[fitsbits] Public Release: ds9, xpa, funtools

Mon Apr 22 12:00:51 EDT 2002

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		    DS9: astronomical image display
		 	 Public Release 2.1

		    XPA: minimal buy-in messaging
		 	 Public Release 2.1

		    Funtools: minimal buy-in FITS support
		 	 Public Release 1.1

		            22 April 2002

	                 SAO/HEAD R&D Group
		    http://hea-www.harvard.edu/RD

Summary
-------

We are pleased to announce the availability of new public releases of
DS9 (2.1), XPA (2.1), and Funtools (1.1).  More information about these
packages (including download links) is available at our Web site:

	http://hea-www.harvard.edu/RD

DS9 Description
---------------

DS9 is our current offering in the popular SAOimage/SAOtng display
series.  It supports FITS images and binary tables, multiple frame
buffers, region manipulation, and many scale algorithms and
colormaps. It provides for easy communication with external analysis
tasks, and is highly configurable and extensible.

DS9 also supports advanced features such as mosaic images, true
PostScript printing, image tiling and blinking, colormap manipulation,
scaling, arbitrary zoom, rotation, pan, and a variety of coordinate
systems. It supports FTP and HTTP access.  The GUI for DS9 is
user-configurable. GUI elements such as the coordinate display,
panner, magnifier, horizontal and vertical graphs, button bar, and
colorbar can be configured via menus or the command line.

DS9 is a Tk/Tcl application that utilizes our new SAOTk widget set. It
also incorporates the X Public Access (XPA) mechanism to allow external
processes to access and control its data, GUI functions, and algorithms.
One exciting new feature of DS9 is the ability to display multiple
images in tile mode, where each image is scaled, oriented, and rotated
to match WCS parameters. 

New features in this release include:

* Support for FITS 3D data cubes.

* Support for HST, WFPC2, and WCS-based mosaics.

* Improved support for IRAF mosaics.

* Expanded support for integrating analysis programs.

* Expanded support for regions.

* Additional scale algorithms: histogram equalization and median filter.

* Support for real-time display.

XPA Description
---------------

The XPA messaging system provides seamless communication between many
kinds of Unix programs, including X programs and Tcl/Tk programs.  It
also provides an easy way for users to communicate with these
XPA-enabled programs by executing XPA client commands in the shell or
by utilizing such commands in scripts.  Because XPA works both at the
programming level and the shell level, it is a powerful tool for
unifying any analysis environment: users and programmers have great
flexibility in choosing the best level or levels at which to access
XPA services, and client access can be extended or modified at any time.

A program such as DS9 becomes an XPA-enabled server by defining named
points of public access through which data and commands can be
exchanged with other client programs (and users).  Using standard TCP
sockets as a transport mechanism, XPA supports both single-point and
broadcast messaging to and from these servers.  It supports direct
communication between XPA clients and servers, or indirect
communication via an intermediate message bus emulation
program. Host-based access control is implemented, as is as the
ability to communicate with XPA servers across a network.

New features in this release include:

* Support for proxy access to XPA-enabled programs (e.g. ds9) situated
  behind a firewall (useful for NVO-type applications).

* Improved support for allowing remote machines access rights to the
  XPA access points (useful for NVO-type applications).

* Ability for XPAAccess() routine and xpaaccess program to contact XPA
  servers directly instead of simply contacting the XPA namer server.

* Support for a clipboard access point that allows clients to store ASCII
  state information in an XPA-enabled server.

* Improved support for Windows platform, as well as new support for Mac OSX.

Funtools Description
--------------------

Funtools, is a "minimal buy-in" FITS library and utility package from
the SAO/HEAD R&D group.  The Funtools library provides simplified
access to FITS images and binary tables, as well as to raw array and
binary event lists. The Funtools utilities provide high-level support
for processing astronomical data.

The main goal of the Funtools project has been to develop a minimal buy-in
FITS library for researchers who are occasional (but serious) coders.  In
this case, "minimal buy-in" means "easy to learn, easy to use, and easy to
re-learn next month". We have tried to achieve this goal by emphasizing two
essential capabilities.  The first is the ability to develop FITS programs
without knowing much about FITS, i.e., without having to deal with the
arcane rules for generating a properly formatted FITS file.  The second is
to support the use of already-familiar C/Unix facilities, especially C
structs and Unix stdio. Taken together, these two capabilities should allow
researchers to leverage their existing programming expertise while
minimizing the need to learn new and complex coding rules.

New features in this release include:

* Funtools programs now accept gzip'ed files as valid input.

* Improved security via replacement of system() function.

* fundisp, funcnts, funhist can output starbase/rdb format (tabs instead
  of spaces between columns, form-feeds between tables, etc).

* Improved support for Windows platform, as well as new support for Mac OSX.

Platforms and Availability
--------------------------

DS9 is a stand-alone application that requires no installation or
support files.  Binary executables of DS9 currently exist for Solaris,
Linux, LinuxPPC, SGI, Alpha OSF1, HP-UX, MacOSX (darwin) and
Windows 95/98/NT/2000/XP (all supporting a consistent set of GUI and
functional capabilities).

XPA and Funtools both consist of a library and a set of user programs.
Therefore, they are most appropriately built from source.  They have
been ported to Solaris, Linux, LinuxPPC, SGI, Alpha OSF1, Mac OSX (darwin)
and Windows 95/98/NT/2000. Once the source code tar file is retrieved,
XPA or Funtools can be built and installed easily using standard commands:

	./configure --prefix=<installdir> 	# configuration
	make					# build the software
	make install				# install in <installdir>

All three packages are available for download from our Web site:

	http://hea-www.harvard.edu/RD

Alternatively, they can be retrieved directly via anonymous ftp from
sao-ftp.harvard.edu in the pub/rd directory.  Source code is available
for all three products, though we recommend using the binary distribution
of DS9 where possible.

NB: DS9 and XPA are matched. If you upgrade one, please upgrade the other
as well (assuming you use both).

Acknowledgments
----------------

Much of this code was developed at SAO by the HEAD Software R&D group,
with the significant help of collaborators and beta test users around
the world. We especially would like to acknowledge help from the
following DS9 collaborators:

	De Clarke         (UCO/Lick)
	Maureen Conroy    (SAO)
	Uwe Lammers       (ESA)
	Steve Murray      (SAO)
	Frank Primini     (SAO)
	John Roll         (SAO)
	Peter Teuben      (University of Maryland)

and code contributions from:

	D.S. Berry        (Starlink)
	L. Brown          (HEASARC)
	Mark Calabretta   (ATNF)
	Mike Fitzpatrick  (NOAO)
	Doug Mink         (SAO)
	Doug Tody         (NOAO)
	Steffen Traeger   (Siemens)
	P.T. Wallace      (Starlink)
	R.F. Warren-Smith (Starlink)
	Peter Wilson      (HEASARC)

Work on these projects was performed at SAO/HEAD under a grant from
NASA's Applied Information System Research Program (NAG5-9484), with
significant support from the Chandra High Resolution Camera (NAS8-38248),
the Chandra X-ray Science Center (NAS8-39073), and the Chandra Telescope
Scientist (NAG8-1607).

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