Official Announcement of the 02FEBpl1.0 ESO-MIDAS Release

The official 02FEBpl1.0 release of ESO-MIDAS has been released on February 25, 2002 and is available on our ftp accounts.

Below you find the following information concerning this new release:

What's new or upgraded in ESO-MIDAS 02FEB?
Platform availability
Source distribution of ESO-MIDAS 02FEBpl1.0
ESO-MIDAS on a CD-ROM
Technical Support and Network Services

What's new or upgraded in MIDAS 02FEBpl1.0?

All important enhancements, new developments and bugfixes can be found in the file /midas/02FEB/prim/help/news.alq and displayed in Midas via the command

Midas> help [News]

Here we list the most important ones:

ALIGN/INTERACTIVE
New command ALIGN/INTER to align two images interactively (and easily!). See the help for details.

SET/MIDAS workenv=FITS
FITS files are now seamlessly integrated into Midas. With the command SET/MIDAS workenv=FITS it's possible to read/write all data files in FITS format. Accordingly, the command SET/MIDAS DEFTYPE= has been removed!

Logical FITS keyword
Logical descriptors have been implemented in Midas to support the usage of logical FITS keywords. See the help of the descr. commands for details.

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

Platform availability

MIDAS 02FEBpl1.0 has been installed and verified on the following platforms:

SUN Solaris 2.6	SUN Solaris 2.8
HP HP-UX A.10.20	HP HP-UX B.11.00
Intel/Linux SuSE 7.3	Intel/Linux RedHat 7.1
Alpha/OSF1 V4.0A	Alpha/Linux SuSE 7.0
VMS

In our ftp area, binary versions are available for the following platforms:

hpux_1100 # 02FEBpl1.0 binary of MIDAS for HP/UX 11.00
hpux_1020 # 02FEBpl1.0 binary of MIDAS for HP/UX 10.20
intel_linux # 02FEBpl1.0 binary of MIDAS for PC/Linux RH 7.1 Kernel 2.4.3
solaris6 # 02FEBpl1.0 binary of MIDAS for SUN/Solaris 2.6
solaris8 # 02FEBpl1.0 binary of MIDAS for SUN/Solaris 2.8

Note: The latest VMS-version of ESO-MIDAS can be obtained from the Royal Observatory in Brussels . Please contact Jean-Pierre de Cuyper (system@midasc.oma.be) for more information concerning VMS and ESO-MIDAS.

Source distribution

As you may already know, MIDAS is available under the GNU General Public License since 95NOVpl2.1. Since then we are not requiring anymore the prior MIDAS User Agreement in order to get access to MIDAS sources.

02FEBpl1.0 is available as source code.

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

Our current schedule anticipates the creation and distribution of the release of MIDAS 02SEPplx.x on CD-ROM in August/September 2002. The availability of this CD-ROM will be announced through the "midas-announce" mailing list.

The ESO-MIDAS CD-ROM will contain the release 02SEPplx.x and will include source code, binaries, documentation, and verification procedures.

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. Therefore, users who have problems or questions concerning ESO-MIDAS running on these systems are advised to use the "midas-users" mailing list for obtaining feedback and solutions to their questions from other users.

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/pub/midaspub
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.

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

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

Official Announcement of the 02FEBpl1.0 ESO-MIDAS Release

What's new or upgraded in MIDAS 02FEBpl1.0?

ALIGN/INTERACTIVE

SET/MIDAS workenv=FITS

Logical FITS keyword

Platform availability

Source distribution

ESO-MIDAS on a CD-ROM

Technical Support and Network Services