Dear TAL users,

Well, with great amounts of will-power, I finally forced myself to
sit
down over the weekend and concentrate on upgrading one of TAL family
members: TAL for Windows. Please note the name change from "TAL
Calculator" to "TAL for Windows". This name change is because TAL for
Windows is now a more powerful program than its ver. 2.8. Ver. 3.0 if
a major release. Here are the changes in ver. 3.0:

1) "TAL Calculator" is now called "TAL for Windows".

2) New feature: Range Lookup is a feature whereby for given a
particle-size distribution range, TAL can list all texture classes
within that range. For example, in the USDA scheme, TAL reports the
following texture classes for 30-50% clay and 10-30% sand: "clay,
silty clay, silty clay loam, and clay loam".

3) New feature: TAL can now handle large data sets up to 1000 soil
samples.

4) New feature: Added file saving and loading capabilities (as well
as
printing)

5) User interface completely changed. A major change is that data
entry and output in TAL now mimics spreadsheet cells as found in
Excel
and Lotus 123.

6) Users no longer need to set any options (such as default soil
schemes) manually; options are saved automatically based on last used
settings.

7) Corrected some errors in the help file.


What is being planned next are:

1) Charting capabilities (hardcore graphics programming -- major
concentration and will-power needed here)

2) Feature for users to add or create their own soil classification
schemes (quite easy to implement, actually)

3) Adding the German soil scheme (easy as well, but I have two German
charts that contradict each other!)


You can get all of TAL files from:

http://members.nbci.com/drsoil/tal.html

Please note the the web address above is slightly different from the
old address. The old address was:

http://members.xoom.com/drsoil/tal.html

Nevertheless, if you use the old address, you will still be
redirected
to the new address. Xoom.com was recently taken over by NBCi.

I have revamped the entire TAL website, so it is worth taking a look.
The colour of the day is purple (you will see what I mean if you surf
there). Please Reload/Refresh the webpage if you see the lots of
green
(NBCi server might still store the old pages of TAL in the server
cache).

I am also planning to move TAL website back to my university server
sometime middle of this year. I am not too happy with NBCi's
increasingly slow server. I only ask for your patience if page
loading
seems to take eons. I will let you all know when TAL website moves,
and if you maintain any bookmarks or links to this current address,
don't worry. I will still put links on the old site, redirecting you
to the new site.

Thanks.

Regards,
Chris