Software Modifications

The MIDAS release 94NOV is the 9th official release of portable MIDAS. A number of new applications have been added to this version. Given below is a overview of the changes and improvements compared with the previous release:

1. Readline: a new line editor from GNU only on UNIX systems. It enhances the line editing capabilities of MIDAS, like a history stack of commands, Emacs or Vi editing functions, command and filename completion functions, and a communication channel to the MIDAS GUI Xhelp for a help-on-line function
2. INTAPE/FITS with data decompression on-the-fly only on UNIX systems. Compressed FITS data, by default those with extensions .z and .Z, are decompressed automatically on-the-fly (pipeline) when accessed.
3. The generic-tape driver. Based in the semi-standard MTIO system interface to tapes, this new driver handles most of the tape devices without any other particular configuration than the system device-name.
4. A new client/server model for access to remote tapes with machine-independent data structures.
5. A refurbishment of the graphics software that resulted in notable improvements in performance. Graphical representation of three dimensional tables is now also supported.
6. Graphical user interfaces for the Data Organizer context (DO) and for the context IRSPEC.
7. A upgrade of the CCD context which now also include test procedures for monitoring the quality of the detectors by a series of standard tests.
8. A new astrometry package called ASTROMET has been included.

For a more complete list of all updates/additions use the MIDAS command HELP [NEWS] after having installed this release. A hardcopy of it can be obtained via PRINT/HELP [NEWS].