Files Format
The WSxM Scanning Probe Microscopy program manages different kinds of data. They are stored in the computer with a file format we provide here so anyone will be able to read them and process them with custom-made programs or create their own files to be processed with our program.
First of all, we want to emphasize that the latest versions of WSxM read most of the common files you can find for commercial SPMs. Thus if you are thinking about creating a convertor for your files to WSxM, first try to open them directly with WSxM.
The most common files you can find in an SPM program are topography maps and therefore we will concentrate on them. For other data files like adhesion or current maps, everything is almost the same. The file managing only differs substantially when working with two-dimensional data (FZ, IV, ... curves) or four-dimensional data (Spectroscopy, Force Volume, CITS, CITM, Movies). We will first take care of three-dimensional data because it is the most commonly used.
There are two file formats for WSxM images. The first one is binary fixed size. It has a 512 bytes binary header and 2 x numpoints data bytes. That header turned out to be too small for the required expansions of the program, so after WSxM 1.x the header format is changed. If your files have the old format, just load and save them with a newer version, and they will be automatically converted to the new file format.
The new header format is an ASCII variable size header followed by the binary data of the image, so if you open a file with an ASCII editor like notepad, you will be able to see the header of the file. - Important: do not try to save that file with the ASCII editor because it will destroy the binary data! A two level structure has been designed to make the header as easy to understand as possible. The fields of the header are easily identified by a Title and a Label; the Title indicates the group of data and the label identifies the field completely.
