[SasView Users] SasView News and a New Release (6.0.0)

Fri Nov 22 05:05:32 EST 2024

Dear Members of the SasView User List,

We hope this email finds you safe and well.

GENERAL NEWS
It is 18 months since our last release of SasView but in that time the Developer Community has been quite active. A new release, SasView 6.0.0, now brings a raft of new features, feature enhancements, bug fixes and improvements in documentation, as well as a new icon! Importantly, SasView 6.0.0 also (finally) achieves feature-parity with SasView 4.x. We hope you like it!

We would like to remind you that there is no active development of SasView 4.x, nor has there been any for several years, and now with the release of SasView 6.x we shall cease development of SasView 5.x. All users are therefore strongly encouraged to upgrade to SasView 6.x. However, multiple versions of SasView can be installed and used alongside one another provided they are installed to different folders.

In other news:

*         A Core Developer Code Camp was held in Abingdon, UK in September 2023. This was followed by a (now rebranded) Contributor Camp at the University of Delaware<https://www.sasview.org/2024-02-09-contributorcamp-12-report/>, USA in January 2024. The latter was a huge success with over 30 people taking part, two-thirds of them first-timers and one-third from outside the USA, from some 15 different facilities or universities!

*         In November 2024, several SasView developers and contributors attended SAS-2024 in Taipei where they delivered an afternoon tutorial session on SasView to a packed audience!

*         You can now follow and tag SasView on LinkedIn! #SasView<https://www.linkedin.com/company/sasview>

*         SasView continues to benefit from great work by vacation students and interns embedded at large-scale scattering facilities or in university research groups and mentored by members of the established SasView developer community. There have been around a dozen such contributors to date. Examples of some of the recent work they have undertaken include:

o   Refactoring how SasView handles its data objects

o   Reimagining plot handling

o   Weighting in constrained fitting

o   Extended support for the analysis of Magnetic-SAS

If you want to see some aspect of SasView developed and have the funds/resources to offer such positions we would love to hear from you!

NEW RELEASE
The Development Team is pleased to announce the release of SasView 6.0.0, available for download as usual through the website at www.sasview.org<http://www.sasview.org>.

This is a major release with many new features and enhancements, including:

*               A What's New window has been introduced.

*               A Preferences option has been introduced, along with a screen scaling factor (useful when running SasView on laptops/notebooks).

*               The Orientation Viewer tool, last seen in SasView 4.x, has been re-introduced.

*               It is now possible to assign relative weights to different data sets when doing constrained/simultaneous fits (useful for co-fitting SAXS and SANS data, for example).

*               The Corfunc (correlation function) analysis perspective has been completely overhauled.

*               The Debye scattering calculation in the Generic Scattering Calculator tool has been made significantly faster (useful if computing scattering from PDB files, for example).

*               New slicers for the analysis of 2D data have been added.

For the full details of what has changed, be sure to read the Release Notes<https://github.com/SasView/sasview/releases/tag/v6.0.0>.

Mac users might like to note that there are now separate installers for both Apple silicon and Intel architectures.

Please note that at the time of writing we are unable to offer a conda package for SasView 6.0.0 due to issues beyond our control, but we are working towards one. However a 'Flatpak' for Linux is available on request to help at sasview.org<mailto:help at sasview.org>.

NEW MODELS
The following models have been added to the Model Marketplace since v5.0.6 was released:

*         Binary Blend (revised)

*         core_multi_shell_cylinder

*         fuzzy_sphere_extended

*         Superball (a cube with rounded edges)

*         Supercylinder (a superellipsoid)

*         Spherical Micelle

*         Cylindrical Micelle

*         Long Cylindrical Micelle

*         Enhanced Cylinder Models for SasView (improved integration accuracy and performance)

*         Enhanced Ellipsoid Models for SasView (improved integration accuracy and performance)

KNOWN ISSUES
The rpa (Random Phase Approximation, for polymer scattering) model remains withdrawn in the SasView GUI whilst we deal with a UI problem. However the rpa model is available from the scripting interface. As a partial workaround for those that prefer to use the GUI, a Binary Blend model<https://marketplace.sasview.org/models/124/> is available on the Marketplace.

Most plots are currently being displayed on log-log axes, even those that it really doesn't make sense for, like the residuals! This will be fixed in the next point release.

Of course, as always, there remain many things that could be added, improved or, sadly, that need fixing. So please continue to provide feedback, bug reports (issues), and, when possible, fixes, either to the code or the documentation or tutorials, as GitHub pull requests, for those who can, or by simply emailing help at sasview.org<mailto:help at sasview.org>.

FUTURE PLANS
A Mini SasView Contributor Camp<https://indico.linxs.lu.se/event/526/>, in association with the LINXS advanced study institute, is to be held in Lund, Sweden January 9-10 2025. And we are also considering another in the Fall of 2025 (date & venue tbc).

Meanwhile the SasView magnetic scattering community are holding a satellite workshop at the ICNS 2025 Conference, July 6-10 2025. Registrations will open soon! Please keep an eye on the SasView webpage (www.sasview.org<http://www.sasview.org>) or the ICNS conference webpage (https://icns2025.dk/). Meanwhile, if you would like further details, please contact Annika Stellhorn<mailto:annika.stellhorn at ess.eu>. There are also ideas for a magnetic scattering-themed SasView Contributor Workshop later in 2025.

Thank you for your continued support! And, as ever, if you would like to get involved, please see https://www.sasview.org/contribute/ for further information.

The SasView Development Team

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