Hi Folks, I'm happy to announce the first full release of Larch, the next generation of Ifeffit. This includes a kit for source installation and a binary installer for Windows. A primitive Larch GUI is included that provides a command-line interface and a browser / help system for data in the Larch session. Essentially all the EXAFS and XANES functionality of Ifeffit 1,2 is reproduced in Larch, with several significant improvements. The current version (0.9.17) should still be considered "beta" software in that bugs should be expected, but Larch is now ready for detailed "field-testing" and use. It you're using Ifeffit for scripting (that is, not using the GUIs Athena, Artemis, SixPack, or Prestopronto that call Ifeffit), you should start using Larch now. Several months ago, I described the goals and status of Larch (see http://millenia.cars.aps.anl.gov/pipermail/ifeffit/2012-June/010586.html), which is still accurate. Since then, the biggest effort has been in documentation, finishing some of the details of Feffit() fitting, and testing. Larch is available at http://xraypy.github.com/xraylarch/ and http://cars.uchicago.edu/xraylarch/ Any feedback on any part of Larch is welcome. I am especially interested in hearing reports from people trying the Windows installer -- I've tested it only on 3 Windows7 machines. I also reiterate my plea for people to get involved in the development and extension of these tools. A main motivation for Larch's implementation and design was to make it very easy to add new features and experiment with new algorithms and methods for analysis. If you're interested in helping Bruce or I develop these codes, please let us know. Some of you may have noticed that support for the Ifeffit 1.2 series has been very poor recently, including the fact that building for Mac OS X has fallen far behind. With this release of Larch, I'm very happy to formally end support for Ifeffit 1.2. I'm willing to use, and help others use, the older versions of Ifeffit, Athena, etc, but there will be no more releases or bug fixes for the Ifeffit 1.2 series. The code is available if someone else wants to maintain it. Thanks, --Matt Newville