The DIANA Stuff

[Mauro Cavalcanti]

Dear Computer Taxonomists,

Hello...

Some months ago, I have announced my DIANA software shell for
editing files in DELTA format and running some of the DELTA
programs (CONFOR, KEY, DIST, INTKEY). I have distributed copies
of DIANA to several interested users (some of which have provided
very useful feedback, in the form of comments and criticisms),
and the program was subsequently made available by Gopher or
Anonymous FTP on the regular DELTA Internet hosts.

Several users have requested a Windows version, that should
hopefully overcomes or at least minimizes the memory limitations
of the DOS-based version. I then started working on a preliminary
version for Windows, using Borland's Turbo Pascal for Windows. A
crude skeleton of that version was already ready when Nicholas
Lander (nlander at wa.erin.gov.au) announced his own DELTA shell for
Windows (DMS), which does the same as DIANA (for DOS or Windows)
and has no memory limitations, besides being somewhat more
flexible than my virtual lady...

However, neither the DOS or Windows versions of DIANA, nor DMS
are really expert 'DELTA editors' in the same sense of Richard
Pankhurst's (rjp at castle.ed.ac.uk) DEDIT or Eric Gouda's
(gouda at cc.ruu.nl) TAXASOFT. I had already stressed that at some
point in the future, DIANA should metamorphose herself into such
an editor. Therefore, since the announcement of Lander's DMS, I
stopped the development of DIANA as a shell for DELTA (both as
DOS and Windows versions), and started transforming her in a
fully-featured DELTA editor - easy as TAXASOFT, colorful as
DEDIT, and hopefully more powerful and user-friendly than both...

The development of such an editor had first required the writing
of specialized routines for reading/writing ASCII files in DELTA
format. Since such code is not readily available, I realized that
it could also be useful to any taxonomist with programming
skills, if available in the form of a general purpose software
library, able to be used not only as a kernel for the development
of the DIANA editor, but for any other DELTA management program
too. Creating this library took me a lot of time - indeed, so
much time that I could not yet start the development of the DIANA
editor itself! But by using such a library, *any* interested user
could develop his/her own DELTA management software, to best suit
his/her own needs...

Now it is just finished, and I am pleased to announce the
availability of the first public-domain library of routines for
managing files in the DELTA format. The current version is still
in a preliminary stage, but already includes functions for
reading and parsing the CHARS, ITEMS, and SPECS DELTA files, as
well as for counting the number of characters and taxa in a
dataset, but does not yet includes routines for writing DELTA
files (what is by far *much* easier than reading them!!!). It is
built-up as a Turbo Pascal unit, amenable to be compiled under
DOS or Windows, and is available as *full source code* to any one
interested. While the library is not yet completed, I am
releasing it now to give interested users a chance of trying it
and *hopefully* providing some constructive feedback! I would
also like to hear of anyone that would like to translate them
into C and BASIC code. Currently, there is not much documentation
for the library, but the routines are commented and a sample
program (VIEW) that lists a characters or items DELTA file is
also distributed as an example of its use.

I encourage anyone interested in obtaining this software library
to contact me directly, at the e-mail/snail-mail address below.

PS: By the way, I am still interested in developing DIANA as a DELTA
editor, but this should proceed faster now that the necessary
routines are available...

Best regards,

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                       Prof. Mauro J. Cavalcanti
                     Departamento de Biologia Geral
                     Centro de Ciencias Biologicas
                       Universidade Santa Ursula
                  Rua Fernando Ferrari, 75 - Botafogo
                 22231-030, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, BRASIL
                   Phone: +55 (021) 551-5542 ext 151
               E-Mail: mauro.cavalcanti%hlbbs at ax.apc.org
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... Documentation - The worst part of programming.
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