Document Help File

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This help file identifies formats and utilities used, and describes each to assist users of this information service. In no case does such identification imply recommendation or endorsement by the National Institute of Standards and Technology.




ASCII - Where neither a PS or PDF file was available or where size allowed, there is an ASCII version available. Note that some versions may contain conversion errors particularly where tables and charts were present in the original.

Postscript (PS) - Documents annotated with postscript file require a postscript viewer (such as Ghostview), or must be downloaded to your system for printing on a postscript printer. You can obtain free public-domain postscript viewers from http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/index.html

Portable Document Format (PDF) - Documents annotated with Portable Document Format file require Adobe Acrobat Reader Software for viewing. You can download free Adobe software from http://www.adobe.com/supportservice/custsupport/download.html

Perl (.pl) - Several tools were written using the Perl language syntax. In most cases, these tools are shown in ASCII for viewing. These tools must be saved to your local disk with a .pl extension in order to be executed by Perl. Reference http://www.perl.com for more information on installing and using the Perl language.

C (.c) - Several tools were written using the C programming language syntax. In most cases, these tools are shown in ASCII for viewing. These tools must be saved to your local disk with a .c extension in order to be executed. Reference each tool for comments regarding execution arguments.




We have tarred and zipped directory structure/files so that users may download all at once. Note that some browser-OS combinations appear to be dropping the extension from downloaded files. The file content transfers, but the file doesn't end with the appropriate extension. If this happens, rename the files to have the same extension as shown on the web page you're downloading from. After downloading the tarred and zipped file, variations of the following utilities may be used to "unzip" and "untar" the directory structure/files onto your system.


Tar utility - Archives and extracts files and/or directories from a single file called a tar file (.tar). For more information on this utility, reference http://kb.indiana.edu/data/acsy.html

ZIP utility - Reduces the size of named files, whenever possible. Each file is replaced with .gz or .Z while keeping the same ownership modes, access and modification times. For more information on this utility, reference All About ZIP Files.




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Last updated: Tuesday, 09-Apr-2019 13:31:01 MDT
Date created: Tuesday, 01-Aug-00
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