Subject: FITSIO V4.0

From: William Pence <pence at tetra.gsfc.nasa.gov>
Date: Mon, 26 Jun 1995 15:14:57 -0400

Version 4.0 of FITSIO is Now Available 
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                          26 June 1995

The new V4.0 release of the FITSIO software, which provides a
machine-independent subroutine interface for reading or writing FITS
data files from Fortran or C programs, is now publicly available.  It
can be obtained on the WWW at URL:

    http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/software/fitsio/fitsio.html

or via anonymous ftp from:

    legacy.gsfc.nasa.gov in the /software/fitsio directory.

New features in this major new release of FITSIO include:

   o Subroutines to insert or delete columns in an existing FITS table.
     These complement the previously available routines to insert
     or delete rows in a table to provide a full set of table
     edit functions.

   o Subroutines to insert or delete FITS extensions within
     an existing FITS file.

   o New subroutines to better support the CHECKSUM keyword proposal.

   o Removed internal restrictions so that FITSIO can now read or
     write FITS tables with up to the maximum of 999 columns.

   o Raised the limit on the maximum number of FITS files that may
     be opened simultaneously from 12 to 20, and raised the limit
     on the maximum number of extensions in a single file from
     128 to 200.

   o Completely rewrote the internal memory management algorithms
     to reduce the needed amount of computer memory and improve
     data processing speed.

   o Improved the FITSIO User's Guide to give more explicit instructions
     for building and testing the FITSIO library on a wide variety
     of platforms.  The Makefile procedures have been greatly simplified.

   o New ports to NeXT, Silicon Graphics, and Linux (on IBM PCs) 
     are provided.

   o Dozens of other small enhancements and bug fixes have been
     incorporated.

FITSIO was developed at the High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive
Research Center (HEASARC) at NASA/GSFC.  Please address any questions or 
comments about this software to William Pence at pence at tetra.gsfc.nasa.gov.