Official Annoucement of the 99NOVpl2.0 ESO-MIDAS Release
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The official 99NOVpl2.0 release of ESO-MIDAS has been released on January 20, 2000 and is available on our ftp accounts.

• What's new or upgraded in ESO-MIDAS 99NOV?
• Platform availability
• Source and binary distribution of ESO-MIDAS 99NOVpl2.0
• ESO-MIDAS 99NOV documentation
• ESO-MIDAS under the GNU General Public License
• ESO-MIDAS on a CD-ROM
• Technical Support and Network Services

What's new or upgraded in MIDAS 99NOVpl2.0?

All important enhancements, new developments and bugfixes can be found in the file /midas/99NOV/prim/help/news.alq and displayed in Midas via the command

Midas> help [News]

• Midas commands in Unix

  All Midas commands not using display or graphics windows can also be executed directly from the Unix command line. For details see the help about [Host+Midas].

• Verification procedures

  The verifications have been expanded a lot. You should always execute them when installing Midas. They are executed via:

  Midas> @ vericopy

  Midas> @@ veriall

• context RBS

  New context RBS has been implemented. See the help (available after: Midas> set/context RBS) for details.

• Midas command line

  The max. length of a single token (atom) in a Midas command line has been increased from 80 to 150 chars. The max. length of the total command line remains at 400 chars. as before.

• INFO/FILE

  New command INFO/FILE has been implemented. See the help for details.

Platform availability

Source and binary distribution

99NOVpl2.0 is also available in binary format for all supported platforms. Binary copies of MIDAS are already compiled and ready to run. Installation is reduced to just the tuning of some configuration files.

Source and binary copies of 99NOVpl2.0 are available in our anonymous ftp account:

Ftp host:	ftp://ftphost.hq.eso.org
Ftp account:	"ftp"
Ftp Password:	<your e-mail address>
Directory:	/midaspub/99NOV/sources (ESO-MIDAS sources) /midaspub/99NOV/intel_linux (PC/Linux 2.0.34) (1) /midaspub/99NOV/alpha_linux (Alpha/Linux 2.0.34) (1) /midaspub/99NOV/alpha_osf (Alpha/OSF1 4.0) /midaspub/99NOV/hp_ux (HP HP-UX A.10.10) /midaspub/99NOV/solaris (SUN Solaris 2.5.1) /midaspub/99NOV/ibm_aix (IBM/AIX 4.1 PowerPC)
Files:	README.<platform> 99NOVpl2.0.tar.Z

1. The binary of MIDAS for Linux was done in a RedHat 6.1 (Cartman) kernel 2.2.12-20, with gcc/g77 egcs-2.91.66, and LessTif 0.89.9 with 'g77' so the Fortran library is necessary and not anymore with the 'f2c' (fortran_to_C converter).

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)

MIDAS is distributed on all platforms with Graphical User Interfaces GUI using the Motif dynamic shared libraries, except for Linux where all GUIs were linked with LessTif and the library has been included in the binary distribution.

ESO-MIDAS Documentation

In particular cases printed copies and updates of documentation can also be obtained from ESO. If you absolutely need hardcopies of the documentation please contact the User Support Group at ESO/Munich.

ESO-MIDAS under the GNU General Public License

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. As a consequence of this distribution policy User Agreements between research institutes and ESO will not apply as of ESO-MIDAS release 95NOVpl2.0 and will not be prolongated when they expire.

A short statement if the GNU General Public License as included in all relevant ESO-MIDAS files and follows below. The full GNU License text is included in the ESO-MIDAS release as separate text file.

Copyright (C) 1995,1996,1997,1998,1999,2000 European Southern Observatory (ESO)

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 675 Massachusetss Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.

Correspondence concerning ESO-MIDAS should be addressed as follows:

Internet e-mail: midas@eso.org Postal address: European Southern Observatory Data Management Division - User Support Group Karl-Schwarzschild-Stra_e 2 D 85748 Garching bei Munchen GERMANY

ESO-MIDAS on a CD-ROM

The ESO-MIDAS CD-ROM will contain the release 99NOVplx.x and will include source code, binaries, documentation, and verification procedures. The complete list of what is on the CD-ROM is given below.

• ESO-MIDAS 99NOVplx.x sources
• ESO-MIDAS 99NOVplx.x binaries for: - Intel/Linux 2.2.12 or higher - Alpha/Linux 2.1.120 or higher - HP-UX 9000 A.10.20 - Sun/Solaris 2.6 - Alpha/OSF1 V4.0a
• Calibration data for all platforms above.
• Demo data for all platforms above.
• ESO-MIDAS 99NOVplx.x ready to run from CD-ROM on PC/Linux.
• ESO-MIDAS 99NOV documentation in: - Postscript format - HTML format
• Xephem 3.2.2 source and binaries for Intel Linux
• SkyCat 2.4.3. source and binaries for Intel Linux, HP and Solaris
• Guide Star Catalog (GSC)

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 ESO Education and Public Relations Department at ips@eso.org or use their Order Form.

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 adviced 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
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: Thu Jan 20 18:01:30 MET