event to be written to a ZDAB file at the same time as the comments are written. The ZDAB file will have the same name as the ASCII output file, but with the extension ".zdab".
The Label field specifies the event information to be written. The format is exactly the same as the image label setting of the Settings window, except that the font specification (%+) and the newline feature (%/) are not allowed. The default label is "GTID: %gt Run: %rn", which gives event GTID and run number.
The Comment field is provided to allow additional comments about the event to be saved. After the comment is written to file, this text field is cleared to allow input of the next comment. Previous comments can be recalled by scrolling through a history buffer using the Up and Down keys on the keyboard. Note that the comment history is not saved like other text fields when this window is closed. Also note that duplicate entries are removed from the history to reduce the amount of scrolling required to find the desired entry.
Pressing the Write button causes the event information and comments to be written to the specified file. Alternatively, you can press the Return key when editing any of the text fields to perform the same function.
The Auto-Next checkbox causes the next event to be automatically displayed after writing event information to a file.
Pressing Done closes the window.
Advanced feature: To allow access to a set of standard event classification strings, a user-defined option menu may be added to the ASCII Output window by simply creating a file called "ascii_window_menu.dat" and placing it in any of the XSNOED search directories. The file should be standard ASCII format with one entry per line. The first entry is used as a title for the menu, and the remaining entries are the menu items. The text from the currently selected menu item is added to the event information when writing to file. As well as the menu items read from file, XSNOED adds an additional menu item called "<none>" to the top of the menu, allowing nothing extra to be written.
Below is a sample output from of a few events using the default event information (run number and GTID). In this example, an option menu was used. The option menu selection appears in brackets after the event information and before the entered comments.
Run: 11417 GTID: 1415830 (Muon) downward-going Run: 11417 GTID: 1415862 (Neck Flasher) Run: 11417 GTID: 1415878 (Neutrino) non-solar Run: 11417 GTID: 1415901 (Silent Flasher) Run: 11417 GTID: 1415906 (Retrigger) no charge