HEASOFT 5.2 Released

[Bryan Irby <irby@zambi.gsfc.nasa.gov>]

***************************************************************
*     THE LABORATORY FOR HIGH ENERGY ASTROPHYSICS (LHEA)      *
*         AT THE GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER (GSFC)           *
*           IS PLEASED TO ANNOUNCE THE RELEASE OF:            *
*                                                             *
*                   HEASOFT VERSION 5.2                       *
*                                                             *
*          AN INTEGRATED SOFTWARE SUITE CONSISTING            *
*               OF FTOOLS/FV, XANADU AND XSTAR                *
***************************************************************

Greetings -

The HEASOFT 5.2 software suite, which contains FTOOLS 5.2/FV 3.1,
XANADU 5.2 (consists of XIMAGE 4.1, XRONOS 5.19, XSPEC 11.2)
and XSTAR 2.1h has been released.  New in this release is support
for the Macintosh OS X platform.

For more information about this release, please see:
====================================================

  http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/ftools
  http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/xanadu
  http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/xstar/xstar.html

There are links from these web pages to the download web page
listed below.

To download the release from LHEA, please see:
==============================================

  http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/lheasoft

The release gzipped tarfiles are also available via anonymous
FTP from:

  ftp://legacy.gsfc.nasa.gov/software/lheasoft/release

Mirror Sites:
=============

The same release files will be available soon from our mirror sites
in England:

  http://ledas-www.star.le.ac.uk/lheasoft/

and in Japan:

  http://heasoft.astro.isas.ac.jp/lheasoft/


NOTE FOR MS WINDOWS 95/98/NT/2000 AND MACINTOSH (OTHER THAN OS X)
USERS: A full version of HEASOFT 5.2 is *not* available for these
platforms.  The FV 3.1 standalone release *is* supported both for
the Macintosh, and for the MS Windows family of operating systems.
See:

  http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/software/ftools/fv

for more information and to download FV 3.1 standalone.

Both source and binary distributions are available for all supported
Unix platforms.  For detailed installation information, see the files
INSTALL.BINARY and INSTALL.SOURCE, available by anonymous ftp at:

  ftp://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/software/lheasoft/release/INSTALL.BINARY
  ftp://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/software/lheasoft/release/INSTALL.SOURCE

or online at:

  http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/software/lheasoft/install_bin.html (BINARY)
  http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/software/lheasoft/install_src.html (SOURCE)

For further details on new features in HEASOFT 5.2, please see the 
release notes, available by anonymous ftp at:

  ftp://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/software/lheasoft/release/Release_Notes_5.2

or online at:

  http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/software/lheasoft/RelNotes_520.html

Problems with FTP?
==================

Some users whose machines are located behind a firewall have
reported difficulties connecting to our (or any other) ftp server.
To work around this problem, modify the above URLs by replacing
the 'ftp://' with 'http://', and insert '/FTP' just after 'nasa.gov'.
For example, change

  ftp://legacy.gsfc.nasa.gov/software/lheasoft/release

to

  http://legacy.gsfc.nasa.gov/FTP/software/lheasoft/release


Notices of future HEASOFT Releases
===================================

Notices of HEASOFT releases, patches, and other bits of
important information can also be obtained by an electronic mail
exploder. The list is called ftoolsnotes. Users can add their names
to this list by sending a message to:

                listserv@athena.gsfc.nasa.gov

requesting this action. This message should be sent from the
account and host on which the user would like to receive the
notices. Leave the subject blank and include in the body of the
request the following:

                 subscribe ftoolsnotes name

where "name" is replaced by the actual name.

Bug Reports
===========

Problems installing or using FTOOLS 5.2 or FV 3.1 should be
reported to:

                ftoolshelp@athena.gsfc.nasa.gov

Problems installing or using XANADU 5.2 (includes XIMAGE 4.1,
XRONOS 5.19 and XSPEC 11.2) should be reported to:

                xanprob@athena.gsfc.nasa.gov

Problems installing or using XSTAR 2.1h should be reported to:

                xstarhelp@athena.gsfc.nasa.gov