The program LAUECELL can be used to index Laue diffraction patterns, without knowing the unit cell dimensions a priori. The principals of the program are described by R.B.G. Ravelli, A.M.F. Hezemans, H. Krabbendam and J. Kroon, in J. Appl. Cryst. (1996). 29, 270-278.
The program works in combination with the program xdisp, written by Wladek Minor, which displays X-ray diffraction patterns. It communicates with the display program by a `hklpredictions' file, which contains the version number of the xdisp program. You has to make sure that the program LAUECELL was compiled for the correct xdisp version. Currently, LAUECELL will write `hklpredictions' files for xdisp version 1.6.2. The communication between LAUECELL and xdisp is still not ideal: one has to press the update/remove prediction button twice in order to see a new simulation of LAUECELL.
LAUECELL consists of three parts: NODIRAX, TRCELL, and INDXPAT. This gives the user the possibility to check each step separately. The program will normally be run interactively. You start with reading an input file, the name of which should be given proceeded by a '@' character. The program converts all the commands to uppercase (except for filenames) and is thus case-insensitive. Commands can be abbreviated by using the first four characters only.
Currently, the FUJI plate and ESRF ID9 CCD detector are supported.