GDS2PG - the gds2i module has been rewritten as a native 32 bit Windows application and is now called GDS2PG. We've made optimizations dramatically speeding up processing of multiple layers. For single layer files the speed improvement is only 10 to 20 percent but for multiple layer files (say five or more layers) we've measured improvements of 10 to 20X. The DOS version processed each layer independently while the Windows version processes all selected layers in parallel.

EMASK - EMASK/MMASK has been ported to a native 32 bit console application - it runs much like the DOS version. A Windows GUI is planned for EMASK once we've determined the best way to design it. EMASK also runs much faster because we have learned how to better buffer the input and output.

We've integrated a Windows Interface that eliminates the need for long complicated command lines; you'll never have to edit a PG.CFG file manually again. For the moment there is no scripting ability but we plan to add this in the future; however the improved speed is such that we don't believe that the need to set up batch jobs will be very important anymore.

GDSVU - the Windows version of GDSVU will become part of the ASM 2600 release package. We recently completed an enhanced version of GDSVU/W that is 10 times faster than the current version. It achieves this speed by effeciently determining which polygons are visible and not writing to screen polygons smaller than a user specified size. As you zoom in smaller polygons are displayed but of course the area displayed is also smaller - so basically the program deals with many fewer polygons.

PGCAM - The port to Windows for PGCAM is almost done. We'll do it in two steps - first a basic PGVU with view, measure and plot capabilities. Then we'll add PGCAM functions - merge layers, mirror data, center data, add text, add/detele rectangles. PGCAM is already 5 times faster than the DOS version and was written to easily handle 100,000 flash files on a Pentium running NT.