The scripts referred to here are at: www.perplex.ethz.ch/scripts/OSX_scripts.zip I've polished up a couple of the Perple_X scripts I made. Perhaps you or others might find them useful. The first one, "runandplot.sh", takes a build file, runs vertex and psvdraw to make pre-selected pseudosection plots without any user interaction. The second is actually a set of three files, plus a sample template. It creates a from a template whole bunch of random bulk composition (within certain boundaries) build files and runs Perplex to calculate the stable phases at a set of predetermined P-T-X points. The print files are "thinned out" (i.e., pseudocompound table removed), and then systematically parsed for garnet presence and composition. The parser calculates a molar-weighted average of all garnet lines in an output for a single PTX condition. The data are exported to four CSV- formatted output files, one that includes every garnet found, one that includes the maximum spessartine found for each bulk composition, one that includes the minumum, and one that includes the "onset" garnet (the lowest-T garnet at each XCO2, for each bulk composition). The files for the second script are: makeRandomBCRuns.sh (the main program), getGrtComps.sh (the parser file-handling program), getGrtComps.pl (the perl program that does the actual text processing on each file), and 711template.txt (a sample template file). I imagine you are wondering why on earth I would want to do calculations on a random bulk composition. Well, it's a bit of a long story, but essentially I've got some rocks that I've put a ton of other work into and needed to figure out the onset temperature for garnet crystallization. I worked for about a year trying to come up with some method that worked, but it's pretty clear that these rocks saw fluids moving through and were somewhat metasomatized. I've been able to come up with possible pre-metasomatism bulk compositions that produce the observed core grt compositions. Although these are not unique, there is little variation in the onset temperature for garnet growth among the set of matching bulk compositions. Each of the scripts can be called with no arguments (or -u) to get a usage guide, and can get a longer description by calling with "- h" (i.e., "help"). They will all produce no output of their own if called with the "-q" flag (i.e., "quiet"), and will spew messages if called with the "-d" (debug) or "-v" (verbose) flags. To run them, of course, they need to be chmod +x Other scripts that are not pretty yet: I've got a script set that works like the second one, but which iterates over all possible combinations of solution models for each solution phase (one of my earlier attempts to use the measured bulk compositions and find a match to my core grt). I've got a script that will make a set of "contour" pseudosections for some property (basically customizing the fill color to range between, say, 0.3 and 0.301, and then for the next one between 0.4 and 0.401, etc.). Hope these are useful to you or others. -Dave ============================ Have you been Touched by His Noodly Appendage? http://www.venganza.org ============================ Dave Hirsch Assistant Professor Department of Geology Western Washington University persistent email: dhirsch@mac.com http://www.davehirsch.com voice: (360) 650-2166 aim: dhirsch@mac.com vCard: http://almandine.geol.wwu.edu/~dave/personal/DaveHirsch.vcf icon: http://almandine.geol.wwu.edu/~dave/personal/dmhface.jpg ============================