* PERMISSION IS HEREBY GRANTED FOR THE USE AND STUDY OF
* NCSA X DATASLICE.  THIS PROGRAM IS PUBLIC DOMAIN AND ABSOLUTELY FREE.
* THE AUTHOR AND THE NATIONAL CENTER FOR SUPERCOMPUTING APPLICATIONS
* DISCLAIMS ALL LIABILITIES THAT MAY DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY ARISE FROM
* THE USE OF THIS PROGRAM.

NCSA X DataSlice (V1.0) :
------------------------
Dated: 			9/1/89

1. Display of 2D planes along any cartesian axis/any arbitrary axes.
2. Changing of the orientation of the display of slices.
3. Up to 15 frames of automatic incremental planes may be tiled on a window.
4. The user may load in seq/hdf palette files for the raster display at
   any time.  The program automatically switches to the correct loading mode.
5. Fully synchronized selection between numeric and raster entries.
   Fully synchronized selection between all tiled rasters.
   Automatic scrolling of windows and scales to display highlighted entries.
6. All raster images may be interpolated.     
7. Multiple windows.
   Up to 10 display/frame/animation/view windows may be displayed for
   any SDS loaded into memory at any time.  Also, the user may load
   up to 10 SDSs simultaneously, but this is, of course, very dependent
   on the amount of memory the user have on hand.  When memory is no longer
   available, the program informs the user and refuses to load in any more
   data until some other windows are closed.
8. Arbitrary plane selection and display of oblique slices.
9. Saving of any of the generated raster images in HDF Raster8 format.
10. Animation of frames from memory with the option of saving all the
	frames generated in a single HDF Raster8 file format.
11. Animation of frames from a single HDF Raster8 file.
12. Dicing slices in the 3D data matrix.  Different palettes may be
    applied and shading of the cube slices can be changed.  The cube can
    be expanded by a cubic pixel expansion so that data points are seen
    as cubes of data rather than points.  The resulting image can be saved
    for redisplay or animation.
13. Volumetric rendering of the 3D data.  The current routine is a quick
	and dirty implementation of the V-Buffer that produces images between
	4 to 10 minutes on normal workstations.  The user can define a number
	of "substances" for displaying, and the resulting images are akin to
	"X-ray" pictures of the 3D data.  Again, palettes may be changed and
	images can be saved.


NCSA X DataSlice (V1.0.1) :
---------------------------
Dated:			10/15/89

Additional features:

1. Sub-volume dicing.
********************
To specify a subvolume of data in the 3D Cartesian Dicer, first select a
slab of data by clicking on one of the Axis Slicing Sliders (eg. the X-
slider).  The starting position of the slider is where you position your
pointer in the slider.  Now click on the slider handle and drag the handle
to a suitable thickness.  A thick slab slicing the data in the X-direction
should be outlined.  Then, then on the Dicer toggle.  Click somewhere on
the Y-Slider.  You will notice that the box is moved up or down (and clipped
when necessary).  To resize the thickness of the box in the Y-direction,
click and drag the Y-slider as before.  Finally, to adjust the box in the
Z-direction, do the same procedure as you did for the Y-Slider, this time
using the Z-Slider.  When you are satisfied with the position and dimensions
of the cube, click View to map the data.
To summarize, clicking on any of the slicing sliders will position the start
position of the box in the particular direction.  Clicking and dragging the
slider will change the thickness of the box in the specified direction.
If the Dicer toggle is off, then clicking on any slicing slider generates
a full cross-sectional slice of 1 plane thickness.  This plane may be
reshaped into a subvolume box by selecting the Dicer toggle.

2. Iso-surface rendering
************************
This feature is still very much incomplete.  It gives a wire framed surface
contouring of your dataset, corresponding to an iso-value that you input.
Currently, only 3 faces of the cube can be mapped, but in later versions,
the surfaces can be fully rotated and polygons colored with light sources
that you might specify.
The scale of the image is dependent on the Dicer Scale Dialog.

3. Use Pixmap Option
********************
For all forms of animation now, the user may now choose to either use
pixmaps or ximages for display.  Pixmaps are very fast, but are considered
'precious' resources built on the X-server's internal memory, and so are
limited to the amount of X-server memory you have on hand.  XImages are
much slower than pixmaps, but do not use up the server memory.  The default
is to use pixmaps.

4. Save separate Option
***********************
This option appears when saving generated animation sequences.  If you select
the option, the sequence will be saved in separate HDF raster8 files with a
4 digit number appended to the end of the file name you gave to the sequence.
This is used so that you may later transfer the HDF files over to a MacII and
use NCSA Image on them.  The default is to save the sequence in a single HDF file.


V1.0.1 bug fixes:
================
1. Sun's OpenWindows compatibility.
The program has been ported over to Sun's OpenWindows (X11/NeWS merge).  Fixes
have been made to the color visual calls and keyboard focus.

2. Visuals with depths that are not 8-planes.
The program has been fixed so that it runs on displays with less than or
more than 8 planes.  It will always try to obtain a 8-bit visual first (256
colors).  If it fails, it will use the default visual and scale the rasters
it generates to the number of colors present in the display.  StaticColor
displays may be used, but you will not be able to load in different colormaps.
The same applies to TrueColor displays.  GrayScale displays may also be used.
Monochrome displays will not allow proper image generation.

3. Animation controls' response.
The response time of the animation controls has been fixed so that it is
now almost immediate.

4. The ugly looking images generated on certain X-servers when the Cartesian
Dicer is used have been fixed so that they are displayed properly on all
servers.

5. Specifying a negative number in the plane increment dialog in the Planes
Along Axes tool will now cause animation sequences to be generated in the
reverse direction from the current plane, instead of crashing the program.

6. Animation speed control now works even for SysV machines.

7. The arbitrary display mode window no longer crashes when View is clicked
when a slice is not selected.

8. You no longer need a Fortran compiler to compile the HDF sources released
with XDataSlice.


NCSA X DataSlice (V1.1) :
------------------------
Dated: 			11/30/89

Additional features:

1. Iso-surface rendering
************************
This feature is left incomplete due to lack of time.  
It now gives a fully rendered surface contouring of a dataset,
corresponding to an iso-value that the input.
Currently, only 3 faces of the cube can be mapped, but in later versions,
the surfaces can be fully rotated.  The single light source is fixed at
position (1,1,1), but will be movable in later versions.
The scale of the image is dependent on the Dicer/Isosurface Scale Dialog.

2. Use Disk Option
******************
For all forms of animation now, the user may now choose to either use
memory or disk storage.  Disk storage animation is very much slower,
but is a better alternative when memory is premium or when generating
a large number of huge images.  The default is to use memory or pixmaps.
When generating images, to use the disk option, first turn on the Use
Disk toggle in the image generation control window and click Animate.
Now, a File Window will pop up in its usual position for you to select
or specify a file to store the images to be generated.  Click on Save
and the usual Animation window will appear as the animation images are
created.

3. Mouse control File Selection
*******************************
To change directories, the user now enter the directory name in the
Directory dialog in the File Window and press <Return> or <Enter> to
execute the change.  Alternatively, he or she may press the Up button
beside the Directory dialog to go back up the directory tree structure.
Or, the user can select a directory name in the File List and click on
the Down button to move into that subdirectory.  Please note that now,
file names of directories in the File List are postfixed by '/' and
file names of HDF files are postfixed by '*'.  This is to give the
user a visual feel of the contents of the working directory.

4. Depth profiling

5. Minimum and Maximum changes
