F.O.X. Home Page

Introduction
Download
Install
Using FOX
Known bugs
Legal info & Disclaimer

Help fight Software Patents !
You who enjoy the use of free software, please take some time to think about Software Patents! If these are made legal in Europe too, that could eventually lead to the extinction of free software. Please see more information on the main ObjCryst++/Fox web page  (UK, Canada, US Mirror) for a scientific approach of the problem, and on FFII and EuroLinux.

I will not be able to distribute Fox anymore if/when Software Patents exist  in Europe...



The ObjCryst++/FOX webpage can be found at http://objcryst.sourceforge.net, and is mirrored on CCP14 web sites ( UK mirror , Canadian Mirror, US Mirror). There are mailing lists to which you can subscribe to get announcements about the FOX program and/or the Object-Oriented Crystallographic Computing library.

Author: Vincent Favre-Nicolin (http://v.favrenicolin.free.fr )
This program was developped in collaboration with Radovan Cerny, and was written at the Laboratory of Crystallography, in Geneva (Switzerland), with support from the Swiss National Science Foundation. (project #21-53847.98)). The development still goes on as a personal research project after my move to the ESRF.

See the ObjCryst++ homepage for more details about the source code.

Reference for Fox
The reference for Fox is: V.Favre-Nicolin and R. Cerny, in preparation for J. Appl. Cryst (2002), http://objcryst.sourceforge.net

NEWS

Latest version is 1.1.2 (march 2nd, 2002). A few bugs only occuring under windows were removed (when changing space group or unit cell), and it is now possible to limit the extent in sin(theta)/lambda of the calculated diffracted data. The threshold below which the dynamical occupancy correction was applied has been corrected to 1 Angstroem.
Version 1.1 featured speed improvements, use of integrated R(w)-factors (for a better handling of patterns with badly defined profiles), the possibility to use single crystal data (eg extracted intensities), overall temperature factor, a better handling of molecules (importing zmatrices and therefore pdb), and is more user-friendly (eg no need to hit 'return' after each input). See the full changelog.

Molecules imported from a z-matrix file with Fox 1.1 or 1.1.1 must be reimported in 1.1.2 if the 3rd and 4th atom are of the same type (they have not been properly saved in the xml file).

The license has been changed to the General Public License. Note that people wishing to use ObjCryst++ without the constraint of releasing their source code may contact me for the right to use a different license (academic, free software particularly).

Introduction
The FOX program was made for the ab initio structure solution from powder diffraction data. Its most interesting features for ab initio structure determination are : So, if you have: Then FOX can help you.

This program can be used also for educational purposes , to show a 3D display of Crystal structures, and the associated powder pattern(s) (see how adding atoms, changing the lattice, or changing the spacegroup affects the powder spectrum and the 3D structure).

If you would also like to choose your own criterion and algorithm to solve the structure, then it will be even better : FOX is built on a very customizable and expandable library, which allows you to evaluate your Crystal structure following a combination of criteria: currently there are only R, Rw factors and an Anti-bump cost function, but it would be very easy to write a new criterion using (say) interatomic distances (energy of the configuration, analysis of the coordination). This, with a versatile way to describe the unit cell's contents, is what makes the algorithms used interesting.
For example you can combine several Powder patterns (X-Ray, Neutron,...) for the same structure,...

Download
FOX is available in precompiled form for Windows (tested on 98, NT SP4, 2000) and Linux-x86 (the source code is available along the ObjCryst++ code-see the ObjCryst++ home page for info). You can download from several sites: For Windows, download the Fox-20020117.zip file (precompiled).

For Linux, download the Fox-20020117.tar.bz2 (source).

Installation
Please send me an email. to tell me if you have trouble with the linux install.


Using FOX


Known Problems

Legal information
The FOX Program is copyright (2000-2002) Vincent FAVRE-NICOLIN, (2000-2001) Radovan CERNY, and the University of Geneva.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA  02111-1307  USA.
 

This page & project is hosted onSourceForge Logo and mirrored on CCP14 ( UK mirror, Canadian Mirror, US Mirror)