THE HOME RANGER version 1.5 May 1999
README

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CONTENTS

1. General Description
2. Requirements
3. Getting Started
4. Some Tips
5. Technical Features
6. Planned Extensions
7. Uninstalling / Removing program
8. History and revisions
9. How to contact the Author

1. General Description

The Home Ranger is a <<FREEWARE>> Windows 3.x program that can
determine fixed or adaptive kernel home ranges of animals from
radio-telemetry data. The program can also calculate standard
error and bias in home range estimates by bootstrapping data
as well as estimate effects of decretization (rounding) errors
in telemetry data. The Home Ranger can also remove covariance
in location data and eliminate effect of data orientation.

Online help is easily accessed by simply right-clicking the mouse
or by using the popup help button on the application's toolbar and
selecting the control of interest. You can also access help by
pressing F1 when the cursor is in a particular control.

2. Requirements

Operating System: Windows 3.x or later versions (NT or 95 / 98).
Disk Space: < 0.9 MB.
Math Coprocessor: The program will not run without one!
Video: The program was designed to look best on a
system running at 800 X 600 video resolution
and >= 256 colors with small fonts.

3. Getting Started

The best way to familiarize yourself with the program is to use the
example data file (Db_dixon.tab) and the program's popup help system.

If you are not sure what a particular option or control does, simply right-click
with your mouse and a pop-up dialog will appear explaining the control's funcion.

The program can estimate home ranges from simulated bivariate normal data or
from an ascii data file containing telemetry data on 1 or more animals.
Each record of the file MUST contain only 4 fields separated by either
commas, tabs, or spaces. See the help topic associated with the RUN
button for more details.

You can direct the program to produce output files of the results by selecting
various options listed in the program's second tab sheet (labeled "Files").
Note that the Home Ranger will produce plots of home range contours
ONLY if the output contour option is selected before running the program.

4. Some Tips & Notes

Always use a plain ascii text editor (e.g., Notepad) when editing or creating
data files. Rich text editors like Word or WordPad add invisible characters
to the data that cannot be read by the program. You can also use M$ Access
or Excel, but the data must be saved as pure text files.

When generating contours the program produces two area estimates for each
contour level requested. The first is based on geometry of the contour
lines and is labelled "Total area from contours", the second is based on
a linear interpolation of the sorted utilization distribution and is
labelled "Exact total area from interpolation". Use the second one when
reporting results. You can examine the utilization distribution for
yourself by selecting the control 'Output utilization?' on the 'Files'
tab. From this file, any home range level can be determined
(1 to 100%) using simple linear interpolation.

5. Technical Features

Apart from the ability to produce various home range statistics, graphics,
and output files, the Home Ranger has many other features hidden under
the hood: for example,

* Automatic Error Checking: The program will not let you enter a
nonsensical value in any of its input boxes. All entered values are
automatically ranged checked for errors.

* Batch Processing: You can batch process data from several
animals from a single data file. Output files will be generated for
each animal included in the data file.

* Huge Data Handling: The Home Ranger can accommodate very
large data sets in excess of 2 billion records. Thus, data
limitations are placed on your computer's hardware NOT on the software.

* Dynamic Memory Allocation: The program uses only as much memory
as is needed. Once a particular task is complete the memory
is released back to Windows.

* Low Resource Use: All windows programs consume some
Windows resources. These resources are finite (only 64K in
Windows 3.x). The program uses only <2%.

* Mulitasking: When operating under Windows 3.x or 95,
the Home Ranger will cooperatively multitask (about every 5 s) with
other Windows programs.

* State-of-the-Art random number generator: The Home Ranger does not
use the standard psuedo-random number generator found in code
compilers. Instead it employs a generator well known to be the
best available for micro computers. The generator has a period of about
10 to the power of 44.

* Simulated Bivariate Normal: The Home Ranger is the ONLY home range
program that easily allows for self-testing. If you want to test
it, you can simulate bivariate normal data and then estimate home
ranges from that data.

* Buffered File Input and Output: All file I/O is buffered for faster
data reading and writing. An added benefit of this feature is that
it also reduces wear on your computer's disk drive.

* Accurate and Precise Numerical Calculations: All calculations are
performed using either 8 byte double precision or scaled integers
for maximum speed and accuracy.

* Floating-point comparisons follow IEEE standards: You should be aware that
floating-point comparisons on ALL computers are NOT 100% accurate.
Most of the computer code I come across does not follow these standards;
the Home Ranger, however, does. This specification helps to ensure
accurate and precise results. Moreover, rounding in all calculations also
follows IEEE standards.

* System Information: You can obtain information on the state of your
computer system (i.e., available memory, disk space, resource use, etc.)
by accessing the program's menu Help-About.

6. Planned Extensions

Although THE HOME RANGER looks and acts like the latest Windows
applications, it is only a 16-bit program (Windows 3.x). I plan
to release a full-featured Windows 32-bit version in the near
future. This next release will also contain a context-sensitive
Windows help file and direct data editing features.
If you would like to see some other features added or if you
have any suggestions for the next version please contact me.

Apart from minor fixes and updates, this is the L A S T 16-bit
version that will be released. Enhancements will only be added
to the 32-bit version.

7. Uninstalling / Removing program

If you used the setup program to install the Home Ranger, you can remove
the program from your system by double clicking or running the Uninstall icon
located in the application's Windows program group.

8. History and revisions

Version 1.5 Many changes to the UI and to the execution code.
Most important change is that this version solves the covariance
problem in location data (see Seaman, D.E. et al. 1998.
Wildl. Soc. Bull. 26(1):95-100). For more info, see online help
for "Standardize data" checkbox.

You no longer need to convert input location data to km.
I've added better support for input and output unit specifications.
You can now either specify the units yourself or let the program
automatically determine them; it works for units from mm to km.

Added more output statistics like correlation coeficients and
their significant tests, crossvalidation scores (LSCV score),
ratio of CV h to ref h, etc. Separate h values are now reported
and used for each dimension.

I changed and tweaked the UI. I think it looks and performs better
now. For example, names of files used in previous runs are externally
stored so that you can quickly re-run previous analyses (see run
button).
I've changed many of the popup help descriptions so make sure you
check them out before performing an analysis (remember, just
select a control and press F1 or right-click with mouse).
The program can be completely navigated either with the mouse or by
using the keyboard. Keyboard actions follow standard windows
conventions. That is, use tab key to move between controls.
Ctrl-tab to change tab sheets (options, files, results, graphics).
Refer to your windows docs for complete information.

Data are now stored in single precision and all computations
are performed in double precision for better program performance.
Coded more routines in assembler and performed more system tweaks.
These changes have resulted in an 85% (nearly twice) speed increase.

Version 1.1 Patched a few minor resource leaks. The program is now
100% leak free. You can launch and close it indefinately
and it will never leak resources. Now if only some M$ programs
(e.g., Word 6) could do that!

Re-coded some process intensive routines in assembler.
Now, not only are they more accurate, they are also
faster than in the previous version. This code has been
optimized for Pentium-class computers. On a Intel Pentium
MMX 200 running NT 4, I processed >26000 locations in only 17 mins.

Fixed a minor <?> bug in batch routine.
The program did not process the FINAL record of the LAST animal
included in the data file, now it does.

Depending on data, some contour lines were drawn oddly. This
problem has been corrected so that it should rarely appear.
However, some data may still cause the problem. I have ran
some simulations, and the problem seems to occur with small sample
sizes and/or data that are clumped with a few outlying points. I leave
to the individual reasearch to decide if their data are suitable for
home range analysis. You may also see broken contour lines that do
not join. This result is NOT a bug, but is exactly what should happen
if data were not sufficient to estimate a complete contour. This
pattern usually only happens for the 100% contour.

Program no longer needs a printer to run. If the program
does not detect a printer when started, it will still operate,
however, all print functions will be disabled.

Added a mechanism to make sending me emails easier.
If you have a email client installed on your computer,
you can send me an email via the help menu or by double-clicking
my email address listed in the About dialog. This should work in
Windoze 3.x, 95, 98, and NT 4.x, but it might not in NT 3.51 unless
the new shell is installed.

Version 1.0 Initial public release August 1997

9. How to contact the Author

Please send your suggestions, comments, critiques, etc. to

FREDH@earthling.net (EMAIL)
(Try using the program's built in email feature [see Help menu])

or via snail mail:

F. Hovey
Ursus Software
PO BOX 9270, R.P.0. No. 3
Revelstoke, B.C. Canada V0E 3K0

Tel. (250) 837-7619 (Office)
(250) 837-7687 (Fax)

All comments are welcomed.