XVis: an educational open-source program for demonstration of reciprocal-space construction and diffraction principles

The program XVis is designed for interactive demonstration of different diffraction issues, such as reciprocal-space construction, connection between real and reciprocal space via diffraction phenomena, different methods of reciprocal-space scanning, accessible reciprocal-space regions for coplanar and noncoplanar diffraction for both transmission and reflection geometries, N-beam diffraction phenomena, reciprocal space for two-layered systems and experimental examples. All demonstrations are calculated using real structure parameters. For better information representation, the program displays most demonstrations in real and reciprocal space simultaneously. The program is open source and can be downloaded from http://x-ray.net.ua/xvis.html .