The first one to unsubscribe ?

[Kristian Nielsen]

> Hi Kristian,
> 
> I don't know if you keep a watchful eye on your mailing list ? If you
> do you may be insulted to see that

I do (the system sends me an e-mail). I did see your new address being
added to the list, but I never saw the old one being removed, and in
fact pha70 at cc.keele.ac.uk is still on the list. Apparently there is some
list problem?

> The ALLOCA problem.

> We tried to install Mcstas on a Hewlett Packard Workstation (HPUX) he has and
> it failed because it objected to alloca.

Ok, I fixed (I hope) the alloca problem. Now mcstas should no longer use
the alloca() function at all. I just checked, and mcstas now compiles on
our HP box using the HP compiler (we normally use gcc).

I already fixed the strcasecmp/stricmp problem in my sources. For
Windows (32 bit) a few other minor details needs fixing, see the list
archive for details. My current sources compile cleanly in Visual C (it
is necessary to define the C preprocessor macro "WIN32").

In the end quite a few files have small changes, so rather than sending
individual files I will build a beta of "McStas v1.01" and put it on the
web page later today.

> The good news, Mcstas works fine under Digital Unix, I loaded it on my Keele DEC
> Unix Alpha with no problems. Ditto Slackware Linux, the only subtlety is that one
> needs to run the final exe files via ./program for some reason.

Great. The reason for the "./program" thing is that "." (the current
directory) is not included in the $PATH variable, probably for security
reasons. I think that is even in the manual :-).

> Collimator + Energy monitor. Okay so a flat energy distribution from say 5meV
> to 100meV. But it wasn't flat in the energy detector. Reason being, as Drew
> explained to me, your source emits as a uniform velocity distribution ? In other
> words you convert the low and high energy ranges to velocities and then use a 
> 0 t 1 random number generator in the range of velocities ? Velocity is a funny 

Ouch! We fixed this in the Source_flat component, but missed it in the
Moderator component. I will fix this and include it in the McStas beta.

> The mailing list looks very nice, my man from Metro. Univ. was very impressed and

> signed on to it. Another suggestion, for your benefit, well Risoes. On the sign on
> page, in the form, ask people to supply their names and normal mail addresses as 
> well. When it comes time to write a report for the EU about how wonderful all this
> Mcstas work is, you'll be able to supply a list of "Mcstas users" from around the 
> world showing what a great success it is. A list of e-mail addresses doesn't have 
> the same impact. Also it provides a mailing list for any future MC meetings. If
> you're unsure about this ask Kurt what he thinks, I think he'll see the "political"
> advantages to keeping such a record. Also record the number of hits and downloads
> from the web page. Again will look nice and impressive in a report to Brussels in
> the future.

Recording rela name and address sounds good, it is now on my ToDo
list. The hits and downloads can be deduced from the server logfiles.

Thanks for all your helpful comments,

 - Kristian.