Other useful software

WAVE makes extensive use of other components of the WFDB Software Package of which it is a part. The most recent version of this package is always freely available from PhysioNet (http://physionet.org/). The WFDB Software Package includes calsig, mrgann, plot2d, pschart, psfd, rdann, rdsamp, sample, snip, sqrs, tach, wfdbcollate, wfdbdesc, wfdbwhich, wrann, wrsamp, and xform (among many other applications). The package also includes the WFDB library of interface functions for user-written applications that read and write signal and annotation files in the formats supported by WAVE .

A web browser, though not a necessity for everyone who uses WAVE , should be part of your software toolbox. If you use link annotations, you will need a browser in order to follow the links to the external data. Even if you don't anticipate using link annotations, you can still use a web browser to view the on-line version of this guide. Mozilla is an attractive choice because of its simple remote-control interface, among other reasons. Mozilla may be obtained freely from http://www.mozilla.org).

An X-Y plotting program capable of being run from the command line is another nearly essential tool. A suitable program should be able to accept multicolumn text input, allowing specification of which columns to plot from the command line (so that it can be driven by WAVE ). Avoid commercial software designed for business graphics with arbitrary (often very low) limits on the number of points that can be plotted. If you expect to prepare plots for publication, avoid packages that only provide screen dumps; any decent plotting program should be able to generate plots at the resolution of your printer. plt is a highly capable plotting package freely available from physionet.org;. plot2d (included in the WFDB Software Package) is a bare-bones command-line front end to gnuplot, a fairly capable interactive plotting program that is included in most Linux distributions, and is also available from http://www.gnuplot.info/ and numerous other sites. plot2d uses plt rather than gnuplot if plt is installed.