McStas: next version

[Per-Olof Astrand]

Dear McStas user,

Version 1.5 of McStas including an updated manual is planned to be
released around the 10th of September. We think it would be very fruitful
for all of us if minor problems or extensions in the source code, official
components or the manual are reported to us so that they can be included
in the next official releas.

We will also separate the McStas manual into two documents: the "McStas
manual" (excluding the component descriptions) and a new "McStas component
manual" including component descriptions only. The latter document will
only be edited by the McStas administrators, and the actual author of the
component will hopefully also be the author of the contribution in
the McStas component manual. In this way, we hope that the authorship of a
McStas component is recognized appropriately. We therefore kindly ask the
McStas user community to send us new components to be included in the
next release. 

Hopefully, we can all benefit from a more extensive exchange of 
components. I have discussed this with some people and a regular user tend
to think that his/her components are simple and can be written by anyone.  
My main argument for submitting a component anyway is that it has already
been tested and validated extensively by the user and it is therefore a
very good chance for that it is correct and a lot of duplicate work is
thus saved.

Kind regards,

Per-Olof Astrand
mcstas at risoe.dk