-> click here to download SwaN-MR and other freeware for Mac OS X <-

WARNING: This page was written between 1995 and 1996 and reflects the situation during that period.



  FTP Sites

I have lost the count of the sites containing the program. Only a few of them are regularly updated:

ftp://qobrue.usc.es/nmr/SwaN-MR
This is the ftp site on this server
ftp://ftp.uniovi.es/pub/mac/nmr
This one is in Oviedo.
ftp://ftp.rediris.es/software/incoming/sciencie/nmr/swan-mr
This one is somewhere in cyberspace.
ftp://ccl.osc.edu/pub/chemistry/software/MAC/Swan-NR
This one is on the other side of the Ocean.
An important issue is how to determine which is the latest version. Rule of thumb: if your copy is 1 year old there should be something better available. Normally a new version takes 2 or 3 weeks to arrive from my Mac to the above "official" sites. In theory the home page should say the truth. The web site you are in is updated at its own pace; this is one of the reasons why I cannot put a button here to download SwaN-MR automatically, like:
Push the button to download SwaN-MR
Inside the ftp sites you will find several versions, named "swanXYZ.sit" or "swanXYZ.hqx"; XYZ are variable digits. Only version 3.2.0 run on the older 68K Macintosh (provided an hardware FPU is present). It has been encoded as "Swan68K.hqx".
All the files are in Stuff-It format. The file containing the on-line reference manual is simply called "manual.hqx". "QuickRef.hqx" contains the 1-page printable manual. It is a Microsoft Word 5 document ready to be printed (a PostScript version is also available); it constitute a quick-reference card, translated in many languages; nowadays they are:

English
Italian
French
German
Spanish
Dutch

If your language is not included, please send your translation, on a disk, to the author. The same applies if you find a mistake.

Inside the first ftp site you may also find other useful software from mine. You can't find another FUNDAMENTAL program: GhostScript, which you certainly would like to use to print your spectra in high definition.



  Trouble-Shooting

If you need the help of an expert write directly to me.

In the first editions of this site there were some pages aimed to explain how to transfer and convert a spectrum to SwaN-MR. This used to be something for initiated. There is still a fossil application called "Tears of rage" Now I have hidden my old pages: they are in the SwaN-MR manual (starting from version 3.4).
It is very important that everyone contribute. Only the ones who don't believe in non commercial solutions should remain idle. If you think like me that commercial firms are doing nothing to help people transferring their spectra to PCs, you may give your hand. For example, if your spectra are difficult to convert, send one of them. That would help us a lot.
My policy is to follow Mestre-C. Not because I am idle, just because you can reach them much more easily than me. When a format can be converted with Mestre-C (and when I have a sample file) it would be straightforward to port the converter to SwaN-MR. If you prefer doing everything by yourself here is the code.


If you are looking for other sources on the web, the one that I know is the archive of the AMMRL.



  Competitors

As far as I know there are other four NMR processing programs for the Macintosh. The day they will be superior to SwaN-MR you will find a link from their web site to mine. If you find or wrote another program keep me informed.

Win-NMR
As the name implies, it was created to run under a different OS. It offers all the advantages and draw-backs of Bruker software. If you want to perform all the operations included into SwaN-MR you must buy at least five very expensive modules: 1D, 2D, spin-simulation, chemical exchange simulation and the link to the spectrometer. In the last years Bruker concentrated on the Windows world. Probably they realized to be out of market.
MacFID
This was a good program from Tecmag. On 3/18/2000 I received the message:
Dear Sir:
MacFID-1D is no longer distributed. Please remove the link to Tecmag from your Web page. Thank you in advance for your help.
Best Regards,
Paul J. Kanyha, Ph.D.
Sales and Marketing Manager
RMN
It is a free-ware written by Philip Grandinetti. The first time (1995) I heard about it I wrote to the author suggesting a mutual collaboration. He explained that he considered RMN a closed project. After another year I put my hands on a copy of it. I read the manual in a matter of seconds. It was saying:
There is no manual for this program. Most menu items should be obvious. Just try it and see what happens. The menu Analyze is disabled until I have time to fix some bugs. The same is true for Simulate under the Acquire menu.
It is a well-crafted program but I never understood the commands.
Nuts
It used to be a PC program by Acorn. Now they sell the Mac version. It is a crude porting of a Windows application, like Word 6. Remembering my experience with the latter I was scared to download the demo. Try by yourself and send me your review.



  Something for Windows users

Three years after me other people started writing a program for Windows along the same principles which inspired SwaN-MR. I am honored to collaborate with them. The program is called Mestre-C and is constantly growing. It's still limited to 1D spectroscopy but not for long. Doesn't it sound strange that there are so many freeware programs for the Mac and only one for PCs? There is something even stranger: in the Department of Organic Chemistry of the University of Santiago de Compostela (where they are writing Mestre-C) there are more Macs than PCs!
There are other alternatives: commercial software or UNIX freeware.



  Other NMR Software Links

The richest list belongs to Peter Lundberg. It is the List of Educational NMR Software. Despite its name, it covers almost all the known software. There are tens of copies of it all around the web.
A shorter list belongs to Graham Barlow. Its site also contains a lot of useful links.
Another vital source of information comes from Marion Buszko: it's the NMR Information Server.
A short page dedicated to NMR software is cured by the Texas A&M University.
Other specific sites are:
http://www.nmrfam.wisc.edu/Software/
http://w3.biochem.siu.edu/nmrware.html and, for simulations:
http://www.uku.fi/perch.html
http://www.chemistry/mcmaster.ca/~bain/mexmanc.html
For those of you who want to enlarge their views on near-by fields, a possibility is YARL.



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