This manual describes software that was introduced with SpecTcl-5.10-006.
With SpecTcl 5.0, SpecTcl's spectra were stored in CERN Root histogram objects with, if available to e.g. Xamine via sbind storage bound into the Spectrum shared memory region. A natural desire is to be able to view and operate on those spectra with Root commands. The new Rootexec command provided with SpecTcl allows users to execute a Root Macro within SpecTcl.
In many cases, users used this to execute commands that perform graphical output (e.g. instantiating a TBRowser, displaying and fitting spectra). With the need to be able to run a headless SpecTcl (under the experiment manager e.g.) many of the things that Rootexec is used for are not possible.
Furthermore, errors in Root macros run by Rootexec can adversely impact SpecTcl's execution. As a worst case example of this, a segfault in a Root macro will crash SpecTcl.
Rootxamine is an attempt to address these problems. It provides the ability to run a fully functional Root interpreter that is attached to SpectTcl's display shared memory in which all Spectra defined in that shared memory are available to that interpreter. Furthermore, as the spectra stored in shared memory change the Spectra visible to Root are dyanmically modified as well.
The remainder of this document is divided into two additional chapters:
Running rootxamine describes how to run rootxamine. The requirements for SpecTcl to support this are described as are the command line options rootxamine accepts.
rootxamine's update and consequences for your scripts. Describes how rootxamine maintains the root histograms it provides and some of the consequences to your Root code of this update process.