The Geochemical Data Toolkit (GCDkit) is a program for handling and recalculation of geochemical data from igneous and metamorphic rocks. It is built using the freeware R language, version for Windows, which in itself provides a flexible and comprehensive environment for data analysis, graphics and software development. The GCDkit was designed to eliminate routine and tedious operations involving large collections of whole-rock data and, at the same time, provide access to the wealth of statistical functions built into R.
Data management tools include loading and saving data files in a number of formats, data editing, searching, grouping and generation of subsets. Implemented are a variety of calculation and normative schemes, for instance CIPW and Mesonorm, as are the common geochemical graphs (e.g. binary and ternary graphs, Harker plots, spider plots, and several dozens of classification and geotectonic discrimination diagrams). The graphical output is publication ready but can be further retouched by built-in commands.
Getting started
The easiest way of importing data into GCDkit is from plain text data files, delimited by tabs, commas or semicolons (the delimiter is recognised automatically, as is a decimal point/comma). See sample data file sazava.data provided.As a (less forgiving) alternative, the data can be pasted, via clipboard, from any Windows-based software, including MS Excel. If reading Excel or DBF files directly (given the RODBC support is available), please stick to the same simple structure required by the text files. See manual entry for loadData or the PDF file Getting started if more information on data files is needed.
Before proceeding, it is strongly recommended to browse through these help pages (or the manual) or at least the cheat sheet. If pressed by time, read at least the Technical notes.
Enjoy!
On behalf of the authors,Vojtech Janousek
vojtech.janousek@geology.cz11 May 2013
http://www.gcdkit.org