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From: hjelmflt@capella (Eric Hjelmfelt)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc
Subject: Re: Spyglass & NCSA Image,HDF,etc. ???
Summary: Its a successor
Keywords: Spyglass, NCSA Image
Message-ID: <1991Feb14.200510.23875@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
Date: 14 Feb 91 20:05:10 GMT
References: <1991Feb13.234431.26255@jato.jpl.nasa.gov>
Sender: hjelmflt@symcom.math.uiuc.edu
Organization: University of Illinois at Champaign/Urbana, Math Dept.
Lines: 36

In article <1991Feb13.234431.26255@jato.jpl.nasa.gov> brian@granite.Jpl.Nasa.Gov (Brian of ASTD-CP) writes:
>We are reviewing a commercial Macintosh visualization 
>software product called "Spyglass."  Superficially, it
>strongly resembles the suite of free visualization tools
>from the the National Center for Supercomputer Applica-
>tions (NCSA).  Some of those tools are "Image" and "HDF"
>and "DataView."
>
>Does anyone out there know what the relationship between
>Spyglass and the NCSA tools is?  Is Spyglass some sort of
>"industrial strength" or "professional" version of the NCSA
>tools?  Or, can we save money and licensing hassles and yet get
>the same functionality just by using the free tools?  Does
>Spyglass actually give you anything for the money?

The Spyglass products are direct successors to the ones from NCSA.  The
NCSA programmers struck out on their own and formed their own company a
few years ago.  The code has been completely rewritten and improved so
that it takes better advantage of the Mac's abilities.  Also, I believe
their latest release, (Dicer ?) has no direct ancestor at NCSA.

As far as functionality, there is not much comparison.  The new products
are infinitly better.  Furthermore, it seems unlikely that the free
ones are ever going to be substantially updated since the main
programmers left.

(p.s. I have no connection with the Spyglass other than once
interviewing for a summer job there.  They are located here in
Champaign.)
(pp.s.  You might try looking at the reviews in Byte and MacUser that
have appeared since last summer.)
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 Eric Hjelmfelt                 |  disclaimer:  What?  They wouldn't let
   hjelmflt@                    |     me speak for them even if I were
      symcom.math.uiuc.edu      |        to pay them!        
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