From January 22nd 1997, LANCELOT will be available by anonymous ftp from RAL and Namur. This simplifies the previous distribution mechanism, which required users to obtain a password for a named account at RAL. New academic users will no longer be required to sign a conditions-of-use form, but they will still be required to read and agree to abide by a number of conditions before they download the package. We trust that past and future users will find the new mechanism more convenient. Full details are on how to get the package by anonymous ftp are available.
LANCELOT is now available for use for commercial purposes. Details of the fee, conditions of use, and how to obtain a commercial licence my be obtained from Mrs. Monica Brown (email: Monica.Brown@rl.ac.uk, phone: +44 1235 445339, fax: +44 1235 445660) in the Administration Department at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory Chilton, Didcot, Oxon OX11 0QX, England, EU.
LANCELOT is now available as part of the Network-Enabled Optimization System (NEOS) from the Optimization Technology Center at Argonne National Laboratory and Northwestern University. Remote input of problems is possible via either SIF files or simple fortran function-evaluation programs. Although the latter input method may not be able to use the full power of LANCELOT, it allows the user to make transparent use of the automatic differentiation package ADIFOR. The NEOS-LANCELOT interface is located here.
David Gay (Bell Labs) has developed an AMPL interface to LANCELOT. This should ease the burden of those who detest the current SIF input.
Installation scripts are now available for the GNU g77 compiler, commonly distributed as part of Linux and other Unix systems.
A commonly-occuring quadratic programming extension to MPS is now handled directly by SIF.
A fortran 90 version of LANCELOT A is being beta-tested at the moment. Its functionality is basically that of the fortran 77 version, but with the following improvements:
The code has compiled and executed successfully with the AIX, CRAY, DEC, EPC, Fujitsu and NAG compilers.
A TCL/TK windows interface to LANCELOT A is under development. More details in due course.