Graham,
 
The Leica <-> ftp was also a problem for us, and I have solved it this way:
 
I implemented an FTP client into NIH Image 1.60. Like in Fetch, you have to
suppy the username, password etc, then the connection is opened. A listing
with info-files, directories and higher directories appears, all of which
are double-clickable (the filenames of the slices don't appear at this
level). When an info-file is double-clicked, NIH-Image evaluates this info,
creates a stack of proper size and spatial scaling, and loads all
corresponding slices via the net into the stack. Additionally, this version
of NIH Image has an interactive 3D slicer (orthogonal and perspectivic).
 
Now the draw-backs:
I enabled the ftp client only for Power-Macs, and only in combination with
Open Transport (which is standard on Macs with PCI bus). I only tested it
on a PPC7200, 7500 and 8500. Only reading files is possible, not deleting
or renaming.
 
I didn't care for error checking.
I didn't test it on any other machine than our own Leica OS/9 here.
 
Because of these reasons, I didn't put this piece of software onto a public
site. However, if anyone wants to take the risk, I would give it away on a
personal basis.
 
I know that this doesn't solve your whole problem, but at least the number
of files is reduced by putting automatically the individual slices into a
stack with proper name and scaling.
 
For those who are interested: I took the reusable C routines of NewsWatcher
(written by John Norstad) and combined it with the Pascal code of NIH Image
in Codewarrior 9.
 
(I posted this earlier but it bounced. Now Paul mentioned it I try it again)
 
 
 
 
 
Norbert Vischer          | Visit the homepage for Object-Image
University of Amsterdam  | and Structured Point Collection:
The Netherlands          | http://www.bio.uva.nl/norbert/object-image.html