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The most significant changes in this release are the introduction of facilities for querying the Virtual Observatory for images and catalogues. These new query toolboxes are located in the Data-Analysis menu.  Other significant changes are the introduction of support for the VOTable catalogue format, and various special catalogue type created by the SMURF and KAPPA packages.

 * Catalogues with suitable descriptions (like those from SMURF and KAPPA) will now have their coordinate systems matched to that of the displayed image. For instance this means you can now query for catalogue positions in J2000 and plot over an image set to B1950 and vice versa.
The most significant changes in this release are the introduction of facilities for querying the Virtual Observatory for images and catalogues. These new query toolboxes are located in the Data-Analysis menu.

Other significant changes are the introduction of support for the visualisation of 2D and 3D clumps detected by the CUPID package, support for the VOTable catalogue format and various special other catalogue types created by the SMURF and KAPPA packages.

Catalogues with suitable descriptions (like those from SMURF and KAPPA) will now have their coordinate systems matched to that of the displayed image. For instance this means you can now query for catalogue positions in J2000 and plot over an image set to B1950 and vice versa.

Finally the GAIA has been updated to use the new SAMP protocol for interoperating with other desktop applications (TOPCAT, SPLAT etc). This replaces PLASTIC support, which has been removed.
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 * A bug in saving and restoring the overlay graphics has been fixed. This was introduced when dashed lines were offered as an option for contouring.
 * A bug tracking coordinates using the arrow keys and the "Show all coordinates" toolbox has been fixed. Previously the reported Y coordinates were those of the last position, not the current one.
 * It is now possible to resize the 3D toolboxes during the first rendering. Previously this could case the application to terminate.
 * The 3D scene now offers lighting controls.
 * A bug in the positioning of the 3D direction axes has been fixed.
 * The baseline subtraction tool in the cube toolbox now allows for the output cube to be given a named prefix.
 * The default celestial coordinate system for FITS files is now FK5/J2000.

Starlink Software Collection - Nanahope Release Notes

These are notes for the pre-release of Nanahope. As modifications are made to the development tree the changes are listed here. During the release the release branch will be created and this document will be released.

Release Check List

[to be removed when the release is complete]

  • PNG detection issue on OSX (PGPLOT does not look in the correct place)
  • libtool on OSX Leopard chooses the wrong -nostdlib option.
  • Update these release notes. Including ORAC-DR notes.
  • Use gfortran on OSX Tiger 32-bit builds?
  • 64-bit OSX must be leopard
  • Build into /star-nanahope ?
  • Need to ship with Java 1.6 on Linux but build with Java 1.5 (at request of Sam Hart)
  • 64-bit OSX must use Java 1.6. Tiger builds must use Java 1.5
  • make sure starversion reports 'nanahope'
  • Can we deprecate NBS so that it can be removed in the next release?

General Changes

  • The handling of NDFs containing large amounts of PROVENANCE information has been made more efficient.

New Applications

Changes to Applications

ATOOLS

  • Add ASTCIRCLE command.
  • Now behaves as expected when loading a .txt file after CONVERT has been initialised. Previously, convert intercepted the .txt file and attempted to convert it to NDF. (the fix for this was in the KAPLIBS library).

CCDPACK

  • A memory handling bug in ccdwish has been fixed. This effected many of the UI applications, like PAIRNDF, CCDALIGN etc.

CONVERT

  • Problems with the package startup scripts under the bash shell have been fixed.

CUPID

  • The ILEVEL message level interface has been modified to match the MERS standard. Symbolic names can now be used in addition to integers. ALL will show all messages and NONE will disable all message output.
  • The description in SUN/255 of how to make the CUPID ClumpFind algorithm emulate the IDL ClumpFind algorithm has been corrected.

CURSA

  • The remote catalogue configuration file is now installed locally. This restores the catremote command to working order.

FINDCOORDS

  • Now uses the locally installed remote configuration file of CURSA and is restored to working order.

KAPPA

  • BEAMFIT increased the precision of the formatted values stored in CENTRE and REFOFF output parameters.
  • CLINPLOT can now plot the data in a variety of ways, including markers and the histogram style.
  • FITSMOD There is a new editing option "Null" that nullify the value of the chosen keyword, i.e. makes it undefined, by substituting spaces for its value.
  • HISCOM has a new parameter called DATE. It allows the date and time of the new history record to be set explicitly rather than to the default current time. There is a choice of formats including Gregorian Date and Time, and Julian Date.
  • NDFCOPY has a new parameter called LIKEWCS. This allows the shape of the template NDF in the WCS Frame to be used to determine the bounds of the output NDF.
  • NDFCOPY has a new parameter called EXTEN. Setting this parameter to TRUE results in any extension NDFs within the supplied NDF being trimmed or padded so that they have the same pixel bounds as the main NDF.
  • NDFCOPY has a new parameter called TRIMBAD. If set TRUE, the output NDF will be trimmed so that it just encloses all good data values in the input NDF.
  • Bug Fixes:
    • BEAMFIT formerly generated erroneous second-axis values of the CENTRE output parameter.
    • CENTROID formerly failed for data with backgrounds less approximately dex-10.
    • COPYBAD now correctly propagates the VARIANCE information.
    • PROVSHOW formerly ignored the SHOW=ROOTS option.
    • WCSALIGN formerly could misplace the pixel origin in the output NDF by one pixel.
    • ROTATE now uses significantly less memory than before.
    • Fix problem in CONVOLVE when a plane in a cube is all bad and aborts the whole command.

Figaro

  • Bug fixes:
    • ARC2D and LONGSLIT now correctly map spectral data. Previously these applications failed to run.

GAIA

The most significant changes in this release are the introduction of facilities for querying the Virtual Observatory for images and catalogues. These new query toolboxes are located in the Data-Analysis menu.

Other significant changes are the introduction of support for the visualisation of 2D and 3D clumps detected by the CUPID package, support for the VOTable catalogue format and various special other catalogue types created by the SMURF and KAPPA packages.

Catalogues with suitable descriptions (like those from SMURF and KAPPA) will now have their coordinate systems matched to that of the displayed image. For instance this means you can now query for catalogue positions in J2000 and plot over an image set to B1950 and vice versa.

Finally the GAIA has been updated to use the new SAMP protocol for interoperating with other desktop applications (TOPCAT, SPLAT etc). This replaces PLASTIC support, which has been removed.

  • The mean angles reported by the select positions toolbox are now normalised as position angles. Previously they were just the arithmetic mean.
  • New options in the spectral extraction window now forces the X and Y coordinates to be positive. This is useful when drawing the with log scaling.
  • Several problems when determining the min/max values and percentile cuts displayed in the main window have been fixed.
  • A bug in the pick object toolbox has been fixed. Previously if you opted for RA and Dec in degrees this setting would be ignored when zooming.
  • Many changes to the XY profile toolbox have been made. This now displays the position along the X and Y axes (previously an offset was shown), along with the value and position of the peaks and the coordinate ranges of each profile. It is also possible to display the peak values using lines drawn in the profiles and on the main image.
  • The blank pixel colour is now preserved when new colour tables are loaded.
  • Time-series spectra extracted from cubes can now be displayed showing the elapsed time from the first observation.
  • The coordinate system used when handling a cube can now be changed to display pixel and grid coordinates, as well as spectral ones.
  • A new command-line option -rtd_autocut has been added. This applies the -default_cut percentile to any images received by the realtime interface.
  • The contour toolbox now detects cubes displayed in other windows and will step through the slices of the cube contouring each in turn over the displayed image. See the help in the contour toolbox for how to use this.
  • A bug in the operation of the patch toolbox has been fixed. Previously GAIA could crash when using very small detached sky regions.
  • A bug in the handling of temporary images created by the regions toolbox has been fixed. Previously if more than one instance of this toolbox was in use the names of the temporary files could clash.
  • The gaiadisp command now uses the RTD_REMOTE_DIR environment variable to locate the .rtd-remote file (this matches the behaviour of the gaia command).
  • The text importer toolbox is no longer shared between all cloned windows. Each window now has it's own instance so that more than one import can be done at a time.
  • A bug in saving and restoring the overlay graphics has been fixed. This was introduced when dashed lines were offered as an option for contouring.
  • A bug tracking coordinates using the arrow keys and the "Show all coordinates" toolbox has been fixed. Previously the reported Y coordinates were those of the last position, not the current one.
  • It is now possible to resize the 3D toolboxes during the first rendering. Previously this could case the application to terminate.
  • The 3D scene now offers lighting controls.
  • A bug in the positioning of the 3D direction axes has been fixed.
  • The baseline subtraction tool in the cube toolbox now allows for the output cube to be given a named prefix.
  • The default celestial coordinate system for FITS files is now FK5/J2000.
  • FITS access is now based on the installed version of the CFITSIO package. This supports closer compatibility with other FITS based applications and is important for UKIDDS.

SMURF

  • SCUBA-2 darks are now interpolated
  • SCUBA-2 processing now accepts bad pixel masks
  • MAKECUBE now issues a warning message if WCS information implied by the RECEPPOS and FPLANEX/Y values in an input NDF is inconsistent.
  • TIMESORT can now handle single time slice data cubes.
  • Bug Fixes:
    • MAKECUBE formerly mis-interpreted non-zero instrument aperture (INSTAP) values in recent ACSIS data.
    • MAKECUBE now ignores input data values that have negative input Tsys values.
    • TIMESORT now sets the correct pixel origin in the output NDFs.

SPLAT

  • When displaying dual sideband spectra, line identifiers can now be drawn for both sidebands, not just the current one.
  • Series of spectra displayed in a single plot can now be offset from each other using artificial baselines for easier inspections. The ordering of the offsets can be determined by evaluating an expression based on the FITS card values in the spectra. This can include the evaluation of dates and times.
  • The VO registry interface has been updated to use version 1 access. Note that any existing saved lists of SSAP registries will no longer be compatible and must be regenerated.
  • A bug calculating UTC from TDB for the epoch of observation in the JAC synopsis has been fixed.
  • A new toolbox for applying offsets to spectra displayed in the same window has been added. This allows the spectra to be displayed stacked above each other by a fixed amount. The spectra can be ordered using the transformation of a FITS value, so that the shift can be applied in, say, date order.
  • The filter box has been changed so that rebin is now the default option.
  • A new menu item for removing all line identifiers from a plot has been added.
  • A fuller description of the items shown in the JAC plot synopsis has been added to SUN/243.
  • The colours that are automatically selected for spectra will no longer include shades of yellow. These tend to be indistinctive on a white background.
  • The properties used for rendering the current spectrum (line style, width colour etc.) can now be saved as the default properties and will persist between sessions. Note that the colour of the spectrum will not be re-used unless you have switched off automatically colouring.
  • Extra controls have been added to the SSAP download dialog. You can now clear all the selections and just download data to the stack without displaying it.
  • Line identifiers can be have the associated spectrum shortname suffixed to labels (it is already possible to prefix the shortname) or just have the shortname shown as the label.

STAR2HTML

  • A new command-line option -hcserver has been added. This supports the movement of the hardcopy server to other URLs.

Changes to Libraries

AGI

  • /PNG graphics device can now be used

AST

  • The Format attribute for the TimeFrame class has been extended to allow the letter "T" to be used to separate the date and time fields when producing ISO date/time strings.

  • Use 1 and 0 instead of "yes" and "no" for the AST__THREADSAFE macro defined in ast.h

  • The astSimplify method now makes a better job of spotting simplifications that can be made to Prism regions.
  • The Channel class has a new attribute called ReportLevel that can be used to control the warnings and errors generated when using a Channel to read or write an AST Object.

  • Updated to include the 2009 leap second.
  • The FitsChan class has been modified so that, when reading a FITS header, it does not remove keywords that may have other non-WCS relevance.

  • A new Channel has been added to read and write STC-S.
  • Bug Fixes:
    • The labelling of Plot axes representing calendar date has been improved. Formerly, axes spanning time intervals of a day to a few years could be badly labelled.
    • Various minor bugs to do with thread-safety have been fixed (including a change to the API for astUnlock).

ATL

  • New routine atlGetParam() for reading a parameter directly into an AST key map.
  • New routine atlShow() to dump an AST object into a text file.

EMS

  • The API has been expanded to allow sprintf formatting directly in forming error messages. See emsRepf. Also added emsSet to take printf formatting strings when setting a message token.

HDS

  • Improve error reporting by naming the component that can not be altered or can't be mapped.

MERS

  • Now completely rewritten in C and is thread-safe.
  • C interface no longer includes the fortran msgFmt<x> routines. Instead a single C routine is provided for sprintf-style formatting (msgFmt).

  • New function msgBlankif. This is a version of msgBlank that can be output conditionally similar to msgOut vs msgOutif.
  • C interface for messaging level now uses a special type (msglev_t) rather than simple int.
  • errRepf, msgOutiff, msgOutifv and msgOutf: new routines supporting sprintf-style formatting in addition to token replacement. %KEYWORD expansion disabled. $PARAM expansion unaffected. (C interface only)
  • Can now be used in a threaded application so long as msgTune and errTune are only called before multiple threads are created.
  • New function msgFlusherr can be used to flush error messages using MSG instead of ERR.
  • MSG filter levels extended to include MSG__DEBUG1 to MSG__DEBUG20. This should allow more fine-grained control of debugging messages.

  • The filter level can now also be set to MSG__NONE (no messages at all) and MSG__ALL (every message) but these can not be used in msgOutif calls. This allows all messages to be silenced or all messages to be displayed.

  • msgIfget can now understand parameters that have an integer value as well as parameters containing the level string. This is to allow the KAPPA ILEVEL scheme to coexist.
  • New function msgFlevok() can be used to compare the supplied filter level with the internal value. A simple wrapper around msgIflev.
  • Only msg_fmtx routines remain in Fortran (there is no C library available to handle arbitrary Fortran format specifiers).

NDG

  • New function ndgRmprvs to remove multiple parents from provenance in one call. This is signficiantly quicker than calling ndgRmprv sequentially.
  • A new function ndfGtprvk has been added to allow provenance information to be returned as an AstKeyMap rather than an HDS structure. This saves having to have a temporary HDS file on disk.

NDF

  • History items are now sorted into date order. This allows history to be inserted into the correct place if it could not be added at the correct point previously (this is used by ORAC-DR to add pipeline log messages to the history).
  • New function ndfHsdat to set the time for history entries/
  • History items now use UTC. Previously localtime was used.
  • Bug fixes:
    • Fix some NDF sectioning bugs. For example in WCS axes that have constant values.

PCS

  • The C interface to SUBPAR is now thread-safe (using a mutex around the fortran). This is required for MERS to be thread-safe.

Changes to thirdparty software

  • match updated to v0.10
  • SExtractor updated to v2.5.0
  • Tcl/Tk have been updated to v8.4.19
  • Xerces C XML parser now included (v3.0.1)
  • perl version 5.10 now included
  • cfitsio updated to v3.13
  • Skycat updated to v3.0.2
  • GSL updated to v1.12
  • tdom now included at v0.8.3
  • tcldict now included at v8.5.2
  • FFTW updated to 3.2.1
  • M4 updated to 1.4.12
  • VTK updated to 5.0.4
  • MESA updated to 7.0.4

Starlink: Nanahope (last edited 2015-06-17 21:08:38 by GrahamBell)