read_spe() arguments acc2avg and cts_sec

[cbeleites]

read_spe() differs from all other file import functions in that it offers two more options for post-processing:

• acc2avg which triggers averaging accumulations (instead of the summation done by the Winspec software)
  i.e. dividing the spectral intensities by the number of accumulations, and
• cts_sec which will divide the spectral intensities by the exposure time

Do we want to keep this functionality or do we prefer that any such non-standard treatment should be done by the user afterwards?

[GegznaV]

If these are not "standard" procedures for this file format, then pre-processing should be separated from data import functionality.

[cbeleites]

@bryanhanson wrote:

I say let the user modify their data if they want, don't do it automatically, and make this clear in the documentation.

[cbeleites]

@GegznaV I don't remember sufficently well what take Winspec has on this question, but you encounter all 4 possibilities across different spectrometer software.

However, it is not easy for us do offer this pre-processing across different file formats because there is no standard how the parameter/key/colum storing the exposure time and number of accumulations is called. There isn't even a standard whether exposure time is total exposure time or exposure time per accumulation.

For the user, doing this themselves will be 2 lines of code: one for dividing the spectral intensities by the respective column and one for updating the labels() of the intensity axis.

[ximeg]

I'm in favor of removing these non-standard arguments. Let's keep all import functions lean and uniform.

As far as I remember, I added these arguments many years ago when I was implementing this function. Back then I was the only user of this function, and I wanted it to do all of these things for me - I felt lazy to add two lines of code for pre-preprocessing afterward :D