Subject: FITSIO V3.401 is available

From: pence at tetra.gsfc.nasa.gov (William Pence)
Date: Mon, 23 Aug 93 12:12:58 EDT

FITSIO - Version 3.401
                           23 August 1993

A new release of the FITSIO subroutine library, version 3.401, is now
available.  This new version contains a number of significant new
features as described below.  This new version is upwardly compatible
with the previous versions, therefore all existing programs which use
FITSIO should still work without any modification.

For those unfamiliar with FITSIO, it is a full-featured yet simple to use
Fortran subroutine interface for reading and writing files in FITS
format.  It runs on most common types of computers and supports FITS
ASCII tables, binary tables, and image extensions as well as simple
primary array FITS files.

The FITSIO software, documentation, and example programs can be obtained via
anonymous ftp from (note the new address compared to previous releases):

        legacy.gsfc.nasa.gov   (128.183.8.233)

Type the following commands from the ftp prompt to copy any desired files:

        ftp>  user anonymous
        Password:                 [type your username as a password]
        ftp>  cd software/fitsio  [to move to the fitsio subdirectory]
        ftp>  ls                  [to see a list of the available files]
        ftp>  get README          [contains latest information about FITSIO]
        ftp>  get fitsio.doc      [complete user documentation]
        ftp>  get fitsio.tex      [Latex version of the documentation]
        ftp>  get ...             [get any additional desired files]
                                  [  Be sure to switch to binary mode in ftp ]
                                  [  when getting the .tar files or the  ]
                                  [  FITS format files.  ]
        ftp>  quit

A brief summary of the the more important changes introduced with this
release are described below.  For more details on the changes made to
this version, see the 'release.doc' file in the FITSIO distribution
directory.

  NEW PORTS:
     - fitsio is now supported on IBM AIX operating systems and
       DEC Alpha OSF/1 and Alpha OpenVMS machines.

  NEW SUBROUTINES:
     - to modify the name of an existing keyword in a FITS header
     - to return the number of the current header-data-unit which is open
     - to read or write keyword values in 'triple precision' F28.16 format
     - to insert a new keyword at a specified location in a FITS header
     - to read a subset of a multidimensional primary array or subset of 
       an N-dimensional vector array column in a binary table.  

  ENHANCEMENTS:

  - the subroutines to write COMMENT or HISTORY keywords were enhanced
    to automatically write multiple keywords if the input string is
    longer than 70 characters.

  - Implemented a local convention for reading and writing character
    string keywords which are too long to fit in a single
    keyword record.  The long keyword values are continued over multiple 
    comment keywords.

  - enhanced the TEST1.FOR and TEST2.FOR programs to perform a
    more extensive test of the FITSIO interface functionality.

  - several efficiency improvements have been implemented

  - added error checking to detect attempts to move to an illegal HDU
    number, (either negative, or greater than the internal buffer size).

  - expanded the documentation in fitsio.doc, including a new section
    on suggestions for optimizing the I/O performance of FITSIO programs.

  - 12 reported bugs were fixed.  These problems were relatively
    obscure and should not have affected many users.  

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. William Pence      
HEASARC  (High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center)
Code 668                         
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center        Internet:  pence at tetra.gsfc.nasa.gov
Greenbelt, MD 20771                     SPAN:      LHEAVX::PENCE
                                        Telephone:  (301)286-4599