**** ENVISION 1.1 RELEASE ANNOUNCEMENT ****
We are pleased to announce that Envision version 1.1 is now available
by anonymous FTP. This release is a major update of Envision version
1.0 previously released last October.
New Features in Envision v1.1
-----------------------------
1. IDL: new visualizations for 3-D perspective wire-mesh surface and
georeferenced contour plots with continental outlines, latitude-
longitude lines, and shaded contour fill. 1D and 2D Contour displays
also have more options than before.
2. NCSA Tools: the NCSA visualization tool XDataSlice is now linked
into Envision. XDS is a 3-D slicer/dicer program. The options
interface for Collage has been changed to allow XDS and Collage to be
controlled from the same window simultaneously. XImage is no longer
supported in Envision, since Collage has now completely replaced it.
3. File Creation: Envision can create arbitrary HDF data files from
any subset of a project. The user selects any number of variables
(which may span multiple files) and can write these to a new file.
Dimension ranges for these variables may be selected in a new
interactive window to put sub-ranges of the data sets into the new
file.
4. Attributes: netCDF/HDF attributes may be created, edited, or
deleted. Attributes are used to describe dimensions, variables, and
files, and have a name and values (often a string). Coordinate values
for dimensions (i.e. scales) can also be changed.
5. File Updating: Data files may be updated with metadata changes
made in the Envision interface.
6. Object Restoring: in Envision, data objects (dimensions,
variables, and attributes) which are deleted in the user interface are
not actually removed from the data files from where they are stored
(unless the file is updated). There are now options to restore these
deleted objects (essentially an "undo" operation).
7. IDL now works with Envision on SGI workstations running IRIX 5.1
or later.
8. Context-sensitive online help is now available for most interface
options. The help system uses NCSA Mosaic and provides interactive
access to the Envision User's Guide and links to other hypermedia
documents across the Internet.
What is Envision?
-----------------
Envision is an interactive system for the management and visualization
of large scientific data sets. It runs on UNIX workstations under
X/Motif, manages data stored in netCDF and HDF files, and does
visualization using NCSA Collage, NCSA XDataSlice, and IDL.
Who is developing Envision
--------------------------
Envision is being jointly developed at the Department of Atmospheric
Sciences at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the
Department of Meteorology at Texas A&M University. Funding for this
project is from NASA's Applied Information Systems Research Program.
The principal investigators for the Envision project are Ken Bowman
(TAMU), John Walsh (U of I), and Bob Wilhelmson (U of I/NCSA).
Envision was written by Keith Searight (U of I), David Wojtowicz (U of
I), and Sridhar Pathi (TAMU), with minor contributions by Ken Bowman.
How to get Envision
-------------------
Envision is public domain software and is available by anonymous FTP.
The primary ftp site for Envision is vista.atmos.uiuc.edu in
pub/envision. A secondary FTP site is csrp.tamu.edu. Included in the
release are binaries for IBM RS6000, HP, Sun, and SGI, as well as
source and make files. Complete documentation, sample data, and
binaries to generate Envision project files for the sample data are
provided. If you get Envision, we request that you report any bugs
you find to envision@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx. We also welcome your
suggestions for making Envision more useful to you.
Envision on the World Wide Web
------------------------------
The Envision Home Page has URL:
http://www.atmos.uiuc.edu/envision/envision.html
PLEASE NOTE: This is a brand new URL and it replaces all previous URLs
for Envision-related WWW documents. If you have an old link to the
Envision Home Page, this is a good time to update it!
The Envision Home Page has:
(1) connections to text and graphics about the Envision
project and what the software does.
(2) links to hypermedia versions of recent Envision papers and
a hypermedia presentation on Envision made at the American
Meteorological Society / Interactive Information and Processing
Systems meeting, Nashville, Jan. 1994.
(3) links to hypermedia pages for other software packages used
with Envision including HDF, netCDF, Collage, XDataSlice, and IDL.
(4) a connection to the new hypertext Envision User's Guide
Envision Tutorial - Coming Soon!
--------------------------------
An online tutorial for Envision is under construction. The tutorial
will step you through examples illustrating the use of Envision to
manage and visualize scientific data sets. It will contain text and
graphical window captures viewable with Mosaic or other WWW browsers.
Watch for it on the WWW Envision Home Page and/or our anonymous FTP
servers.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Keith Searight, Research Programmer k-searight@xxxxxxxx
Univ. of Illinois, Atmospheric Sciences Dept. Ph. (217) 333-8132
105 S. Gregory St., Urbana, IL 61801 Fax (217) 244-4393
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
