[MINC-users] multi-input output type/range

[Claude LEPAGE]

Hi,

This discussion sounds like a good opportunity to add oil to the fire. :-)

With all software should come some documentation which the user is of
course invited to read before usage. I was made aware of the minccalc
behaviour when I started using the minc tools. It is now a well-
conditioned reflex to list the input files in the appropriate order
or to explicitly specify the output type. Maybe adding an option such
as "minccalc -like file.mnc -expression ...." would be an easy way to
remind the user to choose an output data type. This would also not 
change the default behaviour if -like is not specified.

About loss of data, I think this is a separate issue. Binarization 
of data is part of the minc concept, but what I don't like about it,
especially for integer data types, are the different min/max scaling
values by slice. This means a value of 100 can vary from slice to
slice. This is particularly annoying with labels. I think Andrew
once pointed out a global compilation variable to set to obtain 
a global min/max for the entire volume, but I forgot it since. I
would very much like to be able to enable this feature on a per 
file basis via a command line option.

ok, enough ramblings. 

Claude