  PDFgetX3 is a new software application for converting X-ray powder
diffraction data to atomic pair distribution function (PDF). PDFgetX3 has been
designed for ease of use, speed and automated operation. The software can
readily process hundreds of X-ray patterns within few seconds and is thus
useful for high-throughput PDF studies, that measure numerous datasets as a
function of time, temperature or other environment parameters. In comparison to
the preceding programs, PDFgetX3 requires fewer inputs, less user experience
and can be readily adopted by novice users. The live-plotting interactive
feature allows to assess the effects of calculation parameters and select their
optimum values. PDFgetX3 uses an ad-hoc data correction method, where the
slowly-changing structure independent signal is filtered out to obtain coherent
X-ray intensities that contain structure information. The outputs from PDFgetX3
have been verified by processing experimental PDFs from inorganic, organic and
nanosized samples and comparing them to their counterparts from previous
established software. In spite of different algorithm, the obtained PDFs were
nearly identical and yielded highly similar results when used in structure
refinement. PDFgetX3 is written in Python language and features well
documented, reusable codebase. The software can be used either as standalone
application or as a library of PDF-processing functions that can be called on
from other Python scripts. The software is free for open academic research, but
requires paid license for commercial use.
