TINE RELEASE 4.1: RESPONDING TO THE USER'S NEEDS

In the period between the shutdown of the HERA collider and the commissioning of the PETRA 3 synchrotron light source the TINE [1] control system was upgraded and modernized to the next major release level, namely 4.0. Many of the new features and capabilities have been reported before [2]. As can be expected, when what was 'designed and planned' is actually put to use, various imperfections and deficiencies begin to surface, the natural 'enemy' of the developer being the 'user'. To this end there has been a slow and iterative progression toward TINE Release 4.1 which will be reported on here. Many of the embellishments involve improving data transfer efficiency (such as enforcing the use of multichannel arrays even when the user makes single channel calls) or meeting the user's expectations of what should be possible (such as allowing variable-length TINE data types to appear within TINE data structures). In addition, TINE Central services have been more systematically integrated into the protocol.