MinIdent-Win©

About MinIdent-Win©

MinIdent-Win, is a very powerful program that permits the identification of minerals on the basis of their chemical make up and physical properties. It has been designed by professionals for professionals, but because of its unique, simple-to-use format can be used as well by students, amateurs and beginners. MinIdent-Win aims to include all recognised, named mineral species. In addition to the ~6500 minerals included in the database for the Professional edition, MinIdent-Win contains information on more than twenty four hundred discredited, archaic or varietal names complete with links, where appropriate, to accepted species names.

A large part of MinIdent-Win is based on real data for real specimens, not simply average values and ranges, like most programs for mineral identification. For example, the mean compositional values and ranges available within MinIdent-Win have been compiled from actual analyses published in the scientific literature; in some cases dozens of analyses may be involved. These data have been acquired and entered into the database over more than two decades.

One of the unique features of MinIdent-Win is that it can perform two distinct types of identification. The first, which we have termed "MATCH", determines what minerals in the database can match exactly the properties that the user enters. The second procedure ("IDENTIFY") determines which minerals in the database have the best overall fit to the properties the user has entered. The fit is characterised by a "MATCHING INDEX" calculated by sophisticated, purpose-developed scoring algorithms that take into account both the ranges and distribution of the various property values in the records that are used to compile the database. We believe that no other mineral identification product available today, either privately or commercially, approaches the power of MinIdent-Win.

Finally, to make the software even more useful and attractive to collectors, mineral dealers and students, we have included about 600 high-resolution digital images of minerals that can all be displayed at full-screen size. In addition, we have integrated a user's database with the program. This can be used to add an unlimited range of images (which will be accessible from within MinIdent-Win) and can contain an unrestricted amount of information on the user's own specimens.

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