Minutes of the Geant4 Technical Steering Board Meeting, 
15 February 2000

Attendance
In person: John Allison, John Apostolakis (chairman), Makoto Asai, Guy Barrand, Frank Behner, Gabriele Cosmo, Gunter Folger, Juergen Knobloch, Hisaya Kurashige, Michel Maire, Youhei Morita, Maria Grazia Pia, Florence Ranjard, Takashi Sasaki, Marc Verderi, Johannes-Peter Wellisch
By video: Katsuya Amako, Peter Gumplinger
By telephone: Peter Truscott, Hajime Yoshida 

Reports from Working Groups

Geometry (G. Cosmo): a few minor fixes and a protection added in trasportation were included in last reference tag. A new STEP interpreter will be available shortly; feedback will be appreciated. P. Truscott volunteered to try it and provide feedback to the Geometry group, or at least provide example STEP files [that have been found to be problematic for the current STEP reader].
The issue reported at CHEP, concerning the implementation of the geometry of Atlas calorimeter, is being investigated, but it is anyway evaluated as at least an order of magnitude lower than what reported by the user.
Run and Event (M. Asai): the EventManager becomes a singleton. Two bugs have been fixed.
Generic processes (M. Verderi): a proposal for development will be represented. A couple of bugs have been fixed.
Standard electromagnetic physics (M. Maire): the group focuses on testing; a photoabsorbtion model is under development.
Hadronic physics (J.-P. Wellisch): the plan for the Pythia7 interface is in progress. The Kinetic Model approaches release. Fixes for strings in file names and for unit problems have been introduced.
Intercoms (M. Asai): it had a fix.
Visualisation (J. Allison on behalf of S. Tanaka): new commands have been implemented. A prototype Ray Tracer, developed by M. Asai, is available.
Persistency (Y. Morita): a few changes for boolean solids and persistent hits have been released. An Extended Example is available. Persistency has been included in system testing.
Testing (J. Allison): extended examples are part of the system testing; there have been some minor improvements in scripts. A web-based control and monitoring system based on Bugzilla is in progress. The possibility of moving to Remedy as a tool for problem reporting was discussed.
Software management (G. Folger): an ISO-compliant version of Geant4 is available; as not all compilers are fully ISO C++ compliant, i.e. no support for namespaces and/or native STL, a non-ISO version will still be maintained for some time too. Coding guidelines, amended by G. Cosmo for ISO C++ compliance, are posted on the web.
Documentation (K. Amako): a new set of documentation has been released with Geant4 1.0; a web page reporting documentation changes has been available too. The issue of modification to the documentation, in the case any fixes are required after it has been posted on the web, was raised; the practical way how to handle it will be proposed by K. Amako to the TSB mailing list.
Low energy electromagnetic physics (M.G. Pia): the domain is under dynamic development; currently the activity is focused on testing and validation. Processes for low energy hadrons and ions have been released; new physics models are under development to further extend the energy range coverage for antiprotons. A paper has been published on Geant4 low energy electromagnetic processes for ions. A design and code review is in progress. The activity is being reorganised with the creation of the Low energy electromagnetic physics Working Group.

Milestones

J. Apostolakis will circulate a document with a refined definition of the milestones soon. He requested proposals of intents for joint projects with experiments within one week, to be reviewed in two weeks' time.
J. Apostolakis requested a draft of proposal on the Geant4 training kit from the user communities in two weeks' time. Training material is being developed for the CERN School of Computing by M. Asai, G. Cosmo and M. Verderi. M.G. Pia will give lectures on Geant4 at the Detectors School in Italy in February 2000.
A discussion on software process improvement was encouraged and a draft plan was requested by J. Apostolakis in 1-2 weeks.
Working group milestones will be discussed on the TSB mailing list and will be reviewed at next TSB meeting.

Other matters

It was noted that the regular release of monthly reference tags to the member user communities will help to incorporate feedback from experiments as a kind of pre-release testing.
Some aspects of the Problem Report System were discussed. After some discussion it was agreed that (a) it should offer the user the possibility of selecting multiple platforms and versions, (b) that it should be easier to see the list of users and developers known to the system, (c) that email addresses not known to the system should be allowed in the Cc: box and (d) that the restriction on the visibility of reports would be lifted.
A FAQ web page will be available; G. Folger will assemble it, with content provided by others.
The space-related modules developed as part of the ESA contract will be delivered in March.
M.G. Pia requested the availability of a design repository, to be kept updated. She also requested to maintain and regularly update the Geant4 URD. Both these requests will be part of the software process improvement plan.
TSB members should help to create a publications plan.
The CERN/IT/API group will create a poster to document the Geant4 activity in the IT building; other communities expressed interest in it.
Subgroups for the preparation of the TSB meetings agenda, for web pages and for software process improvement were proposed. J. Allison and J. Apostolakis resigned from the existing web working party.
Juergen Knobloch is a new member of the TSB, replacing David Jacobs.
Stéphane Chauvie is a new member of the Italian Geant4 group.

Next meeting and Annual Workshop

Proposed dates for next TSB meeting are 29/3 or 4/4/2000.
It was proposed to hold the next Annual Workshop on 11-15/9/2000 in Paris. M.G. Pia commented that these dates could be problematic for the Italian Geant4 collaborators, because of expected overlap with the annual INFN budget meetings for year 2001; she suggested to hold it later. An overlap with the CERN School of Computing (Geant4 lectures on 18-22/9) should also be avoided. M. Maire and J.-P. Wellisch noted that they cannot be available during October; there are the Monte Carlo conference, and the calorimeter conference. The dates will be further discussed.

Maria Grazia Pia, 1 March 2000