This section records the changes introduced with each new version of DIPSO. NOTE, earlier changes may be over-ridden by later changes.
READ
command has been modified so that it will attempt to read spectral axis
information from the WCS component of an NDF if the NDF was not created by DIPSO.
If the NDF has no WCS component, the spectral axis information will be read from the
NDF AXIS structures, or the FITS header cards in the NDF FITS extension (if any). Details
of the spectral axis are displayed.
WRITE
command has been modified so that it will add a WCS component to the
output NDF describing the spectral axis. This allows it to be used by other Starlink
applications such as SPLAT, KAPPA, etc.USEHTX
command has been modified to allow the path to the Starlink showme
utility
to be given explicitly. This need only be done if the HELP
command fails to find the showme
utility (for instance, if is not on the user’s current PATH, or if it is executed by means of
an alias).
ENV
has been added, which displays the value being used by DIPSO
for a named environment variable.
HELP
and USEHTX
commands, and a hypertext version of SUN/50.
SHELL
command has been re-instated, which allows system commands to be run from
within DIPSO without the need to press control-Z.
COMMAND
command has been enhanced to provide faciltities for
listing commands which do particular jobs, and which contain specified keywords in
their descriptions.
PF
).
help.lis
file containing plain text descriptions of all DIPSO commands has been
updated to be consistent with SUN/50. This file is used by the HELP
command.
PUSH
ing the current
array if the last point in the data array was bad.
ELFIT
changed to avoid floating exception if the variances come out negative (a warning
is issued and zeros are used instead).
ELFSAVEC
now offers the user the chance to overwrite an existing file if one exists. Also, it
no longer converts the supplied file name to upper case.
SM
bug corrected which caused extension of smoothing domain beyond the upper
wavelength limit, and could potentially cause completely spurious results if the upper
wavelength limit was at the end of the array.
TWEIGHT
has been introduced to allow control of the weight used to
draw data curves independantly of the weight of other lines.
PUSH
command to fail with a message like:
after reading in a spectrum using SP0RD
. This only occurred if the first and/or last data point in
the spectrum contained the value zero.
NEBCONT
command to re-issue a prompt for a value, rather than
accepting the default value as read from the specified file, if <RETURN> is pressed (with
mode1,2,3=0).
XV
, SNIP
, etc ) to fail after an invocation of the
condition handler caused by floating point exceptions, control-C’s etc.
HANDLER
and
CRASH
commands have been re-instated.
USENDF
command. Commands READ
, WRITE
, SAVE
, etc., will now
use the selected data format, and so the commands OREAD, OWRITE, OSAVE, etc., are
no longer needed and have been withdrawn.
USENDF
, REPORTING
, TSWAP
, TSTRIP
RECORD
, REPLAY
, RECALL
, SHELL (only on
VMS),
EXPAND
command now takes an optional second string parameter which specifies
which components of the plot are to be expanded.
READ
command (when using NDFs) will now read NDFs not written by DIPSO (i.e. ones
which don’t have a DIPSO_EXTRA extension).
WRITE
command (when using NDFs) now has an optional second string parameter which
specifies the name of a “model” NDF on which to base the output NDF created by the
WRITE
command.
SCREENRD
command, “\” is now used to end input on VMS and UNIX.
The default file format for ‘unformatted’ DIPSO files (SP0) has changed from native unformatted format to STARLINK NDF format. This allows the transport of files between different machines without translation being necessary. It also means that files generated by DIPSO can be automatically input to all standard STARLINK packages.
This version of DIPSO is the first multi-platform release. It has been tested on VAX/VMS, DECstation, and Sun Sparcstation machines. Due to the different way system variables are provided by the two operating systems DIPSO has been enhanced to support both the VMS logical name syntax, and the UNIX environment variable syntax. Thus the following two filename specifications are equivalent and accepted by DIPSO on all platforms.
OWNERDIR:my_data_file
$OWNERDIR/my_data_file
UNIX users should note that filenames are ALWAYS CaSe sensitive.
(If you didn’t use DIPSO before 1987, pass over this section. If you are an old hand, then: the more experienced you are, the more important it is that you should read this section carefully!)
This release of DIPSO is a fairly extensive revision of earlier versions. In particular, the graphics have
been converted to the GKS standard (mainly by JM), interstellar line analysis has been included (IS...
commands), and various aspects of Fourier analysis are now possible. Because interstellar line profiles
are now most easily computed from within DIPSO, the old BACHRD
and BACHWR
commands are no
longer documented, and DIPSODIR:ATOMIC.DAT
has been extensively revised ($DIPSODIR/ATOMIC.DAT
on UNIX machines). ALASRD/ALASWR
have been preserved, however, as the simplest way of
getting data in and out of DIPSO. (ALASRD
has actually been updated to allow more general
inputs.)
In an attempt to (partially) rationalise the command names, and make it easier to locate groups of
related commands in the reference section, some command names have been changed. In particular,
the old ELF
commands are now all prefixed by “ELF”
(surprise!). (The minus side is that you’ll have to
learn the new command names; but the plus side is that ELF
now carries out an error analysis
for you.) The two-spectrum arithmetic functions are now renamed ADIV,
AADD
etc. (from
DIV,
ADD etc. to avoid the trap of typing, say, ADD 3
in the expectation of adding 3 to the
current arrays (the “A” prefix stands for “array”.) Some one-spectrum arithmetic functions
have also had their names changed to a more uniform scheme; e.g. XSH
has become XADD
,
CMULT
has become YMULT
, etc. The old command names will still work in some cases, but
are not recommended. You are urged to read right through the new documentation for
individual commands, as many other minor modifications have been made, and new functions
added.
The most important changes: you will probably find out quite quickly that the default file extension
for command files has changed to .CMD
.
The following commands have changed default functionality, and you should therefore check them
especially carefully: ALASRD
, ALASWR
, DRED
PWRITE
, TPORT
, READ
, WRITE
, SAVE
, RESTORE
.