Previous changes of TAL for Excel

Changes in ver. 2.71 - Feb, 1999

• Bug fixed: Clay loam texture class was mis-specified in the UK classification scheme. This was corrected.
• Bug fixed: In previous versions, texture lookup may fail even though the sum for all 3 particles is 100%. This bug is due to the floating-point representations by the computer. For example, a value of 100 may be stored in the computer as 100.00001. This phenomena was accounted in this version.
• Improved: Direct loading of TAL's add-in into Excel. Previously, this was done manually. Uninstalling TAL also automatically unloads TAL from the add-in list.

Changes in ver. 2.7 - Nov, 1998

• Canadian soil classification scheme added. Ver. 2.7 now supports 3 major soil classification schemes, including USDA and UK schemes.
• Added capability to reset all texture class names to their default names.
• User-defined group names have changed. In USDA scheme, all user-defined group names start with usda; in UK scheme, it is ssew; and in Canadian scheme, it is cda.
• Improved uninstalling capabilities.

Changes in ver. 2.5b - Oct, 1998

• UK soil classification scheme (as used in England and Wales) added. Version 2.5b now supports two major soil classification schemes.
• Added support for the UK scheme in the TAL Options dialog box.
• Added a few more tooltips in TAL Options as well.
• Bug fixed: TAL may give erroneous result when a particle size distribution lies exactly at certain boundaries of 2 or more USDA texture classes. Ver. 2.5b now conforms completely to the USDA scheme. Note this bug has also been fixed for TAL working within Lotus 123 and older versions of Excel. Here, ver. 1.0 is patched to 1.0b.

Changes in ver. 2.0a - Oct, 1998

• Bug fixed: help file location is now stored in Windows' Registry so TAL can always locate the help file.

Changes in ver. 2.0 - Oct, 1998

• Written in Visual Basic. Version 1.0 was written in Excel 4.0's macro language.
• Completely redesigned for easier and more seamless use. Version 2.0 operates more transparently; there is no impression that you are using a separate program.
• You can give names to the user-defined groups.
• You can specify the separator when a texture class lies exactly at the boundary of two or more texture classes.
• No longer supported: if the sum of particle sizes is not exactly 100%, texture class lookup will fail. In version 1.0, TAL will give all possible matches for its texture class. I decided to remove this feature because this kind of data is erroneous anyway.
• No longer supported: TAL now does not have its own toolbar; this makes TAL less obtrusive. Accessing TAL's options is also simplified to a single menu item.
• The function name to determine the texture class has been changed from Texture to USDA. The order of silt and sand arguments in the texture function has also been swapped.