MIDASPLUS SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT

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MidasPlus continues to be the main software package distributed by the Computer Graphics Laboratory. In late 1997 MidasPlus 2.1 was released. The World Wide Web (WWW) documentation has again been expanded to include release notes, frequently asked questions, and bug fixes and workarounds. As always, we continue to provide assistance to MidasPlus licensees, both over the telephone and electronically. The semi-automated testing scripts developed for MidasPlus 2.1 identified a number of inconsistencies among the platforms (Digital Unix, Silicon Graphics IRIX, NEXTSTEP, IBM AIX and Linux). The time required to resolving these inconsistencies was longer than expected and resulted in the relatively late release of a more reliable version of MidasPlus. Although MidasPlus is not officially supported, MidasPlus licensees can report problems either via telephone or to the midas-bugs electronic mailing list. Generally these problems may be solved without modification of software; occasionally, however, new versions of programs are made available via ftp to fix bugs that have no easy workarounds. A prototype molecular modeling collaboratory (software for collaboration at a distance) was developed using MidasPlus delegates. The prototype was demonstrated at Netamorphosis in Washington, D.C. in early March. Netamorphosis was billed as ``a demonstration of advanced networking technologies and applications enhanced by the Clinton Administration's Next Federal Computing, Information, and Communications (CIC) R&D programs,'' and ``[i]n cooperation with Highway 1 and the High Performance Computing and Communications Consortium, representatives from the White House, seven Federal agencies, academia, and industry showed members of Congress how further development of Internet technologies will lead to advancements in health care, the environment, manufacturing, defense, and education.'' The prototype collaboratory was also shown at our advisory committee meeting in mid-March.