RELEASE NOTES 

		spatstat 1.17-0

		22 october 2009

	We thank Ricardo Bernhardt, Horst Wendrock, 
	Ute Hahn and Sebastian Meyer for contributions.
	
OVERVIEW

	Major upgrade of simulation code in progress.
	New dataset 'bronzefilter'. 
	New ways to construct binary masks.
	Bug fixes.

NEW DATASET

	bronzefilter
		Spatially inhomogeneous pattern of circular particle profiles
		in a bronze filter.
		Kindly contributed by Ricardo Bernhardt, Horst Wendrock 
		and Ute Hahn.

IMPROVEMENTS/ENHANCEMENTS

	simulation code
		The code for simulating point processes 
		is undergoing a major upgrade.
		In spatstat 1.17-0 the previous simulation code has been
		rewritten more efficiently, with no change in functionality.
		Future versions 1.17-x will include extra functionality.
			
	rmh
	(rmh.default, rmh.ppm)
		The Fortran code for the Metropolis-Hastings algorithm
		has been rewritten in C. The new version is about 10% faster.

	rmh
	(rmh.default, rmh.ppm)
		The initial state of the random number generator
		is now returned as a separate attribute 'seed'.

	rmhmodel
		The internal format of objects of class 'rmhmodel'
		has changed. 
		
	rmhstart
		Random number seeds are no longer initialised in rmhstart.
		The internal format of objects of class 'rmhstart'
		has changed.

	Kdot.inhom, Kcross.inhom, Ldot.inhom, Lcross.inhom
		The intensity arguments lambdaI, lambdaJ, lambdadot
		can now be functions.
		They can also be omitted, and if omitted they will
		be estimated by a `leave-one-out' kernel smoother.

	owin
		Extra argument 'xy' allows explicit control
		over the pixel coordinates of a binary mask.

	as.owin
		There is a new method for data frames
		which accepts a data frame with three columns (x, y, value)
		allowing the user to specify a binary mask.

BUGS

	[1] as.mask
		The conversion of a polygonal window to a mask
		was sometimes incorrect. This occurred if a polygon vertex
		and a pixel shared exactly the same x coordinate. 
		[Spotted by Sebastian Meyer]
		Fixed.

	[2] pairdist.psp, crossdist.psp
		The separation distance (type="separation")
		was calculated incorrectly.
		Fixed.

	[3] MultiStrauss, rmhmodel
		rmhmodel crashed if applied to a model
		that was fitted using the MultiStrauss interaction
		with some of the radii equal to NA.
		Fixed.

	[4] inside.owin
		The argument 'w' was not passed to as.owin() 
		as promised in the help file.
		[Spotted by Sebastian Meyer]
		Fixed.