important: all fieldtrip functions will be renamed to ft_xxx

[Robert Oostenveld]

Dear FieldTrip users

As some of you may know, Matlab (and specifically the older versions
that we still support) does not have a good way of separating
functions in different toolboxes from each other. The fieldtrip
version of preprocessing (or read_data) might be completely different
from a function with the same name in another toolbox. That is not a
problem for some of the unusual function names, but some function
names like "preprocessing" are very generic and therefore likely to be
used in completely different contexts.

After repeated discussion with the developers of the SPM Matlab
toolbox, we have decided to start adopting the same naming scheme that
SPM is using. That naming scheme consists of prefixing the function
name with the name of the toolbox, e.g. spm_contrasts. The prefix that
FieldTrip will use is "ft_". So that means that the FieldTrip
preprocessing function will be renamed into ft_preprocessing,
sourceanalysis will become ft_sourceanalysis, freqanalysis will become
ft_freqanalysis, etc. This will affect all publicly available
FieldTrip functions, i.e. the main functions that you are using. The
advantage of this change in function names is that it further
facilitates the already very good collaboration of the FieldTrip
project with other EEG/MEG method development groups, such as SPM,
EEGLAB, BrainStorm and others.

Note that this is not an easy choice to make and we have carefully
considered the consequences. Of course all users have existing scripts
that use the old function names. We will do our utmost best to ensure
that your old scripts will remain functional, also with new versions
of the fieldtrip toolbox. To make this possible, we will provide
backward compatibility wrappers, e.g. there will be a preprocessing.m
function that calls ft_preprocessing.m and the likes. Not only the
existing analysis scripts are affected, but also the documentation on
the fieldtrip wiki will have to be updated. Furthermore, fieldtrip
functions often call each other, which means that inside the fieldtrip
functions the function names also have to be changed.

On the short time scale, we will provide backward compatibility
wrapper functions. On the medium time scale, we will ensure that the
fieldtrip code and documentation is internally consistent. On the long
run everyone (which includes you!) should adopt the new function
names. Please start using these new function names in your scripts and
in your derived functions as soon as possible. At a certain point in
the future, the backward compatibility to the old/current function
names will be removed from the fieldtrip release, so by that time all
of your scripts should only be using the new function names, otherwise
they won't work any more. The backward compatibility will be ensured
throughout 2010, i.e. for a full year. Usually we are able to maintain
backward compatibility for a much longer time, so probably you should
not have to worry about this too much.

best regards,
Robert



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Robert Oostenveld, PhD
Senior Researcher
Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour
Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging
Radboud University Nijmegen
tel.: +31 (0)24 3619695
e-mail: r.oostenveld at donders.ru.nl
web: http://www.ru.nl/neuroimaging
skype: r.oostenveld
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The aim of this list is to facilitate the discussion between users of the FieldTrip  toolbox, to share experiences and to discuss new ideas for MEG and EEG analysis. See also http://listserv.surfnet.nl/archives/fieldtrip.html and http://www.ru.nl/neuroimaging/fieldtrip.