If you are having problems with Distance, please check the manual and readme file (ReadMe.rtf) carefully, then the list of known problems on this page. Also, you may want to check the archives of the distance-sampling e-mail list. Once you have exhausted these possibilities, please contact the program authors.

General

• Report a bug in Distance
• Log of changes to Distance web site
• Who uses Distance?
• Downloads, useable with more than one version of Distance.  See also the list of Other Software, at the bottom of this page, some of which interface with Distance.
• RunAnalysisEngine - Visual Basic code for running the D4 analysis engine
  Contributed by Len Thomas.
  This short Visual Basic 6 project shows how to run the D4.exe analysis engine (or older versions) from within that environment.  It works by calling a whole bunch of Windows API functions.  The code is in RunDistance.frm, which is just a text file so even if you use some other environment (such as Visual C or Delphi) it will hopefully still be of use.  Comments welcome.  
  The format of the output files is documented in the Distance manual (see Saving results to file) -- I recommend you read results from the stats file as it has a nice compact format that is easily machine readable. 
  [Note - the code could easily be updated to run the D5 analysis engine, mcds.exe.]
• GxHisto - A macro for reproducing the detection function histograms in MS Excel 97
  Contributed by Dr. Tim Gerrodette, Southwest Fisheries Science Center, NMFS.
  This macro allows you to reproduce the high-resolution detection function histograms produced by Distance 3.5 and later within Microsoft Excel as MS Charts. You do this by copying the graph data from Distance (by clicking the copy button), pasting it into Excel, and running the macro. Distance already provides the facility to copy the plots as pictures, but these pictures can not then be edited. Using this macro, you are free to change the plot format (colors, axes, etc) as you wish.
  Note: this macro only works in Excel 97 or later - if you have an earlier version of Excel please contact Dr. Gerrodette (address is in the download's readme).
• Excel geometry functions
  Developed by Dr. Jeff Laake, National Marine Mammal Laboratory, US NMFS
  This package is an add-in for Microsoft Excel that performs various trigonometric calculations for plane and spherical geometry, plus a number of other related calculations.  It was developed by Dr. Laake in response to his own needs for the analysis of marine mammal surveys and other types of data.  The above link takes you to a web page that describes the functions in more detail and allows you to download the add-in.
• Information and Excel macro for converting data stored as frequency of counts in different distance intervals into format required by Distance (zip file)
  Contributed by Matt Schlesinger, Aaron Ellingson , Jeremy Lindsell and others.
  This zip file contains replies to the following email which Matt posted to the distance-sampling list in December 2004.  It also contains an Excel file with a macro for doing the job (by Aaron) and a Word document describing how to do it manually (for another similar data set, by Jeremy)
  "[...] I'm converting my bird point transect data to Distance format. We recorded birds in 25-m distance categories. The data were entered into MS Access in the following format, to match the data sheet for easy entry (each of these fields separated by commas are columns in the data
  table):
  Site, station, visit, species, 0-25, 25-50, 50-75, 75-100, >100
  Each row is a combination of site, station, visit, and species, with the total number of detections within each distance category noted in the appropriate column. [...] Distance requires that each detection be its own row. [...] Does anyone know of a way to convert a format like mine to Distance format easily?"
• Any other ideas?...
  If you have written a utility program that you think others would find useful in their dealings with Distance we would be happy to publish it here. Please contact us.
• Running Distance under other operating systems.
• Linux: Although we don't have any direct experience, Distance should run without problems within the emulation software VMWare, win4lin, Parallels, VirtualBox, etc.  For VMWare, note that there is a free version called VMWare player, and if you search the web under something like "Free VMWare" you will find instructions about how to set up operating system images using free software (one site is http://johnbokma.com/vmware-player/). VirtualBox is opensource and supported by Oracle.  Other possibilities are to use the free emulators Bochs (pronounced "box" - slow, apparently) or QEMU (with the accelerator module).  For up to date information, try searching the web for "PC Emulators" or "PC Virtualizers".  If you try any of these solutions, please let us know how you get on! We have one report of VirtualBox running Distance 6.0 from an unbuntu platform without trouble.
• Apple Macintosh: If you have an old MacOS, then Virtual PC (now owned by by Microsoft) is known to run Distance.  For OSX, many emulators are available - see http://www.macwindows.com/emulator.html for a list and latest news (examples include Parallels and the opensource VirtualBox).  If you try any of these, then let us know how they work. The only report we have so far is that Parallels worked fine on OSX 10.3.9, 10.4 and 10.5  on both PowerPC and Intel Macs (thanks to Jack Lawson). Another option, if you have an Intel-based Mac, is to use Apple's Boot Camp software and load Windows onto it.  
• One caveat (true of all cross-platform transfers) is that users should be careful when creating ASCII text files on other operating systems for use in Distance.  They need to have the Windows carriage-return and line-feed characters at the end of each line.   There are many ways to ensure this happens, and users who work under multiple operating systems will be well aware of the issue already. 
• Background info:
• ESRI Shapefile Technical Description (Adobe PDF file)
  This is an white paper produced by ESRI describing the internal format of a shapefile.  It also contains some very useful information about how you should order the vertices of a polygon, for example, to create a "clean" shapefile.
• Geographic Coordinate Systems and Map Projections (Adobe PDF file)
  This is an appendix from Samantha Strindberg's PhD thesis (Strindberg 2001). Sam was a PhD student here at the University of St Andrews and developed the methods used in the survey design part of Distance. This appendix gives some background information about geographic coordinate systems and projections: what are they, which should you choose, etc. Hopefully it will be useful for those not familiar with this aspect of GISs.

• Which version of R is currently supported by the MRDS and DSM analysis engines?
  The engine supplied with Distance 6.0 Release 2 were compiled and tested under R version 2.9.1. See Distance 6 downloads, below, for a copy of the R program setup file.  Newer versions of R may work, but there is no guarantee of this!
• Distance 6.0 Release 2 Release Notes. (.rtf - rich text file)
  You should read these notes before installing Distance 6.
• Known Problems and Workarounds in Distance - see Bug reports page
  
• Resolved Problems and New Features in Distance 6.0 Release 2
• Distance 6 downloads:
  • R version 2.9.1
    Download this setup program (approx 36MB) and run it to install the version of R currently supported for use with the MRDS library.  Alternatively, you can get it from the Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN) - but make sure you are downloading the right version!

• Note: Extra support files added to Distance 3.5 Release 6 distribution, 25 Sept 2001.
  The original version of Distance 3.5 Release 6 (20 July), would not install properly on some versions of Windows 95 and 98.  We have now added extra support files to the distribution.  If you downloaded Distance 3.5 Release 6 before 25 September 2001, and are having trouble installing it, then you should download the setup files again.
• Distance 3.5 Release 6 Release Notes.
  We highly recommend reading these notes before installing Release 6.
• Known Problems and Workarounds in Distance 3.5 Release 6
  If you find a problem with Distance 3.5 that is not listed here, please contact us.
• Resolved Problems and New Features in Release 6 and Earlier
• Distance 3.5 downloads:
• Large-dataset version of Distance 3.5 Analysis Engine
  The standard analysis engine allows for up to 5000 samples (transects, points, etc) and 10000 observations. This version allows for 10 times more samples and observations, but uses more memory when it runs.
• Sample projects
• Distance 3.5 Release 4 and later Sample Projects
  Download another copy of the sample projects if you accidentally messed up the originals.
• Problem fixes and patches
• Microsoft Data Access Objects (DAO).
  This archive contains the DAO 3.51 installation package, from Microsoft (about 3MB in size). Re-installing DAO has been found to solve a "Run time error 91" problem that can occur in Distance 3.5 on some computer configurations. See the known problems list for details. Warning: do not install if you do not have a specific problem you wish to fix.