
ANNOUNCEMENT

Version 3.5.2 of the OFFIS DCMTK (DICOM ToolKit) software is now available
for public release.  This release includes the following main changes 
over the previous version (Version 3.5.1):

- Better ISO C++ compliance. If available, the standard header
  files such as <iostream> and <cmath> are used instead of the
  traditional <iostream.h> and <math.h> headers. 
  Visual C++ users are strongly advised to read the platform
  notes in the INSTALL file concerning iostream issues.

- DCMTK 3.5.2 builds correctly with GCC 3.2 and Visual C++ .NET

- Various enhancements in the configure system which now works
  correctly without manual interaction on more platforms: Irix,
  HP/UX 10 and MacOS X 10.2 now build "out of the box".

- Support for encoding/decoding RLE compressed DICOM images has been 
  added. The new tools dcmcrle and dcmdrle allow to convert between 
  uncompressed and RLE compressed transfer syntaxes.

- Support for zlib compressed (deflated) DICOM objects has been added.
  Conversion between uncompressed and deflated transfer syntaxes 
  is offered by dcmconv. 

- The new application dcmscale allows to scale DICOM images.

- The new application dcm2xml converts DICOM objects to XML.

- The new application dcmquant converts any DICOM color image into
  a palette color image. The underlying quantization classes are useful
  for creating palette color icons from color images.

- The Worklist CTN has been replaced by a completely new implementation 
  (module dcmwlm) that supports a larger set of keys, fixes various 
  issues with the old implementation and has a well-defined backend that 
  facilitates adaptation to databases etc.

- Most command line tools now support a command line option "--version" 
  which prints the host platform and the name and version number of 
  external libraries.

- Echoscu now supports C-ECHO over TLS (Security Enhancements One).

- Added support for new value representation Other Float String (OF).

- New layout for dcmdump tool, improves readability.

- Conversion between floating point numbers and ASCII strings (e.g. in
  DICOM DS data elements) is now performed in a locale independent manner,
  making sure that DCMTK works correctly in a non-Posix locale.

- Complete re-design of the DICOM I/O stream classes, required for
  zlib support. Critical API change. Programmers are advised to adapt
  their applications to the new DcmFileFormat loadFile() and saveFile()
  methods which encapsulate the new stream architecture.

- Support for private tag data dictionaries has been added. This can be
  activated in configure using the --with-private-tags option. By default,
  no private tag dictionary is installed.

- Unknown undefined length attributes are now converted into SQ instead of UN.

- Improved behaviour when reading elements with illegal odd tag length. 

- Many network tools now have a command line option --timeout for 
  controlling the connection request timeout.

- A-ASSOCIATE user information sub items are now always sent in ascending
  order to avoid problems with certain other DICOM toolkits.

- Added experimental "promiscuous" mode to storescp. In this mode,
  activated by the --promiscuous command line option, all presentation
  contexts not known not to be Storage SOP Classes are accepted.

- Added --max-send-pdu option to storescu that allows to 
  restrict the size of outgoing P-DATA PDUs.

- Added support for the Numeric Value Qualifier Code Sequence 
  (introduced with CP 260) to dcmsr module.

- Added support for the Current Requested Procedure Evidence Sequence 
  and the Pertinent Other Evidence Sequence to the dcmsr module.

- Dcmmkdir tool supports more application profiles.

- Algorithm for creation of unique identifiers has been improved on
  Win32 platforms where gethostid() is not available.

- The DICOM data dictionary has been re-worked based on the latest 
  supplements and correction proposals, as usual.

- Many bug fixes and minor improvements as usual - See the CHANGES.352
  file for more details.


Many people have contributed to this new release of DCMTK, appearing here 
in alphabetical order. Thank you very much for your support!

  Stefan Allers <stefan.allers@gmx.de>
  Andreas Barth <Andreas.Barth@bruker-biospin.de>
  Judit Verestoy <JVerestoy@tomtec.de>
  Jesper Bojesen <jbb@medical-insight.com>
  Rada Hussein <R.Hussein@DKFZ-Heidelberg.de>
  Bernd Kuemmerlen <bkuemmer@mevis.de>
  David Lappen <dlappen@digitalams.com>
  Arnaud Masson <arnaud.masson@iodp.com>
  Markus Mertens <markus.mertens@uni-muenster.de>
  Gilles Mevel <Gilles.Mevel@etiam.com>
  Sebastian Meyer <meyer@mevis.de>
  Dimitri Papadopoulos-Orfanos <papadopo@shfj.cea.fr>
  Tom Probasco <dimatics@attbi.com>
  Costea-B. Razvan <cbrazvan@laitek.com>
  Rainer Thieme <rainer.thieme@siemens.com>
  Karl Tomaschek <karl.tomaschek@wienkom.at>
  Ben Wright <ben@ami-online.com>

OFFIS staff who have worked on this release are:
  Marco Eichelberg <eichelberg@offis.de>
  Joerg Riesmeier <riesmeier@offis.de>
  Thomas Wilkens <thomas.wilkens@offis.de>
  
The DCMTK software can be downloaded via:
  http://dicom.offis.de/dcmtk/


Kuratorium OFFIS e.V., Oldenburg, Germany, 2002-12-23
