Survex 0.97 prerelease 1 available

[Olly Betts]

I've uploaded the first prerelease of Survex 0.97.  Download links are on:

http://www.survex.com/

This prerelease is available in all platforms.  It represents a major step
towards 1.0, but the scope of some of the changes makes it likely that there
are a few new bugs to be shaken out.  So if you have some spare time, please
download it and try it out.

Perhaps the most notable changes in the version are that the MS Windows
version now has an installation wizard, and can print using the MS Windows
printer drivers (both thanks to Phil Underwood).

Additionally legs can now be marked as surface or underground (surface legs
are hidden by default in caverot and xcaverot, though not yet in aven).
Legs can also be marked as a duplicate survey.  Duplicate and surface legs
are excluded from survey length calculations.

Mark Shinwell has changed the Unix version of avento use the portable
wxWindows GUI library which we intend to use for spud - the transition isn't
quite complete, and a few things don't yet work (see BUGS file for details).

Also all the entries previously in the BUGS file and a substantial number of
entries in the TODO file have been addressed.

Full list of user-visible changes in 0.97-prerelease1:

* extend: fixed bug which result in bogus output (added regression test);
  produce binary rather than ASCII .3d output.

* cavern: don't report error stats for articulating traverses.

* (UNIX version): `make uninstall' now removes the HTML documentation.

* (UNIX version): printer drivers: Look for /etc/survex/print.ini rather
  than $SURVEXHOME/myprint.ini

* cavern: added warning that use of ROOT character ('\' by default) is
  deprecated; updated documentation to mention this.

* cavern: added *export command to allow scope of station names to be
  limited.  If *export is never used, behaviour is as before.

* cavern: added *flags command to allow surface surveys and duplicate
  surveys (to be ignored when calculating the total survey length) to be
  indicated.

* new version of 3d file format which can store flags and is slightly more
  compact.  NB New programs can load old .3d files, but old programs can't
  load new .3d files.

* caverot/xcaverot: allow surface legs to be hidden (they are by default)

* cavern: compass can be omitted on legs in diving data to indicate a plumbed
  leg.  In this case the tape and depth gauge readings are combined to give
  the length of the leg.

* cavern: *begin/*prefix reentry warning now gives the original location as
  a separate warning so smart editors will allow you to click on it to jump
  to that file and line.

* printer drivers: put "http://www.survex.com/" on printouts in case someone
  who gets a printout wants to know more about Survex.

* cavern: added easting, northing, altitude added as prefered aliases for
  dx, dy, dz.

* cavern: bug fix: "*prefix \" or "*begin \" would cause an internal error.

* xcaverot: "load" button now works; bearing always shown in range 0-360;
  / and ' now tilt cave; `u' and `d' now switch to view from above/below;
  shift-ed keys now work; `o' now turns off non-overlapping labels;
  `ctrl-L' toggles display of survey legs.

* caverot: n/s/e/w/u/d now work as in xcaverot - the previous functions they
  had weren't actually useful; if memory is really tight, disable
  non-overlapping labels rather than dying with an error.

* prefer balanced quotes (`...') to unbalanced ('...') in messages.

* cavern: file reading errors now treated as fatal; unattached survey error
  now fatal.

* survex: syntax errors in command line arguments now fatal.

* cavern: if there are errors, don't produce output files.

* cavern: bug fix: trying to report certain errors in really long lines could
  cause an internal error.

* 3dtodxf: renamed to cad3d since it can now produce DXF or sketch format.

* aven: rewritten to use wxwindows (under Unix only so far).

* printwin: new native Microsoft Windows printer driver.

* (MS Windows version): new installation wizard.

* Use double precision floating point to pass numbers to/from .3d file
  reading rotuines to avoid rounding problems.

* cavern: change of terminology - use "reading" instead of "datum",
  since datum more usually means a map datum in surveying.

Cheers,
Olly