Congratulations on the acquisition of NCSA GelReader v 1.2B7 for the 
Macintosh II!

NCSA GelReader is a product designed to automate to some degree 
the measurement of DNA length using digitized electrophoretic gels. 
First, a digitized gel image is read into the GelReader , and displayed 
as an image. NCSA GelReader has the capability to find the lanes and 
the bands(sites) in the gel. Lanes and bands can be interactivly added 
and deleted if necessary. Then, known molecular weights (standards) 
can be used to approximate the molecular weight of the remaining 
molecules. The result is a text report listing the approximated 
molecular weights of the molecules. Some image enhancement 
filters are also provided.

THIS IS BETA SOFTWARE 

This is not released supported software. This product is not yet finished,
and is being circulated on a test basis only. We expect bugs, and
very much hope you will inform us of any that you find. You will find 
the number of our technical support person at the end of this document.
If you encounter problems, please contact her.

This BETA represents our first attempt a supporting mutiply probed Southern
Blots. Many labs are now hybridizing a gel different probes at different times,
resulting in more than one digitized image of the same gel. These images 
must somehow then be virtually superimposed for analysis. This release
attempts to provide this capability. Also, support for saving gels along 
with lane and band information has been added. Of course there have been
bug fixes as well.

THE DISTRIBUTION

Some general information:  All files ending with the extension ".hqx" 
have been encoded by BinHex.  All files with "sit" included in their 
name are archives that have been compressed by StuffIt.

Once you have obtained your files, you will want to extract them.  
For files that have the ".hqx" extension, you will need to use BinHex 
4.0 to extract them.  Run BinHex 4.0 and use the File menu option 
"Upload -> Application".  A dialog will appear asking you for the 
BinHex file you want un-BinHexed.  Once the file has been selected 
another dialog will appear asking where and by what name you want 
to save it as.  (Note:  The new version of Stuffit also has a Decode 
Binhex menu option, which can be used to decode binhex files.)

If the name of the file has an extension ending with ".sit", you will 
want to use UnStuffIt (or Stuffit) to extract the file.  Read the 
StuffIt documentation for details on how to extract the files from 
an archive.

WHAT THIS DISTRIBUTION CONTAINS

Here are the items that you will find in this directory:

1) GR1.2B7.sit.hqx - This is the executable GelReader program, some
sample files, the source and a breif description of the new features.
You will need to use BinHex 4.0 to decode GR1.2B7.sit.hqx.  You will
then need to Unstuff it.

If you have questions about GelReader v 1.2B7 for the Macintosh II, you 
can contact Jennie File at (217) 244-0638.

Thank you.

Thomas Redman
Project Leader
National Center for Supercomputing Appls.
152 Computing Applications Building
Champaign, IL  61820