XTAL3.4: NEW RELEASE OF THE XTAL SYSTEM. S.R. Hall and D. du Boulay, Crystallography Centre, U. of Western Australia, Nedlands, 6009 Australia; G.S.D. King, Fisica-Chemische Geologie, KU Leuven, B-3001 Heverlee, Begium; J.M. Stewart, Chemistry, U Maryland, Washington DC, USA; J.R. Hester, NIRIM, Namiki 1-1, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305, Japan; and D. Grossie, Chemistry, Wright State University, Dayton OH, USA

The Xtal System is an integrated package of crystallographic programs for single crystal structure analysis. It facilitates calculations from processing raw diffraction intensities to the preparation of the publication diagrams, tables and submission files. For some calculation steps, several programs employing different algorithms are provided, enabling a choice of approaches and the ability to cross-check results. All calculations are integrated and share a common archive file.

Xtal3.4 is distributed at cost on an ISO-9660 CD-ROM and may be implemented on any computer supporting a Fortran and C compilers, and X11 graphics libraries. Executables are provided for the most unix, linux, VMS or DOS operating systems. The sources files are also supplied with implementation scripts so that Xtal3.4 may be installed on other machines, or adapted to locally available software.

User support is mainly via internet facilities. A web server provides users with the latest Xtal information. The WWW address is http://www.crystal.uwa.edu.au/xtal/. Newsletters will be airmailed as hardcopy to users but new and updated sources will be available via anonymous FTP from ftp.crystal.uwa.edu.au directory /xtal. General queries should be directed to xtal@crystal.uwa.edu.au.