<!doctype html public "-//W3C//DTD W3 HTML//EN">
<html><head><style type="text/css"><!--
blockquote, dl, ul, ol, li { padding-top: 0 ; padding-bottom: 0 }
--></style><title>Looking for Beta-testers</title></head><body>
<div>Dear SPICE Users--</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>For quite some time NAIF has been hard at work on a substantial
new capability--what we sometimes call the "event finding
subsystem," or "the geometry finder." Whatever
the name, it will provide a mechanism to find the times, or time
spans, when a user-selected geometric condition (e.g. transit,
occultation) is "true", or when a selected geometric
parameter is within some range (e.g. 15 < phase angle < 30).
And still more.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>An overview of the planned system is available in one of our
tutorials: "45_event_finding_preview", located
at<font face="Lucida Grande" color="#000000">
http://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/naif/tutorials.html</font>.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>It will take a bit more time to get enough of this new subsystem
built and sufficiently tested to offer it for trial use by anyone who
cares to be a "beta-tester." But in preparation for that
trial period NAIF needs to determine in which languages the software
must be offered for beta-testing. Our initial--and current--plan is to
offer it only in ANSI FORTRAN 77 and ANSI C, thus minimizing the
amount of code that will have to be changed in response to user
comments, and also minimizing the amount of time between now and when
we are ready to pass out the beta-test code.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>However, it is possible that some or many of you interested in
and willing to be beta-testers would do so only if the code were
available as "Icy" wrappers (IDL), or as "Mice"
wrappers (MATLAB).</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>So my question to you is this: as of now who of you
envision participating in the beta-test activity, and in what
language(s) would you require the code to be for your
participation?</div>
<div><br></div>
<div> FORTRAN 77</div>
<div><br></div>
<div> C</div>
<div><br></div>
<div> IDL</div>
<div><br></div>
<div> MATLAB</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Please "check off" all that apply and send your reply
back to me. We'll make our plans according to the feedback we
receive. <font color="#0000FF"> Please reply no later than
January 18th.</font></div>
<div><br></div>
<div>While we cannot yet commit to a particular beta-test time frame,
possibly something like the following schedule would be used:</div>
<div><br></div>
<div> April 1: start beta-test period</div>
<div> June 1: end beta-test period</div>
<div> Aug. 1: next Toolkit release, containing the
new event-finding code</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Thanks in advance for your interest. (We know everyone is busy...
that's wonderful...so don't feel bad if you can't participate, or if
you're just not interested in this part of SPICE.)</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Best regards,</div>
<div>Chuck Acton (on behalf of the NAIF team)</div>
</body>
</html>