Survex 0.99 prerelease 1 available

[Olly Betts]

This prerelease is available for all platforms except RISC OS and pre-386
DOS machines.  Download it from:

http://www.survex.com/

The Survex manual and other documentation has been given a major overhaul
and should be up-to-date now - please report and omission, inaccuracies, or
poorly documented features.  There's a lot of other new work in this
prerelease, especially in Aven, so have a good play with it and let us know
of any problems you find.

Full list of user-visible changes between 0.98 and
0.99-prerelease1:

* Major clean-up of Survex Manual; renamed from "svxdocs" to "manual".

* Text documentation converted to HTML; BUGS and TODO merged, ZOMBIES
  removed.

* Include HTML documentation overview page and manual in all versions
  (was only included in MS Windows before).

* aven: added new functionality: toolbar, side panel with survey tree,
  find station, measure distance between two stations, click on
  station to centre.

* aven: can now create presentations consisting of a set of views with
  movements between them.  Useful for using aven as a "slide show" in
  a conference talk.

* aven: handles loading file from command line better.

* cavern: added error checks for "*flags" (with no arguments) and
  "*flags not".

* cavern: you can now specify optional covariances to *FIX.

* cavern: parser fixed to recover from errors as intended in a few
  situations where it was failing to.

* cavern: implemented covariances for diving data.

* cavern: added "cylpolar" data style - similar to diving, except the
  tape is measured horizontally rather than along the slope of the leg.

* cavern: complain about *export-ing or *entrance-ing a station which
  is never used.

* cavern: complain about *export after a *begin without an argument.

* cavern: use *title only if at top of survey tree, else generate
  title from filename(s).

* cavern: removed dummy *lrud command which was added for tunnel but
  isn't used by tunnel.

* cavern: round coordinates to nearest cm when writing .3d file.

* cavern: fixed reporting of node stats for stations fixed with error
  estimates.

* cavern: no longer generate a .inf file - the .log file generated by
  the --log option makes the .inf file obsolete.

* cavern: only apply special pathname handling to filenames in
  *include, not those on the command line.

* cavern: *date now checks its argument.  It expects an ISO format date
  (e.g. 2001.09.13) or range (e.g. 2001.09.12-2001.09.13).  For cases
  where the exact date isn't know, the day and month can be omitted -
  e.g. 2001.09 and 2001 are also valid.

* cavern: --new-format renamed to --chasm-format.

* print*: If restricting to a subsurvey, use that survey name for the
  title of the printout.

* print*: Detect .3d files produced by extend and handle them more
  appropriately (don't ask for view or bearing, and modify info box
  on printout).

* print*: --skip-blanks now works on printwin/printpcl/printps;
  --skip-blanks now forces --no-border.

* printps: thinner lines by default (0.1 points rather than 0.5).

* printdm: added --calibrate option to print calibration page; if
  there's no calibration in the .ini file, refuse to print (apart
  from calibration pages) rather than printing to the wrong scale.

* printwin: removed --output option - there is no output file.

* extend: wasn't picking start station as documented - fixed and
  also enhanced to try to find an entrance with legs first.

* survex: conversion wrapper doesn't use --output unless it is actually
  needed, and displays corresponding cavern command line, and (if
  appropriate) file.

* cad3d: added --reduction option (from Leandro) which allows sketch
  output to be scaled down (default scale is 1:500); grid in sketch
  file is now visible by default; default output now goes in the
  current directory. 

* cad3d/3dtopos/sorterr: delete output file if there's an error
  writing to it.

* 3dtopos: minor improvements to sort order.

* hto2svx, svx2hto: Removed HTO support - Survex appears to be the
  only released software to ever have provided support, and an
  exchange format that nobody else supports is useless.

* xcaverot: report more detailed error when .3d file can't be loaded.

* `program --version' now works even if message file can't be found.

* (Unix version): Fixed attempt to load messages from
  "DEFAULTLANG.msg" if both SURVEX_LANG and LANG were unset.

* Much more rigorous checking for operating system errors when reading
  and writing files.

* (RISC OS version): query Territory module to find currently selected
  language, and use that for messages.

* (UNIX version): man pages now have "Survex <version number>" on them;
  fixed minor flaws in man pages.

* Distinguish between a "bad" .3d file and one which has a newer
  revision of the format than we understand.

* img library can now read .pos files as if they were .3d files with
  just stations in, so all programs which can read .3d files can also
  now read .pos files.

* Expanded testsuite further.

* French, Brazillian Portuguese, and German translations brought
  almost completely up-to-date.

* Lots of little improvements to debian packages (mostly from Wookey).

Cheers,
Olly