Didge is a freeware digitizing program, designed to help the user quickly mark and record coordinates on a series of images. It was developed for the study of animal locomotion, but if people find other uses for it, so much the better.

Key features of Didge:

• Handles most image file formats, including JPEG, GIF, and TIFF.
• Scale, aspect ratio and origin of the coordinate system are adjustable.
• Split image files (see figure to right) are supported with separate scales, aspect ratios and origins.
• Images in a user-defined sequence are automatically loaded to speed digitizing.
• Image files can be zoomed larger or smaller.
• Data imports directly into Excel or other spreadsheets via CSV files or cut & paste.

What Didge cannot do:

• Didge doesn't interact with image capturing hardware or handle AVI, Quicktime or other mutli-frame formats. All images must be in single frame formats - JPEG, GIF, etc.
• Didge does not provide direct support for measurements other than Cartesian coordinates. Angles, distances, and the like must be calculated from X,Y data. The installation files include an Excel spreadsheet with formulae for calculating a variety of such measures.

More information can be obtained by browsing the Help Files.

Downlands

The latest stable version of Didge is 2.3. It is still branded as "beta" because I've been too lazy to recompile it.

Didge23b1Setup.exe

This version of Didge includes a number of enhancements and bug fixes. For complete information, see the version history.

Important - If you have a version of Didge prior to 2.2.0, Didge must be reinstalled rather then the executable simply copied over. (Unfortunately, Microsoft's install program does not include an easy "update" method.) Please follow these steps:

• Go to Control Panel...Add/Remove Programs and select Didge as the program to remove. You will need to confirm the removal procedure.
• Install the new version of Didge using the accomanying setup program.

You should find that all your previous settings are preserved despite the uninstall!

Contact Information, Pricing & Bug Reports

Comments and bug reports on Didge are welcome, preferably by email:

Alistair Cullum
acullum@creighton.edu
Department of Biology
Creighton University
2500 California Plaza
Omaha, NE 68178-0103

Didge is freeware, but is copyrighted by the author. You may not distribute copies of Didge in any form for which a fee is charged. If end up using Didge, please send me an email, and I'll try to keep you informed of updates, bugs, etc.

If you are sending a bug report, please include as much of the following information as possible:

• The error message you received.
• The exact steps required to trigger the error, or if unknown, a description of what you were doing when the error occured.
• Any files related to the error (e.g. a format file that won't load).
• The version of the program (from the About window, found in the Help menu of the Datasheet window). Include all the numbers and letters.

Version History

Last modified: June 10, 2008