IRAF V2.12.2a-EXPORT Release Notes July 15, 2004 These release notes provide a summary of the major changes in the V2.12.2a patch update. This is primarily a bugfix and platform-support release to address a number of bugs affecting IRAF tasks and other packages, and to keep the system running on the various (and many) new OS versions that have become available since the last general release. This patch updates Sun/IRAF and select PC-IRAF systems only, we will consider requests for additional platform support. This release is a RECOMMENDED update for sites who: - use the FITS kernel heavily - use the LNUX architecture This release is a REQUIRED update for users - developing scripts for the GEMINI V1.7 package. This release is NOT RECOMMENDED for users - who require a stable GEMINI V1.6 reduction environment (changes in this release can break NIRI scripts) Sites which meet conflicting recommendation criteria above should contact either iraf site support or the Gemini HelpDesk. More detailed technical documentation of all system changes will be found in the 'notes.v212' file in the iraf$local directory, detailed revisions notes for each application package are in the package directories in a file called Revisions, e.g. onedspec$Revisions. Please see also the 'v212revs.txt' file in this directory for a complete description of the V2.12.2a release. If you are upgrading from a V2.11 system, additional features of V2.12 are described in that document but not here. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Contents: ========= 1. Highlights of This Release 2. Platform Support 2.2 Special Note to LNUX Architecture Users 3. Core IRAF Revisions Summary - New Tasks - Existing tasks with new parameters/defaults - Existing tasks with new capabilities 4. NOAO Package Revisions Summary - New NOAO Package Tasks - Existing tasks with new parameters/defaults - Existing tasks with new capabilities ============================================================================ 1. Highlights of This Release: ============================================================================ o Fixed a number of bugs in the FITS kernel related the keyword header corruption of the comment strings for some single-cahracter values, as well a bug affecting things like WAT keywords which span multiple lines. o "login.cl" file changes. The template o MWCS fixes to allow dataless images to open properly, and checks against incomplete CD matrices to prevent a singular matrix error. o Bug fixes to the new CL strstr()/strlstr() builtin functions. Also fixed a bug in the string concatenator. o Added new 'which' and 'whereis' CL builtin commands. The 'which' command searches the package list in reverse order and returns the first package containing the task, 'whereis' returns a space-delimited list of all packages containing that task. These are user-convenience functions mostly, e.g. with many packages loaded and tasks multiply declared it might not be obvious which instance of a task is actually being called. Note, these commands only search the list of loaded packages, in some cases the user may actually want to find all instances of the task in the system, but this is better left as a help/references option. o Added an optional argument to the CL 'logout' command which will allow it to return a status value to the unix shell in #!cl scripts. o Added an new FIO polling interface to allow tasks to be written which can take input from a number of sources (e.g. servers needing to monitor several sockets or files for data). o The EXPORT task has a new 'zscalem()' builtin function for doing image intensity scaling through masks. See the help page for details. o The INTERP task now works in double precision and has no data limit. o Added the new task LSCOMBINE in the LONGSLIT package to register and combine longslit data. This is a combination of the functions in TRANSFORM for resampling and IMCOMBINE for combining. o Added a new task ODCOMBINE to ONEDSPEC which is layered more directly on the source for IMCOMBINE. This version supports bad pixel masks as well as most of the new features of IMCOMBINE. ============================================================================ 2. Platform Support: ============================================================================ IRAF V2.12.2a supports only the following platforms: Sun/IRAF - supports SunOS 4.1 and Solaris 5.5.1 thru Solaris 9 PC-IRAF - supports RedHat 6/7/8/9 and Fedora/RHEL (RHUX) - supports Mac OS X 10.2 and 10.3 (MACX) - supports Slackware 8 and higher (LNUX/x86) Note that PC platforms not mentioned here specifically may still be supported by one or more of the distributions (e.g. Mandrake can use RHUX, Debian can use LNUX or RHUX, etc). 2.1 Special Note to LNUX Architecture Users -------------------------------------------- The V2.12.2 HSI binaries (mkpkg, xc, hardcopy translators, etc) have a known problem affecting compilation of local tasks or external packages and should be replaced. This patch fixes the problem, however to fix only the compilation issues a new set of HSI binaries are also being made available the patch directory as ftp://iraf.noao.edu/iraf/v212/PCIX/patch2a/hbin.lnux.x86.gz To use this file, simply download in binary mode and unpack in the $iraf/unix/bin.linux directory. Contact site support with questions. ============================================================================ 3. CORE IRAF REVISIONS SUMMARY ============================================================================ This section describes changes to tasks in the IRAF core system other than routine bug fixes. New Tasks --------- N/A Existing Tasks with New Parameters or New Parameter Defaults ------------------------------------------------------------ N/A Existing Tasks with New Capabilities ------------------------------------ DATAIO EXPORT - Added new zscalem() scaling function. PROTO INTERP - Removed limit on number of input data points, calculations now performed in double precision. ============================================================================== 4. NOAO PACKAGE REVISIONS SUMMARY ============================================================================== This section describes changes to tasks in the NOAO package tasks other than routine bug fixes. New NOAO Package Tasks ---------------------- longslit.lscombine - Combine longslit images onedspec.odcombine - Combine spectra having different wavelength ranges Existing Packages and Tasks with New Parameters or New Parameter Defaults ------------------------------------------------------------------------- daophot.allstar - Added new 'version' param controlling matrix inversion algorithm for certain datasets. onedspec.dispcor - Added new 'blank' param to control output values when there are no input values, i.e. out-of-bounds data longslit.transform - Added the parameters "minput" and "moutput". This allows masks to be transformed using the same transformation as the data. The transformation procedures were modified to allow doing this efficiently; i.e. doing it in parallel with the data transformation using the same internal coordinate lookup maps. longslit.transform - Added the parameter "blank" to allow setting the value for output pixels interpolated from outside the input image. The value INDEF produces the old behavior or extrapolating from the nearest edge pixel in the input image. Existing Tasks with New Capabilities ------------------------------------ N/A