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Sloth: slowly evolving utilities for x-ray spectroscopy

Sloth is a collection of Python scripts, examples of workflows and documentation that may result useful in the field of x-ray instrumentation, optics and spectroscopy. The project aims providing a dedicated Python environment (called sloth) for scientists working on X-ray spectroscopy beamlines. It should help with the tasks of data reduction/analysis and simulation for X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy (XAS, XANES/EXAFS, HERFD-*), X-ray emission spectroscopy (XES) and Resonant Inelastic X-ray Scattering (RIXS) techniques.

Sloth is lazy by nature and tries reusing as much as possible the existing open-source libraries of the Python ecosystem. It results in a large number of dependecies. Nevertheless, apart few very basic libraries that are mandatory, many other are used randomly in specific modules and you may discover them only by usage, so I strongly encourage to read the code and the documentation.

Sloth is designed as a Python environment running on a Linux-like (virtual)machine (see Installation in the documentation for a full description). On top of this, there is a basic library and some rudimentary not-yet-finished GUIs. The structure of the code or the API is changing rapidily and backward compatibility is not guarenteed. Thus, the library performs as a partial random snapshot of daily work/research and still-to-implement ideas (mainly due to lack of time). Feel free to use/hack it and do not hesitate to drop me a line if you find any script useful. Furthermore, I appreciate if bugs, enhancements or comments could be reported directly in Github Issues

This project works in close collaboration with Larch and the goal is to transfer stable portions of the code there. It means that it is recommended to use Larch in production environments.

Finally, I recommend visiting the Sloth appreciation society and I acknowledge them for inspiring the logo.

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