Release 8 of the HESSI Analysis Software was created at 5pm EST today.
The next SSW update you do will take a while since the entire release
tree will be copied.  At this moment, the development and the release
versions are identical.

The following improvements are included in this release:
1.  Better handling of data dropouts.
2.  Better handling of dead time.
3.  Narrow bins in spectrogram are now handled correctly (no more double
counting). 4.  Subtle change in packet reader so that now all packets
are read correctly (before, a missing aspect packet caused problems). 5.
In export to SPEX, made the flux consistent with the drm and area
variables. We believe the hessi fluxes reported in SPEX had been too low
by a factor of nine. This error was introduced just after the SPD
meeting in June. 6. Fixed the export of the error arrays from
hsi_spectrum.  In some circumstances the squareroot was taken twice. 7.
Moved livetime and dropout processing from spectrogram to eventlist
object to facilitate a future intermediate eventlist file that will
speed up processing. 8.  Added error handling mechanism to all of the
objects. 9.  Included background modelling in forward fit. 10.
Corrected the flux normalization in forward fit. 11. Added background
modeling option to Pixon reconstruction. 12. More robust PMTRAS roll
solution 13. Improved multiple-panel options in the GUI, including
animation of any set of panels. 14. Added Help / What's New button in
GUI.

Features not implemented in this release (but soon):
1.  Pileup correction.
2.  Decimation correction.
3.  Roll database for entire mission.  Flare positions in flare catalog
will follow.

To switch between the development and release versions, follow the
directions here:
http://hesperia.gsfc.nasa.gov/ssw/hessi/doc/faq/faq_hessi_setup.htm
Refer to other FAQ entries on that page for more discussion of release
vs development version issues.

Kim