Subject: JGOFS Software Release 1.5 

The U.S. GLOBEC Georges Bank Program uses the JGOFS software to
serve our diverse data sets via the World Wide Web.  This is the
same software used by the U.S. JGOFS Program to serve their data.
Chris Hammond, my counterpart at the JGOFS program; Glenn Flierl,
one of the original developers of the JGOFS software; Warren Sass, a
programmer at WHOI; and myself have been working on enhancements to
the JGOFS software for several months.  The results of these efforts
will soon be available in the form of a new release, Version 1.5, of
the JGOFS software.

The enhancements made in Version 1.5 include:

	-a new look to the directory of data objects, including
	a Help button, listing of the objects before the directory
	structure, and a pointer to where you are in the directory
	
	-the ability for data and field names to "line up" when
	displayed on your browser.  This "width sensitive" feature
	is available in all standard methods (def, nm, and lm).
	To take advantage of this feature, the field attribute 
	[width=nn] can be added to the field names within your
	objects, where nn is the maximum size of the data value, 
	in bytes.
	
	Alternatively, the width of each column can be extended by
	adding an appropriate number of underscores to the field
	names.  These are stripped off by the software, after they
	are counted to determine the field width attribute.  For
	example:
		field name:  cast
		can be extended to a field width of 6 by either 
			of the following:
		   cast__
		   cast[width=6]
		   
	-improved error message reporting
	
	-fast plotting and data display using a faster computer
	to do these tasks
	
	-ability for URL's (i.e. clickable links) to appear within
	the data comments 
	
Several programming bugs are also being addressed in this new
release, including better sensing of non-numerical data within a
data value and improved handling to data buffers to minimize the
rist of "buffer overflows."

While everyone who browses and accesses the data will see the
improvements in the look of the directory, it is only those sites
who are serving data that need to "do anything" about this release.
Once the new release is available, in about two weeks, access the
install software page at

	http://puddle.mit.edu/jgofs-dir/install.html 
	
and follow the instructions on this page.  You should know that all
your existing methods will continue to work as is with this new
release, but before you recompile any of your methods with the new
software, you need to make some changes to your code.  Contact the
Data Management Office (DMO) for instructions and help when you are
ready to recompile and relink your own methods.

A few data serving sites that take advantage of the local "info"
feature, will also need to run a utility to convert the contents of
their descript.html files into .info files, one for each object
name.  If you need this script, please contact the DMO.

We plan to prepare new releases of the JGOFS software, approximately
every four months.  In addition to futher improvements in the
methods, we also plan to enhance the data analysis and display
functionality in upcoming releases, based on your feedback and
suggestions.

So, if you use data served by the JGOFS software you should see
several improvements on how it looks and performs.  If you serve
data to others via this software, you need to get the new software
release and install it on your system.  As always, I am available to
help you with the installation process.  Please contact me when you
are ready to install the new software.




Internal Notes for upgrade

1. Add text and/or button to otheropt to point to help for Matlab
and math transform options

  http://globec.whoi.edu/globec-dir/matlab-downloading-help.html
  
  http://globec.whoi.edu/globec-dir/mathematical-transformations-help.html

2. Change Help button in dir to point to my ../globec-dir/dir-help.html