MEDM 3.0 is Released

[Ken Evans <evans@aps.anl.gov>]

     MEDM 3.0 has been released.  This is a major version change.
There are many new features, which have been released and tested over
the last year as MEDM 2.3.6 release candidates.  This version is
stable and has been in use in the APS control room during this period,
with bugs reported almost entirely in obscure or little-used
situations.  There have been no reported problems of any nature at the
APS in the last month or more.

     The new features include:

MEDM now supports GIF89a, including animated GIFs and the ability to
display a specific GIF frame based on a CALC expression involving up
to four process variables plus HOPR, LOPR, STATUS, SEVERITY, etc. for
the first process variable.  There is an EPICS Extension, Simple GIF
Animator (SGA), to help animate GIFs.

The Dynamic Attribute now uses a CALC expression involving up to four
process variables to determine visibility.  (This expression is like
the one for GIFs but returns True or False, not a frame number.)

The Composite has a Dynamic Attribute so that whole portions of the
display can be made to change or disappear, based on process
variables.

Drag and Drop puts the dragged process variables into the X selection,
so they can be easily pasted into most X applications, including
XTerms.

Site-specific customizations have been made easier through a
siteSpecific.h file.

The Strip Chart and Printing now have extensive configuration options.

MEDM supports three plot packages, XRT/Graph, Sciplot, and the
Jefferson Plotting Toolkit (JPT).  Sciplot comes with MEDM and is
free.  MEDM has been redesigned to make supporting additional packages
relatively easy.

     These are the highlights.  There are many more new features.  For
more information see the manual:

http://www.aps.anl.gov/asd/controls/epics/EpicsDocumentation/ExtensionsManuals/MEDM/MEDM.html

     MEDM remains a multi-featured, stable, GUI interface for EPICS.

     The EPICS Extensions MEDM, Probe, ALH, Namecapture, SGA,
HistTool, and ADT are available in an InstallShield installation for
WIN32.  See Bakul Banerjee (banerjee@aps.anl.gov) to get this package.


	-Ken