Creating and using new annotation types

WAVE was originally developed for use with ECGs, and the standard set of annotation types reflects this history. If you work with other types of signals, or if the standard set of annotations does not meet your needs, you may define your own annotation types and add them to the Type:  menu in the Annotation Template. To do so, first create a text file containing one-line entries defining each new type, as described in X11 Resources or see the file `anntab' included in the WAVE distribution for an example. Next, set the environment variable ANNTAB, or the X11 resource Wave.Anntab, to the name of this file. The next time you run WAVE , the new types from your ANNTAB file will appear in the Type:  menu. You may use them in the same way as the standard annotation types. Any annotation files you create or edit while your ANNTAB file is loaded will contain embedded copies of your type definitions, so that these files can be used on other systems and by other users without the need to reference your ANNTAB file each time.

In most cases, you should use the unassigned type codes between 42 and 49 for custom annotation types, rather than redefining the standard types. If you are not working with ECGs, however, you may redefine any type codes you wish (the legal range is defined in `<wfdb/ecgcodes.h>').