All software distributed by PPI Node of PDS is subject to the legal rights and
limitations of liability described in the file COPYRIGH.TXT.

==============================================================================
                               Introduction
==============================================================================

The Planetary Plasma Interactions (PPI) Node of NASA's Planetary Data System
(PDS) provides software to facilitate the location of the data of interest on
CD-ROM data products, as well as software to convert data between architecture
specific data formats. In addition, the PPI Node provides software which has
been made available by individual projects which may be useful when working
with PPI data.  Non-PDS software is provided "as is" and is distributed by the
PPI Node as a service to the community. 

==============================================================================
                            Obtaining Software
==============================================================================

To obtain the most recent release of any PPI distributed software use
anonymous FTP to connect the PPI FTP server located at "pdsppi.igpp.ucla.edu".
(Complete instructions on using FTP can be found in the file "FTP.TXT"). At
the PPI FTP server software is maintained in the "SOFTWARE" sub-directory.
Beneath this directory are sub-directories for all supported platforms. For
example, there is a "DOS" sub-directory which contains all software supported
on the Microsoft DOS platform.

If you do have the capability to access PPI FTP server you can obtain PPI
software by requesting a copy of the "PPI Software CD" from the PPI Node
operator.

==============================================================================
                    Software Useful for this Data Product
==============================================================================

This particular CDROM contains software to facilitate the location of the data
of interest on CD-ROM data products (IBM/Windows and IBM/WindowsNT platforms),
as well as

    FFEXTRAC -
       a command-line utility that gives the user the ability to convert
       UCLA/IGPP Flatfiles from the native SUN binary format (MSB/IEEE) to
       other formats

    PVROT -
       a program written by PDS which will read the Pioneer Venus
       Orbiter PVO) high resolution magnetometer data from the Magnetometer /
       Electric Field Detector / Ephemeris data CDROMs (PV01_00xx) and rotates
       the data from spacecraft into Venus Solar Orbital (VSO) coordinates.

==============================================================================
                    Other Platforms and Source Code
==============================================================================

    Executables for IBM-DOS/PC, UNIX-Solaris, and UNIX-SunOs can be found on
    this disk under directories called SOFTWARE/PC, SOFTWARE/SOLARIS, and
    SOFTWARE/SUNOS respectively.

    Source code for compiling the FFEXTRACT and PVROT utilities for other
    platforms can be found on this disk under the SOFTWARE/SOURCE directory
    in *.ZIP type files. These are compressed/packaged files which should
    be easily expanded with the zip software on one's system. For those
    systems without such software, or whose software does not unzip correctly,
    InfoZip's Unzip is provided in the directory SOFTWARE/SOURCE/ZIP_WARE.
    The installation and user's guide can be found in the file SOFTINFO.TXT
    in the ZIP_WARE directory.