From: B.Gilli
                                                           Date: 31 Jul 1999

                


             VLT-SW-OCT99 - RELEASE NOTES FOR CCS
             ====================================

ccs:
---     
- ccsCCS_VERSION   is now   199910

alrm:
----
- standard location for alarm help files is now <mod>/ALARM/HELP
  vltMakefile has been modified to serch that subdirectory for installation.

tims:
---- 
- Obsolescent functions, ISO non compliant (timsTimeToString &
  timsStringToTime) have been removed from distribution. 
- Proper error reporting added in case periodic reply is requested to the
  timerSendReply function and lastReply parameter is not set to ccsFALSE.

db: 
--
- No change

log:
---
- To improve efficiency, the logging system has been internally re-structured:
  the logManager has been split in two processes. One reading as efficiently
  as possible the input message queue, and storing logs on an internal
  buffer where they are picked up by the second process in charge of the
  interface with the syslog. 

- To avoid running into deadlocks in case too mamny logs are sent to the
  logManager and remain pending on its message queue, the following
  modifications have been done :
	- The LCUs are started one after the other with a delay time
          of 10 seconds, therefore we avoid that buffered logs in the LCUs
          are sent from all LCUs in one go.

	- The checking of LCUs is skipped if the message queue is too loaded.
	- Warning messages are issued in the following cases :
		- The LCU checking is skipped.
		- The internal buffer is full and the logManager has to
		  discard incoming logs.


err:
---

No change

samp:
----

No change

scan:
----
-The alarm attached to the scan device point in the database has been
changed according to SPR 990013: the scope is now LOCAL, and an attribute
has been added to allow masking of the alarm. See ALARMS/scanAlarm.hlp file
for details.

Panel Editor
------------

The major modifivcation is the porting to tcl8.
Use "compat" to find out the main differences between tcl7.6 and tcl8.

Based on our experience here there are some 'porting' tips :

- Statements about namespaces have a different syntax.

- "info class" and "winfo class do not return the same value.
   EXAMPLE : "info clas" return  "::myClass", while "winfo class" returns
             "myClass"
   It is indeed so that for a few commands compared to the previous version
   of Tcl/Tk and [incr Tcl], you may now find (or not) leading "::". Some
   of this is reported by "compat".

-  The -mapped option for ::blt::barchart has been replaced with -hide
   (If you use the uifBarChart widget, this will be transparent)

- Operations on lists, such as lindex and lreplace, are very sensitive on 
  the content of the list amd they automatically modify the list in order to
  keep just 'ONE" blank between element of the list.

  In several cases we had to replace 'list operations' with 'string' and
  "ctoken" statements 

                                ___oOo___