A pulse height distribution can be extracted from a QPOE file only if the event structure is `large', `region', or `full'. The source position in the field must be known, and the region where the background is to be obtained must be supplied. SAOimage can be used to display an image, and the cursor used to find the source coordinates. Some instructions for defining regions can be found here. The regions help file also contains instructions for defining regions, and a list of the available shapes.
With the new RDF format files, the output from qpspec for most instruments is split into three files:
| _obs.tab | counts |
| _soh.tab | source off-axis histogram |
| _boh.tab | background off-axis histogram |
For Einstein IPC, there are no off-axis histogram files, but there is a BAL histogram file, _bal.tab.
To convert to the pre-RDF form, the task downspecrdf should be used. To convert from pre-RDF form, use task upspecrdf