News and Announcements

WaveMetrics to become part of Sutter Instrument

JimProuty — Mon, 05 Sep 2022 18:42:25 +0000

WaveMetrics to become part of Sutter Instrument

Sept.1, 2022

Sutter Instrument announced today that it will add WaveMetrics, the developer of Igor Pro software, as a new division. Sutter has been a partner with WaveMetrics for the past 7 years, using Igor Pro’s rich feature set to build software applications for neuroscience. The founders of WaveMetrics had been searching for a suitable home for Igor Pro software.

“Both WaveMetrics and Sutter Instrument are renowned for expert-level technical support, and for continuous development based on customer feedback. This mutual culture of putting the customer first and delivering a quality product makes the two companies a perfect fit.” said Mark Flaming, President of Sutter Instrument. “We are looking forward to continuing WaveMetrics’ legacy supporting the scientific community. We will be continuing to invest in and develop the Igor Pro software suite for a wide range of scientific fields.”

WaveMetrics Inc, founded in 1987 by Larry Hutchinson and Howard Rodstein, developed Igor Pro which is used worldwide as one of the leading data analysis packages. Its built-in, powerful programming environment makes Igor Pro the ideal platform for sophisticated scientific software applications. At the same time, Igor Pro is a popular platform for efficient analysis of large datasets and creating even the most complex data visualizations in research publications. “Larry and I are optimistic that this change of ownership will strengthen Igor and ensure its long-term viability. We wish Sutter nothing but success.” Said founder Howard Rodstein.

Since 1974, Sutter Instrument has grown to become a leader in instrumentation for neuroscience. Sutter’s product portfolio includes micropipette pullers, amplifier systems, microscopes, micromanipulators, light sources and optical products. SutterPatch®, a data acquisition, management and analysis package that comes bundled with the electrophysiology amplifier systems, was built on top of WaveMetrics Igor Pro.

One Digital Drive, Novato, CA 94949, USA

tel: +1 (415) 883-0128 fax: +1 (415) 883-0572 email: info@sutter.com www.sutter.com

JimProuty Mon, 09/05/2022 - 11:42 am News and Announcements

WaveMetrics Under New Ownership

JimProuty — Mon, 05 Sep 2022 18:38:35 +0000

WaveMetrics Under New Ownership

Wed, 08/31/2022 - 03:36 pm

Effective immediately, WaveMetrics is under new ownership. The new owner is Sutter Instrument.

I want to explain how this came to pass and what it means for the future of Igor. Please forgive my long-windedness but I think that our devoted users deserve a full explanation.

In 1987, my former boss and mentor, Larry Hutchinson, showed me an early version of software that he was working on which he called "Igor" as in "scientist's assistant". The software came on one 800K floppy disk and ran on my Mac Plus (upgraded from an original 1984 Macintosh) with 1MB of RAM and no hard drive. Despite the early nature of this software, it already had a command line, a procedure window, graphs, curve fitting, and other analysis operations.

I decided to quit my job and join Larry in a new software venture based on Igor. We shipped Igor 1.0 in early January of 1989. That same year we had the good fortune of hiring Tom Peterson and Jim Prouty, both of whom still work for WaveMetrics.

Igor became Igor Pro circa 1994. We had the additional good fortune of hiring John Weeks and AG, both of whom still work for WaveMetrics, in 1994. And our lucky streak continued with the hiring of Adam Light, who is also still with us, in 2009.

Over the decades, we devoted our efforts to continual improvement of Igor and were rewarded with a user base of bright people all over the world engaged in a vast range of scientific fields. Working with them, and feeling that we made a small contribution to their work, has been tremendously gratifying.

Now 35 years have passed since Larry handed me that floppy disk and we have blown past retirement age. We felt that WaveMetrics and Igor needed younger and more energetic leadership to continue to fulfill our obligation to our users. So we started to look for a potential buyer. Our main criterion was to find a buyer that would respect that obligation.

To make a long story short, the buyer is Sutter Instrument, a neuroscience company based in Novato, California which makes amplifiers, microscopes, micromanipulators, and imaging products. In addition to its long and distinguished history since its beginnings in 1974, Sutter has extensive experience with Igor Pro.

In 2015, Jan Dolzer and Greg Hjelmstadt of Sutter Instrument visited WaveMetrics World Headquarters in Oregon and explained that they were working on a patch clamp system using Sutter hardware and software based on Igor Pro. I noted at the time my impression from the meeting: "The company [Sutter] has a culture much like WaveMetrics - laid back and bending over backward to help customers."

Sutter assembled a team of experts to work on the Igor-based SutterPatch software. It is still under continual development and represents one of the largest and most-sophisticated Igor-based software projects. Our work in providing technical support for SutterPatch development gave us the opportunity to observe Sutter's dedication and inventiveness.

Larry and I are optimistic that this change of ownership will strengthen Igor and ensure its long-term viability. We wish Sutter nothing but success.

And finally, we are very grateful to our users, especially to the old-guard who have been with us for virtually the whole ride. Thank you.

Howard Rodstein
LHR Software, Inc. (formerly WaveMetrics, Inc.)

(To be clear, WaveMetrics continues fully operational using the same web sites, forum, email addresses, and the non-retiring employees.)

JimProuty Mon, 09/05/2022 - 11:38 am News and Announcements

XOP Toolkit 8.02 Released

hrodstein — Wed, 27 Oct 2021 19:42:26 +0000

XOP Toolkit 8.02 Released

The Igor XOP Toolkit allows programmers to create XOPs (plug-ins) for Igor using C and C++. It is a separate product available for purchase from WaveMetrics.

We have updated the XOP Toolkit to version 8.02. The main changes relative to 8.01 are:

Sample XOPs and documentation were updated for Xcode 11, 12, 13
Tested with Visual C++ 2019 (as well as 2015 and 2017)

If you have an XOP Toolkit license, you can download the new versions using the same web address and credentials that you used in the past.

Instructions for updating an XOP Toolkit 7 or XOP Toolkit 8 XOP to work with Xcode 12 can be found under "Updating Xcode Projects for Xcode 12" in Appendix B of the XOP Toolkit 8.02 manual.

hrodstein Wed, 10/27/2021 - 12:42 pm News and Announcements

Igor Pro Missing Support Folders

hrodstein — Wed, 29 Jan 2020 02:01:03 +0000

Igor Pro Missing Support Folders

This article explains why in rare cases Igor is unable to find its supporting files, such as help and procedure files, and what you can do to fix the problem.

Background Information

The Igor installer creates an "Igor Pro X Folder", where X is the Igor version. It installs in this folder the Igor application and a number of subfolders containing supporting files.

On Macintosh, the "Igor Pro X Folder" is typically located in the Applications folder at:

"/Applications/Igor Pro X Folder"

On Windows, the "Igor Pro X Folder" is typically located at:

"C:\Program Files\WaveMetrics\Igor Pro X Folder"         // For Igor 7 and later

"C:\Program Files (x86)\WaveMetrics\Igor Pro X Folder"   // For Igor 6 and before

To simplify matters, the rest of this article addresses Igor Pro 8 and later only, and the 64-bit version of Igor only, and we refer to the "Igor Pro X Folder" as the "Igor Pro Folder".

The Igor Pro installation has this structure:

Igor Pro Folder
    Igor64.app                // Macintosh only
    IgorBinaries_x64          // Windows only
        Igor64.exe
    Examples                  // Example files provided by WaveMetrics
    Igor Extensions (64-bit)  // Contains WaveMetrics-provided XOPs (plug-ins)
    Igor Help Files           // Contains WaveMetrics-provided help files
    Igor Procedures           // Contains WaveMetrics-provided procedure files
    WaveMetrics Procedures    // Contains WaveMetrics-provided procedure files

There are other files and folder in the Igor Pro Folder. These are the critical ones.

At startup, Igor expects the Examples, Igor Extensions (64-bit), Igor Help Files, Igor Procedures, and WaveMetrics Procedures support folders to be in the folder containing Igor64.app on Macintosh and in the folder containing IgorBinaries_x64 on Windows.

The help files in "Igor Help Files" are automatically loaded when Igor starts.

The procedure files in "Igor Procedures" are automatically loaded when Igor starts while the procedure files in "WaveMetrics Procedures" are loaded by #include statements in other procedure files.

The XOP (plug-in) files in "Igor Extensions (64-bit)" are automatically loaded when Igor starts.

Missing Support Folders

Occasionally, for various reasons, the Igor Pro Folder hierarchy is damaged and Igor can not find its supporting folders. This manifests itself in a variety of ways:

• In Igor Pro 9 or later, at startup Igor displays an alert saying that it can not find one or more of the support folders.

• Help is not available because the help files can not be located. For example, the Help Topics tab of the Help Browser shows no topics and the Command Help tab shows no help for any operation or function.

• You get errors when you open an experiment that #includes WaveMetrics procedure files because Igor can not find the WaveMetrics Procedures folder.

• If you click the File menu and scroll down to the Example Experiments menu, its submenus are empty.

Possible Causes

Here are the most common causes of missing support folders:

• Macintosh "translocation" (a Macintosh security feature explained below)

• The user dragged the Igor Pro application file out of the Igor Pro Folder

• An installation did not successfully complete

• Someone or some program inadvertently messed up the Igor Pro Folder

Troubleshooting

The first step is to determine where the Igor Pro Folder is located. To do this:

Run Igor and choose Misc->Path Status
Click "Igor" in the list of symbolic paths on the left
Make a note of the path shown under the list - you will need this later The path listed in step 3 will typically be something like:
```
"/Applications/Igor Pro X Folder"                   // Macintosh
"C:\Program Files\WaveMetrics\Igor Pro X Folder"    // Windows
```
If you see a path on Macintosh that starts with "/private/var/folders", don't panic - this is covered below.

In the Macintosh Finder or in the Windows Explorer, navigate to the folder indicated by the path shown in step 3 and open the folder. It should contain the following subfolders along with other files and folders:

Examples                 // Example experiments illustrating Igor features
Igor Extensions (64-bit) // Contains WaveMetrics-provided XOPs (plug-ins)
Igor Help Files          // Contains WaveMetrics-provided help files
Igor Procedures          // Contains WaveMetrics-provided procedure files
WaveMetrics Procedures   // Contains WaveMetrics-provided procedure files

Most likely you will see that one or more of these support folders is missing.

Fixing the Problem With a Clean Reinstall

The first thing to try is a clean re-install of Igor. We start by uninstalling Igor.

Deleting Installations on Windows

We recommend that you back up your machine up at this point in case you inadvertently delete the wrong thing.

Run the Add/Remove Programs program, called Apps&Features in Windows 10. You can find this in the Settings app. Use the app to remove any copies of Igor found.
Restart your machine.

Deleting Installations on Macintosh

We recommend that you back up your machine up at this point in case you inadvertently delete the wrong thing.

In the Finder locate the Igor Pro Folder that you identified above under Troubleshooting.
Move the Igor Pro Folder to the trash.
Empty the trash.
Restart your machine.

Reinstalling Igor

Download the latest version of Igor, or the latest for which you have a license, from https://www.wavemetrics.net.
Run the Igor installer and install Igor.
At this point, for most people, the missing folder problem should be fixed. We will test this next.

Testing Igor on Windows

Open the just-installed Igor Pro Folder in Windows Explorer and verify that the hierarchy contains the Examples, Igor Extensions (64-bit), Igor Help Files, Igor Procedures, and WaveMetrics Procedures support folders.
Launch Igor using the Start menu in the Windows task bar or by double-clicking the Igor64.exe file.
When Igor finishes initializing, choose Misc->Path Status, click "Igor" in the Symbolic Paths list, and verify that the path listed below the list is the expected path - typically something like "C:\Program Files\WaveMetrics\Igor Pro 8 Folder".
Choose Help->Command Help and verify that Igor shows help for the built-in operations and functions.
Click the File menu and open the Example Experiments submenu near the bottom. Verify that Igor lists a number of example experiments in the submenus.
If you still have a problem, see Windows Troubleshooting below.

Testing Igor on Macintosh

Open the just-installed Igor Pro Folder and verify that the hierarchy contains the Examples, Igor Extensions (64-bit), Igor Help Files, Igor Procedures, and WaveMetrics Procedures support folders.
Double-click the Igor64.app icon to start Igor.
When Igor finishes initializing, choose Misc->Path Status, click "Igor" in the Symbolic Paths list, and verify that the path listed below the list is the expected path - typically something like "/Applications/Igor Pro 8 Folder".
Choose Help->Command Help and verify that Igor shows help for the built-in operations and functions.
Click the File menu and open the Example Experiments submenu near the bottom. Verify that Igor lists a number of example experiments in the submenus.
If you still have a problem, see Macintosh Troubleshooting below.

Windows Troubleshooting

If your Igor Pro Folder looks correct, i.e., if it contains the support folders listed above, try running as administrator by right-clicking the Igor64.exe icon (see path above) and choosing Run as Administrator.
If you still have a problem, send an email to WaveMetrics support. Users of Igor 7 or later should open the Help->About dialog, hold the Shift key, and click the System Info... button. Then, when the dialog finishes loading information, click the button to copy the information to the clipboard. Paste the information into your email (or paste into a text file and attach the text file). Users of Igor 6 or earlier should include the version of Igor, the OS and version, and your Igor Pro serial number.

Macintosh Troubleshooting

If you are here then you have a rare problem but we may be able to fix it.

Open the Security&Privacy control panel in the System Preferences application
Click the General tab.
Under "Allow apps downloaded from" make sure that "App Store and identified developers" is selected.
Close the Security&Privacy control panel.

If the path to the Igor Pro Folder that you found in the troubleshooting section starts with "/private/var/folders" then you are a victim of an Apple feature introduced in Mac OS 10.12 (Sierra) called "translocation".

Under circumstances that are not completely clear, Mac OS decides that an application is not trustworthy. Instead of running the application, it copies the application to /private/var/folders/... and runs the copy in a restricted mode. If this happens to Igor it can not find its support folders.

In theory translocation should not happen with Igor because all versions of the Igor application have been properly code-signed starting with Igor Pro 6.35. For unknown reasons users occasionally experience it.

Technically oriented readers can find a discussion of translocation at https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/app-translocation.html

If you followed the instructions under Deleting Installations on Macintosh and Reinstalling Igor, you should not have the translocation problem. But, if you do, here is one more thing you can try.

These steps require that you have an administrator account on the machine, that you know the administrator password, and that you are comfortable using the Terminal application. If you are not comfortable using Terminal, find a local expert to help you.

Make sure that the version of Igor that you are trying to run has been deleted, including the version in /private/var/folders if any, and that the machine has been restarted.
Download the latest installer for your version of Igor. This creates an installer volume named something like "Igor Pro 8.04".
Double-click the installer volume to open it.
Drag the Igor Pro Folder from the installer window to your Applications folder.

Run the Terminal application and execute these commands:

cd <path-to-your-igor-pro-folder>    # e.g., cd "/Applications/Igor Pro 8 Folder"
sudo xattr -r -d com.apple.quarantine Igor64.app

Test Igor as explained above under "Testing Igor on Macintosh".
If you still have a problem, send an email to WaveMetrics support. Users of Igor 7 or later should open the Help->About dialog, hold the Shift key, and click the System Info... button. Then, when the dialog finishes loading information, click the button to copy the information to the clipboard. Paste the information into your email (or paste into a text file and attach the text file). Users of Igor 6 or earlier should include the version of Igor, the OS and version, and your Igor Pro serial number.

hrodstein Tue, 01/28/2020 - 06:01 pm News and Announcements

Igor Pro on macOS 10.15 and later

aclight — Tue, 17 Sep 2019 16:44:32 +0000

Igor Pro on macOS 10.15 and later

This page discusses the support of different Igor Pro versions on macOS 10.15 (Catalina, macOS 11 (Big Sur), macOS 12 (Monterey), and macOS 13 (Ventura)).

(For information about Igor on ARM processors, see https://www.wavemetrics.com/news/igor-and-apple-arm-processors.)

Summary

You can not run Igor Pro 6 (or before) on macOS 10.15 or later because it is a 32-bit program and macOS 10.15 dropped support for 32 bit programs.

With macOS 10.15, Apple dropped the QuickTime framework that Igor used to support most movie features, and added strict security features that prevent XOPs from running without special security certification ("notarization").

Igor Pro 8.04 is the first version of Igor that is notarized and includes notarized WaveMetrics XOPs. Igor Pro 9 has many new features and bug fixes relative to Igor Pro 8. We therefore recommend that you run Igor Pro 9 if you are using macOS 10.15 or later.

Due to issues described below, we do not consider any version of Igor Pro to be fully supported on macOS 10.15 or later, but when feasible we intend to fix problems that arise.

Igor Pro 6

Igor Pro 6 will not run on macOS 10.15 or later which support 64-bit applications only.

Igor Pro 7

The 64-bit Igor Pro 7 application (Igor64.app) may run, but WaveMetrics and/or third-party XOPs may not load and you may experience other issues. Igor Pro 7 is no longer maintained and will not receive any changes to improve macOS support.

Igor Pro 8 and Igor Pro 9

In Igor Pro 8.04 and Igor Pro 9, the Igor application and included WaveMetrics XOPs are notarized which allows them to run on macOS 10.15 and later.

Most third-party XOPs are not notarized and will not run.

It appears that scripting is more restrictive in macOS 11 than in prior macOS version. We observe that attempts to delete files and folders using ExecuteScriptText fail starting in macOS 11.

With macOS 11 and Igor Pro 8.04, the text in the active tab of a tab control disappears. An example is the Help Browser. This does not happen with macOS 10.15 or with Igor Pro 9.

On Monterey and later versions of macOS, Igor may crash on startup while opening help files if the "standard" fonts are not installed. The crash log will mention the CTFontCreateWithQuickdrawInstance routine. The workaround is restore the standard fonts using the Font Book application: Click File->Restore Standard Fonts... and click the Proceed button.

macOS 10.15 introduced the read-only system volume. If your system volume is named "hd", in macOS 10.15 and later, it appears in the Finder as "hd" but it is really two volumes - a read-only system volume named "hd" and a data volume named "hd - Data". The OS makes these two volumes appear as one to programs like Igor. However if you mount such a volume while running off of a different system volume, the OS fails to make the two volumes from the inactive system appear as one. This leads to errors in Igor if you try to access the inactive system volume. For example, you will get errors if you try to run a copy of Igor that resides on the inactive system volume.

On some later versions of macOS, "ghost windows" may appear if a docked window is killed. Closing the ghost window by clicking its close button is the workaround for this problem.

If you encounter additional issues using Igor Pro 9 or later, please report them to support@wavemetrics.com. Please use the Help→Contact Support menu item so that your system information is included in the message.

Loading XOPs

Due to security changes in macOS 10.15 and later, third-party XOPs may not be loaded when Igor runs, even if the XOP is properly activated. Instead, macOS and Igor may each present an error dialog when the XOP's code is first loaded. This often happens when Igor starts, but not always.

macOS 10.15 and later require that all loadable bundles (including XOPs) be notarized by default(*). In order to notarize an XOP, the XOP's author must have an Apple Developer ID certificate and must submit the XOP to Apple's notarization service. Many third-party XOPs are not notarized and will not run.

All WaveMetrics XOPs that ship with Igor Pro 8.04 and Igor Pro 9 are notarized and should therefore load properly. If the OS presents an error dialog when loading one of the XOPs that ships with Igor Pro, make sure that you are not using a copy of the XOP from a previous version of Igor Pro.

You may wish to deactivate third-party XOPs by moving them or aliases to them out of the Igor Extensions 64-bit folders within your Igor Pro 8 User Files or Igor Pro 9 User Files folder.

If you must use an unnotarized XOP, see this workaround that was verified to work with macOS 10.15.6, macOS 11.0.1, and macOS 12.0.1.

If you are an XOP developer and would like documentation about signing and notarization of XOPs, send an email to WaveMetrics support requesting the "Signing and Notarization of Macintosh XOPs" help file.

(*) "by default" is Apple's terminology but they do not document if or how the default can be changed.

National Instruments Libraries

The NIGPIB and VISA XOPs are used for data acquisition. This section is of interest to you only if you use these XOPs on Macintosh.

The NIGPIB XOP requires that you install the NI-488 driver from National Instruments (version 21.0 as of this writing). The VISA XOP requires that you install the NI-VISA driver from National Instruments (version 21.0 as of this writing). Starting with macOS 11.4, the operating system does not load kernel extensions required by these drivers by default, causing Igor to crash. To make the drivers work, you need to do extra steps described here.

Movie-Related Operations

Apple removed the QuickTime framework from macOS 10.15. This framework was required by the PlayMovie operation and was used when the /A flag (AVI format) is provided with the NewMovie and PlayMovieAction operations. In Igor 8 or later PlayMovie attempts to pass movie files off to the Finder using AppleScript to open them using the program associated with the file extension. However, Igor 8 and 9 do not have permission to automate the Finder in later versions of macOS. You can still open a movie file using PlayMovieAction and extract frames from the movie.

Privacy Dialogs

macOS 10.15 and later have privacy dialogs that ask the user to approve attempts by an application to access certain locations, such as the Documents and Downloads folders. Igor Pro cannot prevent these dialogs from appearing, nor can it determine whether the user has approved or denied access to a location. Because the default location for the Igor Pro User Files folder is within the Documents folder, you will likely see this dialog when Igor starts for the first time and possibly at future times as determined by the OS. If you click "Don't Allow" in one of these dialogs, Igor will act as if the target folder is empty. If you don't allow access to a folder that contains your Igor Pro User Files folder, any Igor procedures or extensions contained in the folder will not be loaded.

You can allow or remove access at a later time from System Preferences→Security & Privacy→Privacy→Files and Folders.

Gizmo Crashes

Some MacBook Pro users have reported that Igor crashes when they attempt to open an experiment that contains a Gizmo window. The stack trace suggests that at the time of the crash the OS is switching from the integrated graphics processor to the discrete graphics processor. A workaround is to first start Igor and, in an empty experiment, execute

NewGizmo/junk=2

Then open the experiment containing Gizmo windows.

Another possible workaround that we have not tested is to disable automatic graphics switching in system preferences.

Stage Manager

Stage Manager is a feature introduced in macOS 13 that allows you to organize windows from different applications. Unfortunately, when Stage Manager is enabled, some features of Igor may not work correctly. We strongly suggest that you disable Stage Manager when using any version of Igor Pro.

Users have reported that the Windows→Send To Back and Bring to Front menu items do not work correctly. We also have received a report that appending traces to the top graph window does not work as expected when Stage Manager is enabled. As far as we can tell, it's not possible for Igor to disable Stage Manager or even detect that it is enabled, so there is nothing Igor can do to avoid these potential problems.

Frequently Asked Questions

I'm currently using Igor Pro 7. What do I need to do to use Igor Pro 9?
Igor Pro 9 requires a paid upgrade from earlier versions. You can download Igor Pro 9 from https://www.wavemetrics.net/. If you have not previously installed it, it will run fully functional for 30 days during which you can evaluate whether it fits your needs. After that time you will need to purchase an upgrade if you want Igor Pro 9 to remain fully functional.
I am able to use non-notarized third-party XOPs without any problems. Why am I not seeing the third-party XOP problems discussed above?
The rules for when notarization is required are vague and subject to change by Apple at any time. If you are able to load non-notarized XOPs, you may have developed those XOPs yourself or obtained them from the author in a way that prevents the notarization status from being checked.
I need to use a third-party XOP but macOS won't load the XOP because it is not notarized. Is there anything I can do?
You may be able to obtain a notarized XOP from the third-party XOP author. If not, you can try this workaround.
I am a third-party XOP developer. Can WaveMetrics notarize my XOP so that others can use it?
No. For legal and logistic reasons, WaveMetrics can not notarize XOPs that we have not developed.
I am a third-party XOP developer. Can WaveMetrics provide information about notarization of XOPs?
Yes. Send an email to WaveMetrics support requesting the "Signing and Notarization of Macintosh XOPs" help file.

aclight Tue, 09/17/2019 - 09:44 am News and Announcements Igor Pro 6 Igor Pro 7 Igor Pro 8 Igor Pro 9

Igor Pro Mojave (macOS 10.14) Support

aclight — Wed, 26 Sep 2018 15:52:48 +0000

Igor Pro Mojave (macOS 10.14) Support

WaveMetrics has discovered the following compatibility issues while testing Igor Pro 7.08 and 8.02 with macOS 10.14 (Mojave). We recommend that you do your own testing on a separate partition before upgrading your main partition to macOS 10.14. Furthermore, you may want to remain on an older version of macOS if any of the issues identified below (or the workarounds to those issues) are insufficient for your purposes.

If you encounter any additional issues, please report them to support@wavemetrics.com. Please use the Help→Contact Support menu item so that your system information is included in the message.

Please note that Igor Pro 6 and previous versions are no longer supported or maintained. If you are using an older version of Igor Pro and encounter any of the issues described below, we suggest that you upgrade to Igor Pro 8 or continue to use an older version of macOS.

We will update this post if further issues are discovered.

KNOWN ISSUES

ACCESSIBILITY ACCESS (EVENTS) SECURITY DIALOG

Versions affected: Igor Pro 7 and Igor Pro 8

Description:

Initiating a drag in certain places, such as the Data Browser and the Gizmo Info window, can cause an Accessibility Access (Events) dialog, shown below, to appear:

In our testing, clicking Deny causes no problems. The Qt framework that Igor Pro uses creates a fake mouse event in the process of dragging, and this fake mouse event is triggering the security warning. According to the Qt bug report related to this issue, the fake mouse event is not actually necessary any more. Therefore denying accessibility access to Igor should not cause any problems.

Workaround:

Igor Pro 7: No fix is available
Igor Pro 8: Fixed in Igor Pro 8.03 (and later)

DARK MODE

Versions affected: all

Description:

Mojave includes a new dark mode that is controlled from the General pane of System Preferences. Igor knows nothing about dark mode. As far as we are aware, Igor works fine if you choose dark mode, but the appearance of Igor doesn't change. The versions of the Qt framework used by Igor Pro 8 and earlier do not and will not support dark mode.

Workaround:

Use the default light mode

CRASH WHEN LOADING AN EXPERIMENT

Versions affected: All Igor Pro builds prior to October 20, 2018 (including Igor Pro 7.08 and Igor Pro 8.02)

Description:

Double clicking on an experiment in Finder or the desktop starts Igor and then tells Igor to load the experiment. For some experiments, Igor will crash after the experiment is loaded. Loading the experiment after Igor has started up works as expected. We do not understand why this happens, nor do we have an explanation for why only some experiments cause this problem.

Workarounds:

For all versions of Igor, if you start Igor first and then load the experiment, Igor should not crash.
Igor Pro 7: Fixed applications are available on the nightly build page. Use the Help→Igor Pro Nightly Build menu item to download the nightly build. All nightly builds dated on or after October 20, 2018 contain the fix.
Igor Pro 8: Fixed in Igor Pro 8.03 (and later)

BOLD FONT STYLE UNRELIABLE

Versions affected: All versions of Igor Pro 7 and later.

Description:

Text that is set to be bold is sometimes not displayed as bold due to a macOS Mojave bug. This seems to happen most/all of the time with Igor Pro 7, but rarely with Igor Pro 8. This can occur wherever formatted text is possible (formatted text notebooks, annotations, axis labels, drawing text, etc.).

Workarounds:

Igor Pro 7: No fix is available
Igor Pro 8: Fixed in Igor Pro 8.03 (and later).

SUBTLE TEXT RENDERING CHANGES

Versions affected: Igor Pro 7 and Igor Pro 8 (all versions)

Description:

macOS 10.14 uses a new font smoothing algorithm, and the version of the Qt framework that Igor Pro 8 uses has not been adapted to this new algorithm. This change causes some text to look slightly more bold or blurry compared to macOS 10.13.

Workaround:

None.

aclight Wed, 09/26/2018 - 08:52 am News and Announcements Igor Pro 7 Igor Pro 8

Igor Pro High Sierra (macOS 10.13) Support

admin — Mon, 25 Sep 2017 21:22:43 +0000

Igor Pro High Sierra (macOS 10.13) Support

WaveMetrics has discovered the following compatibility issues while testing Igor Pro 7.05 and Igor Pro 6.37 with macOS 10.13 (High Sierra). We recommend that you do your own testing on a separate partition before upgrading your main partition to macOS 10.13. Furthermore, you may want to remain on an older version of macOS if any of the issues identified below (or the workarounds to those issues) are insufficient for your purposes.

If you encounter any additional issues, please report them to support@wavemetrics.com. If you are using Igor Pro 7 or later, please use the Help→Contact Support menu item so that your system information is included in the message.

Please note that Igor Pro 6 is no longer maintained. Any issues discovered in Igor Pro 6 will not be fixed, though in some cases we may be able to develop workarounds. If you are using Igor Pro 6 and encounter any of the issues described below, we suggest that you upgrade to Igor Pro 8 or continue to run Igor Pro 6 on an older version of macOS.

We will update this post if further issues are discovered.

KNOWN ISSUES

EXPERIMENT SAVE ERROR

Versions affected: Igor Pro 6, Igor Pro 7.05 and 7.06 nightly builds before build 30285 (Sep. 27)

Description:

Saving a packed experiment containing a notebook will fail if the OS is installed on a drive formatted using the new APFS file system. The error message will mention that "logical end-of-file was reached unexpectedly". This error is caused by a change in behavior of macOS file system calls on disks using the APFS file system.

Workaround:

Igor Pro 7: Update to Igor Pro 7.08 (free) or buy an upgrade to Igor 8.

All versions: Save an unpacked experiment instead of a packed experiment, or use the File→Save Notebook As menu item to save the notebook as a separate file.

MISSING PROCEDURE, NOTEBOOK, AND HELP BUTTONS

Versions affected: Igor Pro 6 only

Description:

The buttons at the bottom of procedure, notebook, and help windows (eg. Templates, Procedures, and Compile, Find, Search, and Go Back) are missing, as in the example below:

Workaround:

Upgrade to Igor Pro 8.

admin Mon, 09/25/2017 - 02:22 pm News and Announcements Igor Pro 6

Solution for Igor Pro Windows File Open/Save Dialog Crashes

admin — Mon, 17 Oct 2016 20:23:17 +0000

Solution for Igor Pro Windows File Open/Save Dialog Crashes

Several users have reported crashes on Windows while using the 64-bit Igor Pro application (versions 7 and above). These crashes occur when a system file open or file save dialog is presented, such as when using any of the File→Open or File→Save menu items. The crash could also occur when any built-in command that presents such a dialog, including Open or LoadWave, is called.

This crash is caused by an interaction between Igor Pro 7 or later and some versions of the Dell Backup and Recovery application, which was pre-installed on many Dell machines.

If you are not using the Dell Backup and Recovery application (in our experience, this is usually the case), we recommend that you uninstall Dell Backup and Recovery and then reboot your machine.

If you are using the Dell Backup and Recovery application, we recommend that you update the application to the latest version. While we have not tested different versions of Dell Backup and Recovery to determine whether this problem is present in all versions or only certain versions, some users have reported that updating the application to the latest version resolved the crash.

If you are using the Dell Backup and Recovery application and you cannot upgrade the application, you may be able to continue using the application with Igor Pro if you disable two extensions that Dell Backup and Recovery adds that cause the crash. To do that, download ShellExView from NirSoft. Run ShellExView and disable the following extensions:

DBROverlayIconBackuped.DBROverlayIconBackuped Class
DBROverlayIconNotBackuped.DBROverlayIconNotBackuped Class

Then reboot your machine.

admin Mon, 10/17/2016 - 01:23 pm News and Announcements Igor Pro 7 Igor Pro 8 Igor Pro 9

Igor Pro 6 Font Issues on macOS 10.12 (Sierra)

admin — Mon, 10 Oct 2016 20:19:52 +0000

Igor Pro 6 Font Issues on macOS 10.12 (Sierra)

We've come across two font related issues with Igor Pro 6 on macOS 10.12 (Sierra) and have developed workarounds for both problems. Neither problem is present in Igor Pro 7, so if you haven't already upgraded to Igor Pro 7, you may wish to purchase an upgrade.

PROBLEM WITH ARIAL FONT

If you use Arial font in Igor 6 on macOS 10.12 (Sierra), Igor displays "unicode conversion error" instead of the correct text in graphs.

This affects both the English and Japanese versions of Igor 6.

WORKAROUNDS

Purchase an upgrade to Igor 7 which does not have this problem.
Use a different font.
Drag the Arial.ttf font file from /Library/Fonts to some other folder for safe keeping and restart your machine. Igor 6 will use Geneva in place of Arial.
Drag the Arial.ttf font file from /Library/Fonts to your desktop and restart Igor. Igor will display blank text for Arial. Quit Igor and drag Arial.tff back into /Library/Fonts and restart your machine. Arial now works correctly in Igor. This workaround may not be reliable or durable, though I have not seen it to fail in limited testing.
Workaround #4 works for ASCII characters only. It does not work for non-ASCII characters (accented characters, math symbols, ...). For non-ASCII characters, you need to use workaround #1, #2 or #3.
Drag the Arial.ttf font file from /Library/Fonts to some other folder for safe keeping. Replace your Arial.ttf file in /Library/Fonts with an Arial.ttf file from C:\Windows\Fonts on a Windows machine and restart your machine.
Workaround #5 works for ASCII characters only. It does not work for non-ASCII characters (accented characters, math symbols, ...). For non-ASCII characters, you need to use workaround #1, #2 or #3.

PROBLEM WITH CONTROLS

Controls, such as SetVariable controls, created with a default font setting in Igor 6J (Japanese) on macOS 10.12 (Sierra), display as very thin in the vertical dimension and are unusable.

This occurs because macOS 10.12 does not include Osaka font.

This problem does not affect the English version of Igor 6.

WORKAROUND

Install Osaka.ttf and OsakaMono.ttf in your /Library/Fonts folder. You can obtain these fonts from an older MacOS or download them from Apple. For downloading instructions, see https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT206872

admin Mon, 10/10/2016 - 01:19 pm News and Announcements Igor Pro 6

Igor Pro 6 and QuickTime for Windows

admin — Mon, 18 Apr 2016 20:12:36 +0000

Igor Pro 6 and QuickTime for Windows

With the recently announced security vulnerabilities in QuickTime for Windows, some of our users have asked us to specify the Igor Pro 6 Windows features that require QuickTime for Windows to be installed.

BACKGROUND

Two security vulnerabilities in QuickTime for Windows were recently discovered, and it is reported that Apple considers QuickTime for Windows to be deprecated and will no longer provide security updates for this product. The only mitigation to these newly discovered vulnerabilities available is to uninstall QuickTime for Windows. Apple provides instructions for doing so on its Uninstall QuickTime 7 for Windows page.

IMPACT

Igor Pro 6 on Windows optionally uses QuickTime to provide additional features related to loading and saving some types of sound, image, and video files. Specifically, QuickTime is required on Windows for the following features:

IMAGES

Importing image files of the following types using the ImageLoad operation or the Load Image dialog: PICT, GIF, Photoshop, Silicon Graphics, BMP and Targa.
The ImageFileInfo operation. Because this operation requires QuickTime, it will return an error if QuickTime is not installed.
Saving image files using the ImageSave operation except for raw PNG and TIFF files without color tables. The /IGOR flag must be used in order to save TIFF files when QuickTime is not installed.
Saving a picture file representing an Igor window using the SavePICT operation or Save Graphics dialog with the /T flag. SavePICT without the /T flag does not require QuickTime.

SOUND

Loading and saving sound files using the SndLoadSaveWave XOP that ships with Igor Pro 6 requires QuickTime on Windows. This XOP provides the SndLoadWave, SndSaveAIFF, SndSaveWAV operations and LoadWAVfile and SaveWAVfile operations. If you uninstall QuickTime, you can load simple .WAV files into Igor 6 using the LoadWAVfile.xop. To use LoadWAVfile.xop you must first remove SndLoadSaveWave.xop.

MOVIES

Creating QuickTime movies using NewMovie. NewMovie can create AVI movies on Windows if the /A flag is used. Creating AVI movies dos not require QuickTime.
Playing any type of movie within Igor Pro using the PlayMovie operation requires QuickTime. However, the PlayMovie operation is able to open movie files outside of Igor Pro in your default movie viewing program, which is typically Windows Media Player.

The above information about Igor Pro 6 applies specifically to Igor Pro 6.37 and later. Prior versions of Igor Pro 6 may use QuickTime for Windows in slightly different ways. Igor Pro 6.37 is a free update to all Igor Pro 6 license holders. The latest version of Igor Pro can be downloaded from http://www.wavemetrics.net/.

RECOMMENDATIONS

The 64-bit version of Igor Pro 6 and all versions of Igor Pro 7 and 8 do not and have never used QuickTime for Windows to provide any functionality. Also, the QuickTime for Windows installer prevented installations on a machine running Windows 10. Therefore, if you are using Windows 10 or one of the versions of Igor Pro that does not use QuickTime for Windows at all, your use of Igor Pro should not be affected if you choose to uninstall QuickTime.

Igor Pro 7 and Igor Pro 8 provide built-in support for some of the features for which Igor Pro 6 requires QuickTime for Windows. Specifically, Igor Pro 7 and 8 support:

Importing BMP image files using ImageLoad or the Load Image dialog
Saving image files as JPEG, TIFF, PNG, and raw PNG using the ImageSave operation (the /IGOR flag is no longer required)
Loading and saving sound files using the new built-in SoundLoadWave and SoundSaveWave operations

If you have further questions on this matter, please contact support@wavemetrics.com.

admin Mon, 04/18/2016 - 01:12 pm News and Announcements Igor Pro 6