Official Announcement of the 01FEBpl1.3 ESO-MIDAS Release
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MIDAS 01SEPpl1.3 Release

The official 01SEPpl1.3 release of ESO-MIDAS has been released on September 14, 2001 and is available on our ftp accounts and on CD-ROM.

• What's new or upgraded in ESO-MIDAS 01SEP1.3?
• Platform availability
• Source distribution of ESO-MIDAS 01SEPpl1.3
• ESO-MIDAS on a CD-ROM
• Technical Support and Network Services

What's new or upgraded in MIDAS 01SEPpl1.3?

All important enhancements, new developments and bugfixes can be found in the file /midas/01SEP/prim/help/news.alq and displayed in Midas via the command

Midas> help [News]

• Size of FITS headers increased

  Lately, the size of the FITS headers (i.e. no. of FITS keywords) has increased significantly. E.g. the VIMOS instrument produces FITS files with more than 3000 keywords in the FITS header...). Therefore, the internal format for Midas descriptors has been changed to be more compact and efficient, indicated by the version string: VERS_100. This format is naturally backwards compatible, i.e. you can work in 01SEP with the Midas files created in 01FEB. However, trying to work in 01FEB with a Midas image/table created with the 01SEP version will NOT work and produce the message: "(ERR) SCFOPN: myfile.bdf - VERNOR". Thus, if you want to use files created in 01SEP later on in a previous Midas version again, convert them to FITS format first.

  If you want to continue using the old descr. format with 01SEP, use the command

  SET/MIDAS DSCFORMAT=old
  

• New command: COMPUTE/SIGNATURE

  A new command has been implemented to create and fill a Midas descriptor DATAMD5 with the MD5 signature of the data in FITS representation. See the help for details.

• SET/MIDAS new option added

  A new option SQUOTE=yes/no has been added. With SQUOTE=YES Midas continues to treat single quotes (') as special replacement characters, like { and }. For backwards compatibility, this is currently the default. After

  Midas> set/midas squote=no
  

  the single quote is treated like any other character.

• Host system commands

  In e.g. Unix,

  Midas > $ ls filename
  

  executes the "ls" command from a running Midas session. Now, we save the return status from such a host system command in keyword AUX_MODE(17), which can then be checked later on. Furthermore, a new function ires = M$SYSTEM(op1) has been added to COMPUTE/KEYWORD, which runs the command contained in `op1' in the host system and returns the return status of the command in integer keyword IRES. See the help of COMPUTE/KEYW for details.

• display with more than 8 bits

  Thanks to the efforts of Craig Markwardt of the U. of Wisconsin the long standing problem with graphics cards supporting 16, 24bit displays only has been finally solved. Now Midas works with 8, 16, 24 and 32 bit displays. Thanks a lot, Craig!

• INDISK/MFITS

  New command INDISK/MFITS to read in a FITS file and all its extensions has been implemented. See the help for details.

• HELP/SUBJECT

  This command has been completely revised. Now, the complete main help directory is searched for a given string and all commands containing this string are displayed.

• work on FITS files

  Now one can directly access extensions of FITS files, for details see the help of the topic [Filenames].

• MIDAS on VMS

  Thanks to the efforts of Jean-Pierre de Cuyper at the Royal Observatory in Brussels, a VMS-version of the 01SEPpl1.3 MIDAS is also available ( MIDAS at the Royal Observatory in Brussels).

For details use the command: help [News] or click on [News] topic in the graphical user interface.

Platform availability

Source distribution

For a proper installation of MIDAS sources follow the procedure of the installation document provided in PostScript (installunix.ps.Z) and .html format (installunix.html) ESO-MIDAS is a copyright protected software product of the European Southern Observatory, and provides general tools for image processing and data reduction.

As of the 95NOV release,patch level 2.0, ESO-MIDAS is available under the GNU General Public License. This means that the ESO-MIDAS system is available free of charge and can be freely redistributed on certain conditions.

ESO-MIDAS on a CD-ROM

Available on this CD-ROM:

ESO-MIDAS 01SEPpl1.3 sources

ESO-MIDAS 01SEPpl1.3 binaries for:

PC/Linux 2.4.3 or higher
Alpha/Linux 2.2.16 or higher
HP-UX 9000 A.11.00
Sun/Solaris 2.6 or higher
Alpha/OSF1 V4.0

Calibration data for all platforms above

Demonstration data for all platforms above

ESO-MIDAS 01SEPpl1.3 ready to run from CD-ROM on PC/Linux

ESO-MIDAS documentation in:

Postscript format
HTML format

The CD also includes, apart from the standard packages, the reduction recipes (implemented as MIDAS procedures) needed for the basic reduction of FORS1, FORS2 and UVES data. For each of those pipelines, the package includes a README file, the set of midas procedures and a set of master calibration frames. The user manuals are still in a draft form and have not been approved officially by the Instrument Scientists.

The CD-ROM is available to everyone interested in the ESO-MIDAS. Research Institutes can order the CD-ROM directly from the ESO-MIDAS Group by filling out the ESO-MIDAS Problem Reporting Form (category distribution), or just by sending an email to midas@eso.org. Others are kindly invited to contact the Education and Public Relations Department (e-mail: ips@eso.org). The availability of this CD-ROM will also be announced through the "midas-announce" and "midas-users" mailing lists.

The ESO-MIDAS CD-ROM contains the release 01SEPpl1.3 and will include source code, binaries, documentation, and verification procedures.

To remind you, the ESO-MIDAS products contained on the CD-ROM, are available via our anonymous ftp server: ftp://ftphost.hq.eso.org/midaspub. The ftp services include regular patches and updates of ESO-MIDAS.

Technical Support and Network Services

Technical support for ESO-MIDAS can be obtained using the ESO-MIDAS Helpdesk by filling out the ESO-MIDAS Problem Reporting Form

Please note, that ESO is not in the position to give active support to individual users outside research institutions neither to support ESO-MIDAS installations on PC/Linux systems. Also, as of the 95NOV release we have reduced the support for VMS and OpenVMS systems. Since 1996 the VMS version of MIDAS is maintained and developed at the Royal Observatory in Brussels by Jean-Pierre de Cuyper (system@midasc.oma.be). Therefore, users who have problems or questions concerning the VMS-version of ESO-MIDAS should contact Jean-Pierre de Cuyper at the Royal Observatory in Brussels.

In case the ESO-MIDAS Problem Report System cannot be used the MIDAS User Support can be contacted via:

Electronic mail:	midas@eso.org
Telefax:	+49 89 32006480 (attn.: MIDAS Support)
Post:	Data Management and Operations Division - User Support Group Karl-Schwarzschild-Strasse 2, D-85748 Garching bei Muenchen, Germany

Other public services:

Anonymous ftp:	ftp://ftphost.hq.eso.org
WWW:	http://www.eso.org/esomidas
Mailing lists:	midas-announce (for official announcements) midas-users (for general discussion)

To subscribe to these mailing lists, send a mail to majordomo@eso.org with the following command in the body of your email message: "subscribe midas-announce <email>", or "subscribe midas-users <email>", where <email> should be your e-mail address.

For your questions, comments, problems, etc, related to ESO-MIDAS, please use the ESO-MIDAS Problem Report Form.

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