new versions of XVista, ensemble software

[Michael Richmond <richmond@stupendous.cis.rit.edu>]

  Prompted by a course I'm teaching this quarter, I've
made a number of improvements to some of the software
used in the TASS pipeline.  There is a new version of
the XVista package of programs for image display and
analysis: version 0.1.6

        http://spiff.rit.edu/tass/xvista/

The major improvements over older versions are

       - works with 8-bit or 24-bit displays

       - reads and writes 16-bit integer FITS images properly
            on both little-endian (Intel) and
            big-endian (PowerPC) platforms
       
       - there is now a tutorial, with pictures 
            and examples of a few common tasks.  
            
  There is a major limitation which remains: this package
can't handle floating-point images.  If your images
are SIMPLE=T, BITPIX=16, you're out of luck.  Sorry.

  I also have made some minor fixes and improvements
to the "ensemble" programs, which take as input 
measurements of stars on a set of images and produce
as output light curves of all the stars.  You can find
this package at

       http://spiff.rit.edu/ensemble/

  If anyone is masochistic enough to try the code,
I'd be interested in feedback; no guarantees, of course,
but I would like to fix things that are obviously wrong.

                               Michael Richmond