This is burrow-owl, a software package for visualizing
multidimensional nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR)
spectra, with an emphasis on spectra used in
macromolecular structure determination.

burrow-owl incorporates the higher-order spectrum principle,
a way of identifying correlated peaks in
multiple spectra without the need for peaklists.

The name burrow-owl continues the tradition of naming
programs used in structure determination after birds,
started by the program
coot (http://www.ysbl.york.ac.uk/%7Eemsley/coot/).
burrow-owl and coot are similar in some ways:

- both are free software (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/philosophy.html)
- both draw contour plots with automatic wrap-around and
  instant recontouring
- both use the guile-gtk library (http://www.gnu.org/software/guile-gnome/)
  to provide a modern graphical user interface controlled by a
  high-level scripting language

There are also some important differences:

- coot is for x-ray crystallography; burrow-owl is for NMR.
- The coot is a water-dwelling bird, whereas everybody knows
  that a burrow owl lives in a hole in the ground.  (Why do you
  think they call it a burrow owl, anyway?)