Incompatibility problems

Questions 74 through 80 (Table 10) aimed to gauge the degree of discontent with different data formats and the degree of software incompatibility problems. The responses to Questions 74, 75, and 77 dictate general discontent, but not enough to significantly discourage most respondents from proposing experiments at other facilities (Questions 78 and 79).

New users have the most difficulty with inadequate documentation, followed by inadequate theory functions, followed by the software interface (Table 11). While old users weren't asked about these issues, two added documentation as a high priority in the next section of the survey.

Table 10: Questions 74-80 about problems associated with different data formats and software.

#		Number			Percent
		Yes	No	n.a.	Yes	No	n.a.
74	Do you have problems with program incompatibilities with different data formats?	29	26	4	49.2	44.1	6.8
75	Do you have problems with program incompatibilities with different operating systems?	35	17	6	60.3	29.3	10.3
76	Do you have problems with program incompatibilities with terminal types?	19	30	6	34.5	54.5	10.3
77	Have differing data formats and-or incompatible software seriously inconvenienced you?	27	29	3	45.8	49.2	5.1
78	Have differing data formats and-or incompatible software discouraged you from proposing experiments at other facilities?	4	43	12	6.8	72.9	20.8
79	Would you do experiments at additional facilities if there was a universal data format?	14	19	23	25.0	33.9	41.1
80	Have data formats and-or analysis software hampered you as a new user?	20	16	21	35.1	28.1	36.8

Table 11: Problems for new users.

#	New user: which aspects caused problems?	greatest problem			no problem		n.r.
		1	2	3	4	5		mean
81	documentation	11	7	3	6	1	36	2.3 $\pm$ 1.3
82	software interface	5	5	12	4	1	37	2.7 $\pm$ 1.1
83	theory functions inadequate for experiment	9	5	8	2	4	36	2.5 $\pm$ 1.4