Suggestions for McStas

[Thomas C Hansen]

Dear Kristian,

McStas 1.2 works fine, thanks for all your work. However, I've got some
(disordered) suggestions for amelioration, as you asked for it.

1. Having DEFINITION PARAMETERS (so strings, etc.) also for the INSRument, not
only for the COMPonent would be fine.

2. The 'make' functionality of mcrun and mcgui is limited to the *.instr file.
It would be great, if these front ends could check as well for invoked *.comp
and force recompiling if these are newer than *.out and *.c.

3. The trace (mcdisplay) option in mcgui should accept options like --multi and
--inspect.

4. The circle in MCDISPLAY draws only a rough polygon. that's okay for small
circles, but if I present my curved 1D PSD, having a radius of about 1.5 meters,
I cannot see precisely enough the neutron's trajectory in the detection gap.
That's not really a problem for me, as I can work around with some hundred short
lines on a circle (permitting as well to draw only a part of a circle), but
maybe for others ...

5. The Beamstop_rectangular component draws very funny lines with mcdisplay.

6. It would be a great job (a lot of work), but really useful, to have some kind
of a standard adaptation procedure/macro/subroutine also for other components
than the source, as well the possibility to invoke it into new/modified
components in a standardized way. I am thinking for instance of targeting in
monochromator crystals (e.g. for the vertical divergence a MC choice of phi is
done which could result in neutrons never hitting neither sample or detector),
or the implementation of a complex powder sample with several Bragg reflections,
incoherent scattering, multiple scattering, etc. could become more efficient and
maybe easier.

Good luck, and thanks again,

Thomas

--
Dr. Thomas C HANSEN, Instrument Scientist D20, Diffraction Group
Institut Max von Laue-Paul Langevin, BP 156, 38042 Grenoble Cédex 9, France
ILL4-1st floor room 100, Phone +33(0)476207044, Fax +33(0)476207648
mailto:hansen at ill.fr, http://www.ill.fr/YellowBook/D20
Private: 13, allée des étangs, 38240 Meylan, France, +33(0)476180553