So you mean stimulus durations are needed for
creating the coding files, right? Even in that case,
it is not much of a burden on the user. The timing_tool.py
example applies to either tr-locked or not, and to constant
stim durations or variable (e.g. via dmBLOCK).

In theory, the timing_tool.py example should apply to any
-stim_times* timing files (assuming they are properly
constructed - for example, it is not appropriate to use
the '*' separator for stimulus durations, that is just for
amplitude modulation).

If the stim times are married to durations (via ':'), then
timing_tool.py will apply the durations when making the
1D files. So still, the user does not need to do anything
special because of those durations (except to make
sure they are being properly applied :).

- rick