A new version of APS2

["Charles Day, ASCA GOF, NASA GSFC" <DAY@heagip.gsfc.nasa.gov>]

Attention APS2 Users:

There is a new version of APS2 (Asca Proposal Submission software for
AO-2) available via anonymous FTP.  In addition to fixing the bugs
mentioned in my previous email, it also fixes the following:

 o For suns and decstations: In the old version, when you submit the
   proposal, part of the subject line was placed in the distribution
   list, so you will get error messages about unknown users.  The
   proposal does get submitted to the correct account but with only
   the first word of the title in the subject line.  The new version
   of the software fixes this.  If you prefer not to get the new
   version, you can email the *.POST file to:

   asca@rosat.gsfc.nasa.gov

   Please put the proposal title in the subject line.  Thank you
   David Buote for reporting this bug.

 o Also for suns and decstations:  If you try to create a proposal
   and give it the name of a proposal that already exists in your
   working directory, APS2 will not notify you of this and will seem to
   create a new proposal.  HOWEVER, it saves the original proposal
   and not the one it just "created."  This is fixed in the new version
   - if you try to create a proposal that already exists, APS2 will
   specifically ask if you want to delete the old one before continuing
   on. Thank you Craig Sarazin for finding this one.

 o For Vaxes:  The APS2.COM file has a small error - it tries to run
   an executable named APS instead of APS2.  You can either edit your
   APS2.COM file, rename your executable or get the new version. Thank
   you Laura Whitlock for reporting this bug.


One final important note for those of you who may try to do this: APS2
is NOT backwards-compatible with the AO-1 proposal files. The reason
is that the AO-2 forms are different from AO-1 (i.e., some fields on the
target form were removed, etc). So this means you cannot simply read
your old AO-1 proposal files into APS2 and generate an AO-2 proposal.
If you try this, you will get errors.  You can recover your abstract by
renaming the abstract file to have the new proposal name and you can
recover part of the cover page by specifying your AO-1 proposal for the
cover default (the fields will be fine up to the zip code).  I apologize
for the inconvenience.

Please report any bugs that you find.

Thank you for your patience,
Margo Duesterhaus
Proposal Manager
duesterhaus@lheavx.gsfc.nasa.gov