file: README		G. Moody	30 July 2010

Software for creating 'maps' of PhysioBank records

To build and install the software in this directory, first install the
WFDB and plt software packages from PhysioNet, ImageMagick (from
www.imagemagick.org), then return to this directory and type 'make'.

This directory contains 'wfdbmap', a program that reads a WFDB record,
optionally including one or more associated annotation files, and generates a
script containing embedded data.  When the script is run, it creates (using
'plt' and 'lwcat', from the plt package) a PostScript-format 'map' of the WFDB
record and its annotations.  The maps displayed by the PhysioBank ATM are
created in this way.

Also in this directory is 'map-record', a shell script that illustrates how
'wfdbmap' and (indirectly) 'plt are used to create a map, and how to convert
the PostScript map into a PNG-format map (using 'convert' from ImageMagick).
For example, to make a map of mitdb/200 and its associated 'atr' annotations,
run the command:
    map-record mitdb/200 -a atr
The outputs of this command are 200.ps and 200.png.  If other annotation files
are available, their annotator names can be given as additional command-line
arguments:
    map-record RECORD -a ANN1 ANN2 ANN3 ...

*** A MAJOR LIMITATION of this version of wfdbmap is that it cannot properly
map segments of a variable-layout multisegment record unless all of the
.hea files for that record are local (i.e., they can't be retrieved from a
web server as needed).  For the ATM, this is not a limitation at all, since
the ATM is mapping local records on physionet.org.  For general use, it's
a serious limitation, since variable-layout multisegment records are often
the records for which a map would be most useful.

The symptoms of this problem are a warning message of the form:
    wfdbmap: can't open http://physionet.org/physiobank/database/...
and an output map that shows all signals as missing. (The annotations are
mapped properly, however.)
