Agilent Technologies E1439 User Manual page 32

Using the Agilent E1439
Programming the Agilent E1439
C programming
The E1439 is shipped with a source library of C-functions that can be called from user programs.
This elevates the interface above the register level so the programmer does not have to be
concerned with such things as register addresses and packing or splitting parameters into 16-bit
register lengths. The library includes ANSI compliant source code files with all machine
dependent code constrained to a single source file. By re-writing selected portions of the
machine.h file, the programmer can create and compile an E1439 library that is compatible with
virtually any development environment using the C language. The most common reason for re-
writing machine.h is to accommodate I/O libraries other than VISA. In some cases, the library
may need merely to be re-compiled to target a different processor type for the host computer.
Porting the E1439 library to a different computer environment is likely to be a fairly straight
forward task. However, some of the higher level tools shipped with the E1439 may not be as
easily ported. The interactive soft front panel and some example programs include human
interfaces that depend on certain display and keyboard support which may be system dependent.
Although source code is included for these applications, porting them to a different environment
may present a greater problem than porting the library itself. The installation utilities are
specifically targeted to operate on the supported development environments and may not be
available in other environments.
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