An important update has been made to the tpsSpline program. Version 1.20 has just been uploaded to the SB morphometrics server site.
The thin-plate spline window now simply computes the spline from the two specified configurations of landmarks. The principal warps window displays the warps based on the currently specified reference configuration. The previous versions of this software tried to do something more clever (spline between any two pairs of shapes based on a fixed reference configuration) but that seems to have confused many users. The program now simply does the obvious computations. In addition, tpsSpline can now read link files and slider files. The sliders file allows the program to slide semilandmarks so as to improve the fit of a specimen to a reference configuration. Several options are provided. The purpose of this option is simply to allow a user to see how well the different options work for their data. The program will not save a file of adjusted coordinates as done by the tpsRelw program. The help file has also been updated. An example dataset is also provided for semilandmarks around an outline. In a few days I expect to upload a new version of the tpsRelw program with several options for the way in which semilandmarks are slid and for how the GPA iterations are performed when there are semilandmarks. The present version of tpsRelw does not always slide the semilandmarks in a reasonable way. I suspect I will be adding other options in the future to better handle special cases. ----------------------- F. James Rohlf State University of New York, Stony Brook, NY 11794-5245 www: http://life.bio.sunysb.edu/ee/rohlf == Replies will be sent to list. For more information see http://life.bio.sunysb.edu/morph/morphmet.html.
