L Notes from Previous Few Releases

L.1 Release Notes–-V2.0

L.1.1 General Changes

• Now supports 64-bit integer data.

L.1.2 New Commands

The following new applications have been added:

CONFIGECHO

This is intended as a scripting tool. It displays the value of a named entry in a group of configuration parameters.

NDFECHO

This is intended as a scripting tool. It expands a given group expression into a list of explicit NDF names, and displays a specified subset of the expanded names.

L.1.3 Modified Commands

The following applications have been modified:

CHANMAP

• Four new estimators are available: FBAD, FGOOD, NBAD and NGOOD, which produce the fraction/count of good/bad pixel values.

COLLAPSE

• Four new estimators are available: FBAD, FGOOD, NBAD and NGOOD, which produce the fraction/count of good/bad pixel values.

MSTATS

• Four new estimators are available: FBAD, FGOOD, NBAD and NGOOD, which produce the fraction/count of good/bad pixel values.

NORMALIZE

• A new boolean parameter called LOOP permits normalisation against a single row or column when comparing two-dimensional NDFs.

PARGET

• A new boolean parameter called VECTOR specifies the output format to use for vector-valued parameters.

ROTATE

• Now estimates north at the centre of the image rather than at the bottom left corner, and uses a more accurate method.

WCSADD

• The transfer of set attribute values from basis Frame  to new Frame can now be controlled using a new boolean parameter called TRANSFER (previously, set attributes were always transferred). The new default is to transfer attributes only if the two Frames have the same class and Domain.

WCSREMOVE

• The Frames to remove can now be specified by name as well as by index.

L.2 Release Notes–-V2.1

L.2.1 New Commands

The following new applications have been added:

EXCLUDEBAD

This will copy a two-dimensional NDF, excluding any rows or columns that contain too many bad values. Good rows or columns are shuffled down to lower indices to fill the gaps left by the excluded rows or columns, thus causing the output NDF to be smaller than the input NDF.

L.2.2 Modified Commands

The following applications have been modified:

ARDPLOT

• Can now display the outline of a Region even if no picture has been displayed previously on the graphics device. The size of the plot is controlled by the new SIZE parameter. Any existing picture can be ignored by setting the new CLEAR parameter to TRUE.

BEAMFIT

• There is now more control of the initial or fixed sizes and shapes of the beams. Note that this has involved a change of the type and function of Parameter FIXFWHM. FIXFWHM like other FIX- parameters is _LOGICAL; it just constrains whether the FWHM values should be fixed. A new parameter called FWHM allows you to set either initial values, or when FIXFWHM is also set TRUE, it sets fixed FWHM values. The interpretation of FWHM values depends on a new CIRCULAR parameter, which constrains the fit to be circular thus there is no minor axis and orientation derived. In combination it is possible to give a list of circular or elliptical FWHMs.
• The output parameters now store the statistics of every fitted beam, not just those of the primary beam.

CENTROID

• The centroid’s formatted co-ordinates, such as right ascension and declination, are now normalised into the usual ranges. This aplies both to the reported positions and the output parameters.

COPYBAD

• Now writes the number of good and bad pixels in the output NDF to output parameters NGOOD and NBAD.
• No longer sets the BAD_PIXEL flag for the DATA and VARIANCE components.

DISPLAY

• The MODE parameter can now be set to "Current" to force the current upper and lower limits to be re-used.

ERASE

• Now has a parameter called REPORT that indicates if an error should be reported if the specified object does not exist.

GDCLEAR

• Will now remove any unused space from the graphics-database file, thus keeping its size to a minimum.

HISTOGRAM

• The new WIDTH parameter offers the option to specify the bin width instead of the number of bins.

MFITTREND

• Now has a parameter called PROPBAD, which controls whether to propagate bad input values to the returned fit.

NDFECHO

• A new parameter called EXISTS has been added that allows the list of displayed NDF paths to be filtered by removing the paths for NDFs that do not exist.

NORMALIZE

• This will loop if the first NDF is one-dimensional and the second is two-dimensional, provided LOOP=TRUE. It previously only worked if the dimensionalities were in the reverse sense.

OUTSET

• The USEAXIS parameter now works, needed when the supplied NDF has more than two axes.

PROVADD

• The inoperative parameter MORE has been removed.

SCATTER

• Now writes the number of pixels used to form the correlation coefficient to output parameter NPIX.

SETQUAL

• It is now possible to copy all quality information from one NDF to another using a new parameter called LIKE.

WCSALIGN

• The Gaussian kernel may now be applied in resampling mode as well as rebinning mode.

L.3 Release Notes–-V2.2

L.3.1 Documentation Changes

• SUN/95 has been upgraded to the new style of documentation. Some residual collateral damage to the typesetting is likely to be present.
• Most of the old release notes have been removed from SUN/95, with just the few most-recent sets of notes retained in a separate appendix.
• The detailed descriptions of plotting and AST attributes are now in appendices.

L.3.2 Modified Commands

The following applications have been modified:

COLLAPSE

• Fixed bug in the calculation of the variance for the Sum estimator. Note that this applies to other collapsing commands such as MSTATS.

CONFIGECHO

• A new parameter called LOGFILE has been added that allows the list of displayed configuration parameters to be written to a text file.

COPYBAD

• Restore setting the BAD_PIXEL flag for the DATA and VARIANCE components, only setting it false if no bad pixels were copied and none existed in the input NDF.

SEGMENT

• A bug that caused a crash for NDFs with degenerate axes has been fixed.

SETQUAL

• A new parameter QVALUE can be used to store a constant integer value in the range 0 to 255 in the QUALITY component for all pixels.

WCSALIGN

• A new parameter ALIGNREF can be used to control the co-ordinate system in which the input NDFs are aligned.

WCSMOSAIC

• A new parameter ALIGNREF can be used to control the co-ordinate system in which the input NDFs are aligned.

L.4 Release Notes–-V2.3

L.4.1 New Commands

The following new applications have been added:

NDFCOMPARE

Compares two NDFs and reports whether they are equivalent, based on a range of different tests.

L.4.2 Modified Commands

The following applications have been modified:

BEAMFIT

• Now works for HEALPix maps with its apparently non-square pixels.
• A long-standing issue of occasional nonsense WCS errors has been rectified by using a better-conditioned algorithm.

FITSMOD

• A missing END header may be appended using the Write mode. Any associated value and/or comment are ignored. The easiest way to append an END header is with the wrapper FITSWRITE.

NORMALIZE

• Now calculates and displays Pearson’s coefficient of linear correlation on the remaining data at every iteration.
• New Parameter CORR added to hold the last displayed correlation coefficient.
• New Parameters OUTSLOPE, OUTOFFSET and OUTCORR added. These are one-dimensional NDFs in which the slopes, offsets and correlation coefficients respectively are stored when operating in looping mode (i.e. LOOP=TRUE).

ROTATE

• Now writes out the rotation angle actually used to an output parameter (ANGLEUSED).

SQORST

• Propagates UNITS as it used to in the IMAGE-format version.

L.5 Release Notes–-V2.4

L.5.1 New Commands

The following new application have been added:

ALIGN2D

Aligns a pair of two-dimensional NDFs by minimising the residuals between them.

L.5.2 Modified Commands

The following applications have been modified:

APERADD

• Has a new parameter MASK, which can be used to save an NDF containing a mask showing which pixels were included in the aperture.

COLLAPSE

• A warning that suggested that WLIM should b lowered even when it had the minmum of zero no longer appears.

LINPLOT

• Parameter TEMPSTYLE is withdrawn. The + syntax should be used to set temporary style changes.

LUCY

• A bug that prevented correct background removal when Parameter BACK was null was excised.

MFITTREND

• Has a new FOREST parameter, which improves spectral-line masking in line forests using a smoothed mode rather than the mean and a better estimate of the baseline noise.
• A bug has been fixed preventing fits in the rare combination of neither variance nor bad values being present, and without masking of lines. Bad variances are also now checked before spline fitting.

NDFCOPY

• A bug has been fixed that prevented excess WCS axes from being removed.

NORMALIZE

• Has two new parameters DRAWMARK and DRAWWIDTH that can be used to exclude central markers and width indicator from the plot.

PROVSHOW

• Has a new option SHOW="TREE", which allows the family tree to be stepped through in an interactive manner, with the user choosing which parent is to be displayed next.

WCSADD

• Has a new option MAPTYPE="REFNDF", which causes a copy of a co-ordinate Frame read from a reference NDF to be added into the modified NDF.
• New Parameter RETAIN allows control over whether or not the new Frame becomes the current Frame in the modified NDF on exit.

L.6 Release Notes–-V2.5

L.6.1 General Changes

• A log of Kappa commands can now be written to a text file specified by the environment variable KAPPA_LOG. The log lists the application name and parameter values in separate headed lines. Note that the format of the log may change to simple command lines that could be replayed in a script.

L.6.2 Modified Commands

The following applications have been modified:

ALIGN2D

• Parameter TR may also include the scale and offset in its seventh and eight elements.
• The RMS residual between the aligned and the reference arrays is now written to an output parameter called “RMS”.

CONFIGECHO

• This now reports all elements in an array, not just the first element.

CONTOUR

• The dynamic default for Parameter LABPOS is now ! (i.e. a null value), so no label is now drawn in "Bounds" or "Good" mode unless a value is supplied explicitly for LABPOS.

DISPLAY

• Has a new Parameter PENRANGE, which can be used to restrict the range of pens (i.e. colour indices) used. The default is to use the full range of available pens.
• The vertical position of the key can now be controlled through Parameter KEYPOS.

HISCOM

• Has a new Parameter APPNAME, which can be used to change the application name stored in the new history record from the default of “HISCOM”. Scripts that generate NDFs can use this facility to record the details of the invocation of the script in the form of a history record in the output NDF.

MFITTREND

• The auto method uses the median rather than the mean to clip outliers. This permits better masking of strong and extended emission.

SQORTST

• Permit an axis scale to be retained by using an asterisk in Parameter PIXSCALE.

TRANDAT

• Will now recognise the string "BAD" (case insensitive) within the input text file and generate appropriate bad values in the output NDF.