[Kst] raw data access

[Ted Kisner]

Greetings,
  my name is Ted Kisner and I am a collaborator on the Boomerang experiment.  
We use kst for real time data display and post-acquisition viewing.  I have 
not used any of the newer versions of kst (I'm still using one compatible 
with kde 2.2.x on my debian machines).

I am guessing that kst still supports reading from "dirfile" format raw 
binary data.  I'm not sure if it still uses Barth's original getdata.h file 
for reading this data.

I wanted to point out a library that I've created that is based on Barth's 
original code.  In addition to bug fixes, this library has the following 
features:

o  Reading and Writing to both RAW fields and derived fields (LINTERP, LINCOM 
and BIT).

o  Automatic endian swapping when reading and writing data files on 
big-endian machines

o  Large file support

you can download the library here

http://cmb.phys.cwru.edu/kisner/code/dirfile/

it is my hope that this library could be useful to the kst project.  Here are 
some questions I have.

1.  how is the current raw data access integrated into kst (is it a plugin?)

2.  I believe that using this library instead of the builtin code is simply a 
matter of changing a couple function calls.  Is it worth making a patch for 
this, or should someone more familiar with the code base "just do it"?

Any info is greatly appreciated...

-Ted