Visualization Toolkit upgrade to release 2.0p1

The 2.0p1 release of the Visualization Toolkit for SGI has been installed in

the vtkit_v2.0 locker. To access it and run demos

compiled from C++ code, do "add vtkit_v2.0", followed by "set_vtk_demos".

This will pop open a new window containing a number

of C++ demos (ending with a .cxx extension).  To compile one of these

(such as Mace), type "make Mace" within this window.  Eventually a

binary "Mace" will be produced which you can run directly.

A major advantage of this new installation is that dynamic linking is

now supported- this will greatly reduce the size of your binaries, by

a factor of 10 or more- to get static linking, use Makefile.s by doing

something like "make -f Makefile.s Mace". You can compile your own

code by adapting Makefile and Makefile.s in the demo directory. Please

read file /mit/vtkit_v2.0/README.dynamic_linking if you plan to do

dynamic linking.

There are also Tcl demos which you can run by cd'ing to one of the Tcl demo

directories (../examplesTcl, ../graphics/examplesTcl, ../imaging/examplesTcl,

../contrib/examplesTcl, ../patented/ExamplesTcl), and then doing

"run_vtk mace.tcl" (and so on).

Some of the demos will fail due to various errors or missing data files- some

data sets supplied with the Toolkit are very large and were not installed

to save space. Some will run but take a long time to start- up to several

minutes on an Indy. Generally if you see a flat black or red window appear,

the demo is still starting up.

Performance is significantly improved if you have access to an O2- if you

compile C++ demos on the latter, the compiler will issue many warning

messages but the binaries still seem to work.

There are many online man pages in html- open your Web browser with file

/mit/vtkit_v2.0/www/atoz.html to access these, and see also file

/mit/vtkit_v2.0/www/README.html for general information.

Although this release has a python interface, it is currently not installed.

This message is in file /mit/vtkit_v2.0/Athena/messages/upgradev2 if you

want to see it again.