All of the input and output files in the QTL Cartographer system are plain text, and can thus be viewed by virtually any text editor or word processor on any platform. The input files for many of the programs will have embedded commands that start with a minus sign (-). Care should be taken not to have stray tokens such as `-Chromosome' in input files. Also, the case of commands is generally very important: When in doubt use the exact case that is specified here.