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> On the FCS side, are there any programs that do cover
> all of the permutations of any version? Are there any
> that actually conform yet?
The answer to the first part is definitely no. The FCS standard is
unfortunately much too flexible--thus writing code to read all possible variants
is nearly impossible, not to mention simply not worth the effort! For
example-who now stores bivariate histograms in data files? Anyone? And yet,
this is part of the FCS standard. And I will buy dinner, with wine, for the
first person who shows me a legitimate, non-hypothetical use for the $LOST
keyword.
In particular, the problem becomes considerably more difficult when you consider
fully bit-packed data (i.e., putting 10 bit data in only 10 bits instead of 16).
For those who thought byte order was a problem for FCS, this is a nightmare by
comparison. Even for those who didn't think byte order was difficult, this is
still a nightmare.
It also seems that the evolution of FCS is only going towards greater
flexibility rather than less. This is like the evolution of CPU's--for a while,
manufacturers were putting greater and greater power into each--supporting
thousands of different instructions. Then someone discovered that supporting
LESS instructions made for MORE efficient processers (i.e., RISC processors). I
hope that the FCS standard will soon evolve in a similar direction--simplify!
Especially, in a way that encourages rigorous data analysis (e.g., not allowing
the storage of non-listmode data).
Why not make the new FCS actually only allow those formats which are currently
supported by a vast majority of software? The distilled version would be far
easier to support programmatically, and would result in far fewer problems for
cross-compatibility.
mr
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CD-ROM Vol 3 was produced by Monica M. Shively and other staff at the
Purdue University Cytometry Laboratories and distributed free of charge
as an educational service to the cytometry community.
If you have any comments please direct them to
Dr. J. Paul Robinson, Professor & Director,
PUCL, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907.
Phone: (765)-494-0757;
FAX(765) 494-0517;
Web