Hi all,

It's quite a while since my last update, so had thought it best to get
one out and keep everyone informed.  A core group of xmds developers
have started discussing the structure of xmds-2.  That being the case,
xmds-1.x will continue to be developed to add more features to xmds
itself (and these will eventually appear in xmds-2, but that is a long
way away yet).  Here is a summary of what's been happening recently:

xmds-1.2:
- xmds-1.2 is to be released soon.  We aren't adding any more features
  for this release (however there is a growing list for xmds-1.3) and
  are currently stomping on as many bugs as possible.

autoconf stuff:
- configuration has been worked on extensively, and some issues are
  still being worked out.  I have been able to get xmds to configure,
  compile, install and generate simulations (that run!) on these
  platforms so far:
	   - Linux RedHat
	   - Linux Debian
	   - Linux Gentoo (x86, ppc)
	   - FreeBSD (w/o mpi, since lam doesn't want to compile on
	     FreeBSD for some reason
	   - Alpha True64 (on the supercomputer!)
  so we're getting there (slowly, but hey).

simuation command line arguments:
- the simulation command line argument syntax has changed.  It now
  looks like:
  
  
	
		 nconst 
		 int 
		 2 
	
  

  You can put in ints, floats, doubles (but not complexes),
  char*'s etc.  Each different argument is specified in its own 
  tags and it has to have the ,  and 
  tags.  The name specified in the  tag is the long version of
  the name at the command line, so one can use

  some_simulation_name --nconst 4

  to specify that nconst should be 4.  It is also possible to use
  short names such as 

  some_simulation_name -n 4

  but if there exists more than one argument starting with n then only
  one of them will take that short argument.  For a list of short
  arguments use

  some_simulation_name --help

  and this will print out the usage of the simulation and the
  arguments it expects, the type of the arguments and their default
  values if you don't specify them.

xmds.org:
- the web site has been updated a bit further and some people (after I
  hassled them enough) have sent me some scripts to put into the
  script repository.  If you have any xmds scripts, could you send
  them to me at cochrane@physics.uq.edu.au with a brief description of
  what the script is supposed to do.

xmds examples:
- I've added some more example xmds scripts to the examples
  directory.  Have a look and see if they do the right thing for you
  (they do for me, but it helps to check!).

testing, testing, 1-2-3:
- I've been doing a lot of testing of configuration and xmds itself on
  sourceforge.net compile farm and various other places.  I've also
  had a lot of help and feedback from Joe Hope (thanks heaps Joe!),
  but basically none from anyone else!  Where are you all?  Please
  USE the thing, that way we can make it do more and fix stuff that
  may be broken, and eventually we all end up with a better tool.

I think that's it for the moment.  Happy xmds-ing!

Later

Paul