Official Announcement of the 05SEPpl1.3 ESO-MIDAS Release
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The official 05SEPpl1.3 release of ESO-MIDAS has been released on Jan. 12, 2006 and is available on the ESO ftp server .

• What's new or upgraded in ESO-MIDAS 05SEPpl1.3
• Platform availability
• Source distribution of ESO-MIDAS 05SEPpl1.3
• ESO-MIDAS on a CD-ROM
• Technical Support and Network Services

What's new or upgraded in MIDAS 05SEPpl1.3 ?

All important enhancements, new developments and bugfixes can be found in the file /midas/05SEPpl1.3/prim/help/news.alq and displayed in Midas via the command

Midas> help [News]

• Midas on Windows

  A first implementation of Midas based on the Cygwin framework (Cygwin_NT-5.1) in Windows XP has been done. Cygwin (free GPL software available from www.cygwin.com) emulates a Linux system (including X11, Motif) on top of Microsoft Windows. Thus, after having installed Cygwin in Windows you can install Midas on top of that.

• COMPUTE/KEYWORD

  A new function M$STRCMP has been implemented for exact string comparison. The command used in Midas procedures: IF str1 .EQ. str2 THEN ... always compares strings in uppercase, i.e. it is not case sensitive, thus "ABCD" and "aBcD" are considered equal...

• new screen dump command

  A new application procedure to make a screen dump of a displayed image and store it in a given image-type file. See help/applic screendump for details.

• Midas on AMD Athlon 64

  Midas has been ported to 64-bit architecture of the AMD Athlon-64. Actual machine at ESO is an Athlon +3400 running 64-bit SuSE 9.3 Linux.

• Midas and Python                                  

  In the context of the joint ESO/Finland  Sampo  project a Python interface to Midas was built. It is  called PyMidas  and provides (similar to PyRAF)  access to Midas via the Python scripting language.  PyMidas works with versions of Midas from the release 05SEPpl1.3 on.  PyMidas together with all information needed for the installation of PyMidas and the PyMidas Users Guide can be obained from ESO's ftp-server in the directory PyMidas .                                           
  

Platform availability

Source distribution

ESO-MIDAS on a CD-ROM

The CD-ROM will contain the release 05SEPpl1.3 and include source code, documentation, and verification procedures, as well as calibration files in FITS format and binary format for some architectures (i.e. the ones on our ftp site).

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 Report Form

Please note, that ESO is not in the position to give active support to individual users outside research institutions. 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.

Send comments to <midas@eso.org> Last modified: Jan. 12, 2006