DIANA for Windows Pre-Announcement

[Mauro Jose Cavalcanti]

Dear Computer Taxonomists,

Greetings! This is to announce the first "official" release of
the DIANA for Windows DELTA shell. A formal posting will also
appear in this discussion list, giving instructions on how to
obtain the program by Anonymous FTP or Gopher. The purpose of
this message is to clear some points not properly covered in that
announcement nor in the program's documentation.

1) DIANA for Windows (as her counterpart for DOS, released last
year and also available at the same sites where you will find the
Windows version) is a FREE program - that is, it may be used,
copied, and distributed freely, provided that no price or fee is
charged for it. However, this version has some distribution
restrictions - please read carefully the program documentation
(contained in a Windows Write file and in a Windows
hypertext-based help file that can be called from within DIANA).

2) If you do not have access to FTP (or do not like it, because
of its slowness and frequent system crashes, as happens to occur
here!), I can send you a copy of the program by e-mail, in
UUENCODED format (123924 bytes in size). You should be able to
uudecode it in your local system. Upon requesting copies by
e-mail, please be sure to send me also you *complete* snail-mail
(postal) address, since I'm databasing all DIANA users (or
potential users).

3) The DIANA project is now supported by my Department, as well
as by the Laboratorio Nacional de Computacao Cientifica/CNPq (a
Brazilian governmental research organization), which is providing
funds for full Internet access and computer resources. So, I
would like to know of any applications of DIANA that get
published: I would also appreciate receiving a reprint of any
paper reporting work that used DIANA (as this can help to obtain
funding renewal to support work on this package and distribution
of it).

4) Text files edited in the current version of DIANA for Windows
still are limited to 64K (a limitation of the Borland Pascal
library editor, probably related to the small data segment size
used by BP programs). Unfortunately, I suspect that this problem
has no easy solution (the library editor should have to be
entirely replaced by something able to load text files of any
size - which is not a simple task!). My proposed solution to this
problem is just use the DIANA built-in editor for editing
more-or-less small data files (like those we use in teaching!),
as well as directives files (that usually are very small ones).
Working DELTA databases should be handled by a "real",
menu-oriented, DELTA Editor, several of which are just under
development, including some for the Windows operating environment
(keep looking at your mailbox!).

5) An experimental library of functions to read and write
"standard" DELTA files in Windows DLL format is already
available, but is not included in the DIANA for Windows
distribution package. The current version of this library (which
is written in Borland Pascal) should work with any language that
supports DLL calling, such as Borland Pascal/Turbo Pascal for
Windows, C/C++, and Visual Basic. I have been successful in
calling the library functions from within Borland Pascal and
Visual Basic programs. This "DELTA Library" is available directly
from me as an uuencoded self-extracting file (26654 bytes in
size).

6) Your help is much appreciated! I am always happy to hear
constructive criticisms and suggestions for features that ought
to be incorporated in the package.

7) Please note that I have now a new e-mail address
(maurobio at omega.lncc.br), to which all messages should be sent.

Best wishes,

   + - - - - - - - - - - - Prof. Mauro J. Cavalcanti - - - - - - - - - - - +
   | Departamento de Biologia Geral              Universidade Santa Ursula |
   | Rua Fernando Ferrari, 75, Botafogo      22231-040, Rio de Janeiro, RJ |
   | Phone: +55 (021) 551-5542 ext 151                              BRASIL |
   |                     Internet: maurobio at omega.lncc.br                  |
   + - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - +