December 31, 2009

Dear Colleague:

A new release (5.1.2) of the MB-System software package is 
now available via anonymous ftp.  

MB-System is a software package for Unix computing
environments consisting of programs which manipulate, process,
list, or display swath bathymetry and sidescan data.
MB-System is being developed at the Monterey Bay Aquarium
Research Institute (MBARI) and the Lamont-Doherty Earth
Observatory (L-DEO) of Columbia University with support from the
National Science Foundation and the Packard Foundation.

The 5.1.2 release is now the current version of MB-system, and 
replaces all previous releases. We recommend that all MB-System users
upgrade to 5.1.2. In particular, we will no longer provide 
support for problems encountered while using MB-System releases
prior to 5.1.2.

The current version of GMT is 4.5.1. MB-System release 5.1.2 requires 
installation of GMT 4.3.1 or later, and is easier to install in conjunction
with GMT 4.5.0 or later. We will not provide support for problems 
associated with the use of prior GMT releases.

If you identify a problem with this release, please provide us 
with a description of the problem, particulars of the installation 
(e.g. operating system and compile flags), and a data sample 
associated with the problem. We also ask that you post this 
information to the MB-System Discussion List rather than email 
us directly. The discussion list can be accessed at:
    http://listserver.mbari.org/sympa/info/mbsystem

We are continuing to actively develop MB-System, and so 
occasionally updates to the MB-System distribution will appear
in the MB-System ftp archive:
    ftp://ftp.ldeo.columbia.edu/pub/MB-System
and be announced on the MB-System web pages:
    http://www.mbari.org/data/mbsystem/
    http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/pi/MB-System/
Only major releases will be announced by email.

To obtain the compressed tarfile of the directory structure containing
the source code, do the following:
        % ftp ftp.ldeo.columbia.edu
        Name:  anonymous
        Password:  your_email_address
        ftp>  cd pub/MB-System
        ftp>  binary
        ftp>  get mbsystem-5.1.2.tar.gz
        ftp>  quit

Users may also obtain "point-and-click" access to the MB-System
source distribution at:
        ftp://ftp.ldeo.columbia.edu/pub/MB-System/

To uncompress and extract the mbsystem distribution do:
        % gunzip MB-System.5.1.2.tar.gz
        % tar xvf MB-System.5.1.2.tar

Alternatively, most recent versions of tar support a single step extraction:
        % tar xvzf MB-System.5.1.2.tar.gz

Information and installation instructions are found in the files
mbsystem/README and mbsystem/install_makefiles.

Note again that we prefer to be contacted through the MB-System 
discussion email list (mbsystem@mbari.org).

Cheers,

Dave Caress and Dale Chayes

David W. Caress (caress@mbari.org)
Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute
7700 Sandholdt Road
Moss Landing, CA 95039

Dale N. Chayes (dale@ldeo.columbia.edu)
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University
Rte 9W
Palisades, NY 10964

------------------------------------------------------------------------