FTOOLS v4.2 Release

[William Pence]

************* FTOOLS RELEASE 4.2 READY ***********************

A new release of the FTOOLS software package is now publicly available. 
FTOOLS is a package of about 300 data analysis programs and Perl and Tcl
scripts that operate on FITS format data files (and now also on IRAF format
image files).  Some of these tasks are very general and may be used on any
FITS format file while others are specific to various high-energy
astrophysics misssions supported by the HEASARC.  This software can be
obtained from:

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

or via anonymous FTP from:

  legacy.gsfc.nasa.gov/software/ftools/release/FTools_4.2/

or (in Europe) from the LEDAS mirror site:

  www.star.le.ac.uk

or (in Asia) via anonymous FTP from:

  vega.bac.pku.edu.cn

PLEASE NOTE: The Chinese mirror site in particular may take sometime before
it can be updated.

As was true of Ftools 4.1, both source and binary distributions
are available for all supported Unix platforms. See the files
INSTALL.BINARY, INSTALL.GUIS and INSTALL.SOURCE, for detailed
installation information.

Highlights of What's NEW in FTOOLS 4.2:
=======================================

1) A binary distribution of FTOOLS 4.2 is now available for
MS Windows NT/95/98.  A Windows version of FTOOLS on CDROM
should be available in January.

2) Changes have been made to the directory structure, and
corresponding changes were made to the installation procedure. Please
make sure to read and follow the instructions in the installation
guides.

3) The following is a list and brief description of some of the more general
new features in FTOOLS v4.2. For more detailed information, as
well as some discussion of changes to preexisting tools, please see the
Release_notes_4.2 file.

CFITSIO/FITSIO
==============
    Many  new features were added, including support for
    handling files over the internet and filtering of files at
    run time.  All the ftools tasks automatically inherit these
    new CFITSIO capabilitities.

FV
==
    New features include improvements to plotting and graphing
    routines. A standalone release of FV is also available which
    will work independently of the Ftools.

FUTILS
======
    New tools include:

     cphead -- Copy keywords from an HDU of an input file to an HDU of an
               output file.

    fcollen -- Modify the vector length of a column in a binary table
               extension of a fits file.

      fcopy -- Copy the contents of a FITS file to a new file (for use with
               new command-line filtering).

      fdiff -- Display differences between pairs of fits file.

   xfverify -- Verify that a FITS file conforms to the FITS Standard.
               (This is a faster, more capable replacement for fverify.)
    

Notices of FTOOLS Releases
==========================

Notices of the FTOOLS Releases, online HTML versions of FTOOLS
documentation (like this document), the official FAQ, and other
goodies are available on the World Wide Web at:

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

This is where the most up to date FTOOLS information is available,
including a frequently updated FAQ. For fastest help, users are
encouraged to check here first for answers to questions.

Notices of FTOOLS Releases, patches, and other bits of
important information can also be obtained by an electronic mail
exploder. The list is called ftoolsnotes. If you would like to have
your name added, send a message to:

                listserv at athena.gsfc.nasa.gov

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

                 subscribe ftoolsnotes name

where "name" is replaced by your actual name.

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

Any problems installing or using FTOOLS should be reported to:

                ftoolshelp at athena.gsfc.nasa.gov