[Spice_announce] New NAIF Toolkit is Available
Charles H. Acton
Charles.H.Acton at jpl.nasa.gov
Wed Mar 5 15:21:43 PST 2008
March 5 2008
Announcing the SPICE Version N62 Toolkit
Dear SPICE users--
The NAIF Team is pleased to announce the availability of the Version
N62 generic SPICE Toolkit. You can find the Toolkit packages for the
various programming "environments" supported by NAIF at the usual
location on the NAIF server:
http://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/naif/toolkit.html
Consistent with normal practice of NAIF, this Toolkit is backward
compatible with previous Toolkits, meaning you should be able to
re-link an application linked against an older Toolkit's libraries
with the new N62 Toolkit libraries without problems. Nevertheless we
suggest you be prudent and do a regression test before using the new
executable.
It is VERY IMPORTANT that you carefully read the "whats.new" file
available from the download area of the NAIF website and also
included in each Toolkit. This comprehensive list of all additions
identifies a number of changes and bug fixes that could affect your
program's operation or its numeric results. It also describes a
number of new high-level APIs (subroutines) that could be useful to
you.
The major addition to SPICE in N62 is the first official release of
"Mice"--the MATLAB interface to SPICE. Mice is available in four
environments:
Mac/Intel OS-X Apple C / MATLAB 7.x / 32bit
Mac/PowerPC OS-X Apple C / MATLAB 7.x / 32bit
PC Linux gCC / MATLAB 7.x / 32bit
PC Windows MS Visual C / MATLAB 7.x / 32bit
Also available as a new environment is:
PC Linux Intel FORTRAN
Several new high-level routines have been added in this Toolkit.
Support for new built-in ID-to-name mappings for a number of
spacecraft and natural bodies have been added, and IDs for some of
Jupiter's satellites have been revised consistent with changes made
by the IAU.
Some new Icy interface modules are provided.
Permuted indexes are now provided for Icy and Mice, in addition to
those for the FORTRAN and C Toolkits.
All Toolkit documents, including the source code headers, are now
hyperlinked; this feature alone could make acquiring the N62 Toolkit
worthwhile! The hyperlinked documentation is also available from the
NAIF website.
The Toolkit software has been extensively tested by NAIF *ONLY* in
the environments specifically called out on the NAIF web pages and in
the "whats.new" file. Experience has shown that code that works under
a particular platform/OS/compiler environment does not necessarily
work under a similar environment. You are advised to contact NAIF if
you are interested in porting the Toolkit to a non-supported
environment; in such a case we may or may not be able to assist you.
NAIF encourages you to upgrade to the N62 Toolkit--this will give you
new and better capabilities, better documentation, some (small)
accuracy improvements, and easier access to important documentation.
It will also make both your and our jobs easier if you run into
problems for which you need help from NAIF.
If you do decide to download and install one of the N62 packages be
sure to read the instructions provided in the "README" (text) file,
and review the contents and organization of your new Toolkit in the
"dscriptn.txt" file.
Feel free to forward this announcement to any of your colleagues who
might be interested but who might not be signed up for SPICE
announcements
(http://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/mailman/listinfo/spice_announce).
Getting Help from NAIF
Please read the support information provided on the NAIF website at:
http://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/naif/support.html
Rules on Use of SPICE
The rules pertinent to use of SPICE, including U.S. Export status,
may be found at:
http://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/naif/rules.html
Beyond N62
The NAIF Team's tentative plan for the subsequent Toolkit, N63, is to
release it in the Fall 2008 time frame, with the major addition being
the first official release of the geometric events finding subsystem
now under development, an outline of which is provided in the SPICE
tutorial named 45_event_finding_preview.
The following Toolkit, N64, would contain the first official release
of the new shape modeling subsystem, an outline of which is contained
in the SPICE tutorials named 44_shape_model_preview. Perhaps N64
would be released about one year from now.
Caution: with a small team of four, and with flight project support,
data archiving, and customer support taking priority, we cannot
commit to these dates.
Questions?
Should you have any questions please contact NAIF manager Charles
Acton or any member of the NAIF Team.
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