Release 5.0 - A Summary of New Features and Enhancements

This issue of EMME/2 NEWS is dedicated entirely to introducing the many enhancements and new features that have been added in Release 5.0. Since there are so many new developments, it is impossible to describe or even enumerate all of them here. Thus, we will concentrate on describing the more important new developments. Complete information regarding the new release can be found in the release notes and the new version of the EMME/2 User's Manual, which are sent out along with the new software distribution.

Let us first start with a short catalogue of the main new features of Release 5.0 (the items marked with an asterisk (*) are explained in more detail in the following sections of this news letter):

• Flexible file naming for reports, plots, batch input and output (*)
• New menu commands "help" and "lic"
• Comments in batch entry files
• Engineering notation to avoid output format under- and overflow
• Customized plot titles (*)
• Automatic annotations (*)
• Conditional annotation commands (*)
• New macro read-only registers for switches (i), scenario status flags(f) and module version (v)
• New operators for macro registers: modulo, bitwise AND, bitwise OR
• New macro test operator for bit masking
• 6-digit node numbers
• Increased numerical precision for constants in expressions and functions
• Improved numerical precision for sums involving large (sub-)matrices
• New attribute based transit line selection (*)
• User data items on transit segments (*)
• Modules 2.21 and 2.31 now support switch 11 (no echo of batch input)
• New "path=yes/no" clause in transit itineraries to control automatic path search
• New module parameters in module 2.24 to control punching only one transit segment per route card and repeating redundant attributes
• Longer expressions and access to up to 20 matrices in the Matrix Calculator 3.21
• New bitwise AND and OR operators in expressions and functions
• New and enhanced Network Calculator featuring transit line and transit segment calculations, access to reverse link attributes, temporary attributes, link mode modifications, and much more ... (*)
• Transit line and transit segment scattergrams in module 2.43 (*)
• Access of turn user data items UP1, UP2 and UP3 in turn penalty functions
• Efficiency improvements in variable demand assignment
• For a variable demand assignment, the specification of matrices MAT1, MAT2 and MAT3 is now optional
• Computation of first waiting times in transit assignment
• New E2PLOTS utility for manipulating plot files (*)
• New E2XFBANK utility for transforming data banks between different host formats (*)
• Support for AUTOCAD DXF standard plot file exchange format in GPL (*)
• Support for HP Laserjet TIFF data compression in GPR (*)

There are also many important improvements that are host specific:

• New graphic procedure interface EMTOOL for DOS based systems, providing more speed and compatibility with a wider range of supported graphic adapters (*).
• Support in text and graphic mode for international (8-bit) character set under DOS.
• A new, easy-to-use and efficient installation procedure for all DOS based systems, replacing the BACKUP/RESTORE format used in previous releases.
• EMTOOL procedure interface supporting the Sunview and X11 windows system on UNIX work stations, including a new and more flexible graphic tablet interface with extended mapping calibration possibilities.
• Improved efficiency of VAX/VMS compilation, resulting in an overall increase in speed of about 30times.

The EMME/2 User's Manual has been extensively revised and improved for Release 5.0. Note especially some major additions in chapters III, IV, VI and VII. The glossary, appendix B, has also undergone a complete overhaul, and translations in various languages are now provided for the terms. A complete set of manual pages, new manual cover sheets, release notes and system specific installation instructions are provided along with the software distribution.