General programming recommendations
Manual operation is designed for maximum operating convenience. In contrast, the priority of remote control is the "predictability" of the instrument status. Thus, when a command attempts to define incompatible settings, the command is ignored and the instrument status remains unchanged, i.e. other settings are not automatically adapted. Therefore, first define an initial instrument status (e.g. using the *RST command) and then implement the required settings.
As a rule, send commands and queries in separate program messages. Otherwise, the result of the query can vary depending on which operation is performed first (see also "Command sequence and synchronization").
The service request is the only possibility for the instrument to become active on its own. Each controller program should instruct the instrument to initiate a service request if there is an error. The program should react appropriately to the service request.
The error queue should be queried after every service request in the controller program. The queue entries describe the cause of an error more precisely than the status registers. Faulty commands from the controller to the instrument are recorded there as well. Thus, query the error queue regularly, especially in the test phase of a controller program (see also "Error queue").