NEWS

DALY 1.5.0 (2016-11-26)

fixed imports declarations in NAMESPACE
converted 'round()' to 'fround()' in 'DALY.cpp'
'sensitivity' functions could result in errors due to loss of dimensions (@thanhleviet)

introduction of a 'DALY_list()' function to combine different 'DALY' objects
introduction of a 'plot()' method for objects of class 'DALY' and 'DALY_list'
introduction of a 'scatterplot()' method for objects of class 'DALY' and 'DALY_list'
introduction of a 'print()' and 'plot()' method for objects of class 'DALY_sensitivity'

function 'sensitivity()' has been updated to allow calculating (standardized) regression coefficients and partial correlation coefficients, either on the original or the ranked input values

fixed mismatch between Authors@R and Author fields in DESCRIPTION file
the use of extern "C" {} in the 'DALY.cpp' file has been revised to fix issues with clang

the DALY Calculator output now also includes the simulated values from the input distributions
several functions have been updated to make proper use of the 'match.arg()' functionality
the 'DALY' database on the search path is replaced by a '.DALYenv' environment in the DALY package

the 'readDALYdata()' function now correctly reads '.RData' files when specified through the file argument
all instances of 'INC' and 'MRT' have now consistently been renamed to 'cases' and 'deaths', respectively
the DALY Calculator manual has been rebuilt to fix issues with pdffonts

each window has a "save or cancel" policy
the basic DALY Calculator output consists of simulated DALYs, YLLs, YLDs, incident cases and deaths per outcome and per age/sex class
'print()', 'summary()' and 'hist()' methods have been updated
saving and loading data is implemented through '.RData' files instead of '.txt ' files

DALY 1.1.0 can be installed and run under Mac OS X, Linux and Windows operating systems. The DALY Calculator is only launched after attaching the package in an interactive session, which means that the package can be installed without having the required tools installed. Loading the package under Mac OS X and Linux requires the prior installation of the X Window System (X11) and the Tcl/Tk toolkit.

global variables removed; all variables needed by the DALY Calculator are stored in a separate 'DALY' database
welcome messages implemented through 'packageStartupMessage()'
problems with installation of 'BWidget' resolved by replacing 'tkwidget(parent, type = "ComboBox", ...)' by 'ttkcombobox()'
'set.seed()' can be used to select the seed used for the random number generation processes within the DALY Calculator
a same window can be opened only once; calling a window opening function while the corresponding window is already opened will return focus to the existing window
evaluation of input data improved by using regular expressions
empty cells in the *Life Expectancy* window produce an error message, while they are still allowed in other windows
'iterations' can only be set to a strictly positive integer value
on closing the DALY Calculator main window, all other DALY Calculator windows will close as well
checkboxes may also be set by clicking the corresponding text.

calculate DALYs, YLDs, YLLs and Deaths for a simple incidence-based disease model
able to include up to eight outcomes
five age-groups included, i.e., 0-4; 5-14; 15-44; 45-59; 60+
life expectancy table can be defined by user; standard table is the Coale and Demeny model life-table West, level 26 and 25
two examples included: Neurocysticercosis in Cameroon and Toxoplasmosis in the Netherlands
saving/loading data through .txt file
the basic DALY Calculator output consists of simulated DALYs, YLLs, YLDs and deaths per outcome, aggregated over age/sex classes
'print()', 'summary()' and 'hist()' methods for objects returned by the DALY Calculator.

A first version of the DALY Calculator was developed in November 2010, but was never released. This version consisted of a single 'data' window, and was only able to reproduce the Neurocysticercosis example.