fv FITS File Viewer

[William Pence]

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        First Release of fv: An Interactive Fits File Viewer

fv is a general software tool written in Tcl/Tk which can be used for
viewing, plotting, and (in the next release) editing FITS format data
files. This first release of fv has a graphical user interface (GUI)
that provides spreadsheet-like widgets to display data in any FITS
table or image, a text widget to display FITS header keywords and a
graph widget to display images. In addition, users can plot values in
two or more columns of a FITS table/image and export the plot to a
postscript file. Users can also save listings of table/image data to an
ASCII file.

The future release(s) of fv will allow users to edit any keywords or
data values in the FITS file and save the changes.  The current limited
image/graph display will be greatly enhanced and an interface to the
SAOTNG display tool will also be provided.

fv is currently supported on most Unix platforms; in the future we hope
to also support IBM and Macintoch PCs.  fv is being distributed as a
standard part of the latest FTOOLS 3.6 distribution, but is also
available as a standalone program for those who do not want the entire
FTOOLS package.

Either FTOOLS or fv may be obtained from the HEASARC (High Energy
Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center) FTOOLS Web site at:

         http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/ftools

Any comments or questions about fv should be sent to
ftoolshelp at athena.gsfc.nasa.gov.

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