GUI version of Ferret

["Jonathan Callahan" <callahan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello Ferret Users Group,

My name is Jonathan Callahan and I have taken over development of the GUI
interface to Ferret.  This announcement is to let you know our time table with
regard to the release of the GUI. Note that the GUI will initially be released
as a BETA product. Please send me email if you would like to be a BETA Ferret
user and try the GUI at that stage.

I am curently at the stage of minor fixing, tweaking and cleaning of the GUI
version. No more major features are being added.  The development operating
system thus far has been SunOS 4.1.3. I plan to begin porting to other
platforms during the month of April.

This version of the GUI will provide a point-and-click interface for defining
new variables as well as the basic plotting and transforming options that were
available in the previous version. In this early stage of BETA release we will
not yet have a formal users guide, but we will provide a short
tutorial guide on using the GUI.

We expect to port to other operating systems in the following order:

	SunOS
	Solaris (SunOS 5.4)
	OSF (DEC Unix)
	SGI/Irix 5
	AIX (IBM)
	HPUX

We will send out notices as the ports become available.