Origins: IDA (1990)

Frida’s ancestor is IDA (“Inelastic Data Analysis”), started by Joachim Wuttke in 1990. IDA was written in Fortran 77 and used the proprietary NAG library. It was designed to analyse inelastic neutron scattering data at what is now the MLZ (Maier-Leibnitz Zentrum) in Garching.

Frida-1 (Fortran)

As Frida-1, the program continued in Fortran. When Wuttke left the field in 2001, maintenance was taken over by A. Meyer at DLR Köln.

Frida-2 (C++ rewrite, 2001–2005)

A C++ rewrite was started for time-series analysis. When Wuttke returned to neutron science in 2005, he modernized the codebase and renamed it Frida (“Fast reliable interactive data analysis”) — the earlier name IDA had been taken by other projects.

From this point on, Frida-1 (Fortran) and Frida-2 (C++) existed as parallel branches. Frida-2 is the version described in this manual.

Milestones

Year	Event
1990	IDA started (Fortran 77)
1996	Multi-z coordinates added
2001	Wuttke leaves; A. Meyer takes over maintenance
2001–2003	C++ rewrite for time-series analysis
2005	Wuttke returns; code modernized, renamed Frida
2006	Abstraction layer for x-y-dy
2008	Git version control introduced
2010	Full r-parameter support; CHANGELOG started

Current status

Frida is actively maintained. Bugs are fixed promptly; new features are implemented occasionally.