Resolved problems and new features

See also Distance 4.1 resolved problems and Distance 5.0 resolved problems

Distance 6.0 Release 2

Release date: 28 July 2009

Resolved Problems

MRDS Analysis Engine

  • 366 Error message returned due to data selection problems when plotting detection functions fit to interval data. [July 09, JRBB; fixed JRBB July 27th]
  • 367 Scaling of histograms for plotting ds model objects was incorrect. [July 23rd, Charles Paxton; fixed JRBB July 24th]

Distance 6.0 Release 1

Release date: 14 July 2009

New Features/Upgrades

  • New variance estimators for CDS, MCDS and MRDS, based on Fewster et al. (2009). 
  • Changes made to location of default settings database and sample projects, to enable Distance to work better under default Microsoft Vista security settings
  • Ability to open projects by dragging and dropping project files onto an empty part of the main project window.
  • Improvements to MRDS plotting.
  • Improved documentation in MRDS, DSM chapters, and MCDS appendix.
  • Added ability to delete obsolete R objects in .RData.
  • MRDS: Now using version 1.3.5 – see Fixes.txt in mrds library directory for details of improvements.
  • DSM: Now using version 1.0.3.
  • DHT Engine removed from this release – will re-appear in a future version!

Resolved Problems

Interface

  • 364 The Browse… dialog under Preferences | General | Default project folder can cause a program error if the directory does not exist.  [LJT 9 June 2009; Fixed LJT 9 June 2009]

MCDS Analysis Engine

  • 363 Expected cluster size incorrectly calculated when there is missing data (coded as -1) [March 2009, Ben Phalan; fixed LJT March12 2009]

Distance 6.0 Beta 6

Release date: 17 December 2008

New Features/Upgrades

  • MRDS: Now using mrds library version 1.3.4, built with R 2.6.1.  Summary of new features/fixes is in the Fixes.txt file in the mrds library folder.
  • DSM: Now using dsm library 1.0.2, built with R 2.7.0.  Summary of fixes given below.

Resolved Problems

Interface

  • 359 Setup project wizard: If you specify that you want a g(0) multiplier, it makes the operation of this multiplier to multiply, not divide.  [M Schnup 2 April 08; fixed 3 April 2008, LJT]

Design Engine and Design Properties

  • 360 (May be related to #289.)  Strata labels are reported incorrectly under coverage probability section of design results. [Claudia Faustino 15 Aug 2008; Fixed LJT 15 Aug 2008]

MCDS Analysis Engine (includes CDS as well)

  • 361 When analyzing data where the last sample has no observations, this sample is omitted from the data sent to the analysis engine. [25 Oct 2008 ER] [Fixed: 4 December 2008 LJT]

DSM Analysis Engine

  • Various fixes made by ER:
    • dispersion parameter can be changed for quasipoisson error models,
    • Error message during prediction:  Error in if (gam.model\$result\$family\$link== "log") { : argument is of length zero, repaired
    • with trial mode survey design, tracker values are missing.  This leads to missing values within segments, and any segment with missing values is ignored during aggregation.  This error has been fixed.
    • If a field was specified containing the size of cells in the prediction grid (rather than the cell sizes being constant throughout the grid), an error was generated.  This is now repaired.

Distance 6.0 Beta 5

Release date: 28 March 2008

New Features/Upgrades

  • DHT: Contains a test version of a new analysis engine: DHT (Distance Horvitz-Thompson).  This engine allows analysis of survey designs where coverage is not even within the study area.  A sample project is provided to demonstrate its features.

Distance 6.0 Beta 4

Release date: 10 January 2008

New Features/Upgrades

  • MCDS: New sample project – Amakaihi example from Marques et al. (2007) MCDS paper.  See sample projects in Chapter 3 of online manual for more information.
  • MRDS: Now using mrds library version 1.3.1, built with R 2.6.1.  Summary of new features/fixes is in the Fixes.txt file in the mrds library folder.

Resolved Problems

MCDS Analysis Engine (includes CDS as well)

  • {354} Detection function parameter estimates not being output to bootstrap stats file. [Florian Webber 19/9/07; Fixed LJT 20/9/07]

MRDS Analysis Engine

  • 355 Cannot deal with missing distances in interval data.  Error is in create.interval.data function.  [Fixed LJT 9 Jan 2008]
  • 356 When running analyses using previous detection functions, get error “Could not find the method command in model definition”.  [Fixed LJT 9 Jan 2008]

DSM Analysis Engine

  • 357 When GAM fails to converge during bootstrapping, rather than terminating, the bootstrapping continues, but that replicate is set to NA.  [Fixed ER Jan 2008]
  • 358 The default behaviour for the overdisperson parameter in the quasi-poisson link function is to be estimated from the data.  The user interface radio button was corrected to indicate this.  [Fixed ER Jan 2008]

Distance 6.0 Beta 3

Release date: 21 August 2007

New Features/Upgrades

  • CDS/MCDS Engine now outputs version number as first line of log file.
  • DSM: Now has a chapter in the users manual

Resolved Problems

MCDS Analysis Engine (includes CDS as well)

  • 350 MCDS Properties: When cluster size is a covariate, the message on the Cluster Size tab is cut off. [2 Jan 07 LJT; fixed 2 Jan 07 LJT]
  • 351 MCDS: When cluster size is a covariate, clusters of size zero are being treated as missing data, when they should be treated as an observation of zero (-1 is the value currently used for missing data) [2 Jan 07 LJT; fixed 2 Jan 07 LJT]
  • 352 CDS and MCDS: Bounds on key function parameters not respected during bootstrap. [LJT 2 Feb 07; Fixed LJT 2 Feb 07]
  • 353 MCDS: Floating point overflow error in routine FNEVALC, line1815  of covest.for. [Steve Buckland 30 Dec 06; Fixed LJT 2 Feb 07 – bug in HNKEY2]