[fitsbits] xpa/funtools patch release

[Eric Mandel]

		    Funtools: minimal buy-in FITS support
		 	 Patch Release 1.2.3
		
		    XPA: minimal buy-in messaging
		 	 Patch Release 2.1.5

		            12 January 2004

	            High Energy Astrophysics Division
		Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics


Summary
-------

We are pleased to announce the availability of new public releases of
Funtools (1.2.3) and XPA (2.1.5).  These are patch releases: users
are encouraged to upgrade at their convenience. More information about
both packages (including download links) is available at the Web site:

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

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

Funtools, is a "minimal buy-in" FITS library and utility package.
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.

Changes in this release include:

* Improved handling of parentheses in filter expressions.

* Improved rules for handling comma separators in filter expressions.

* Changed the name of the routine _FunColumnSelect to FunColumnSelectArr,
  in order to emphasize that it is not a private routine.

* Funcalc local variables in the compiled program now use a "__" prefix
  to avoid conflicts with user-defined variables.

* By default, fundisp will display integer image data as floats if the
  BSCALE and BZERO header parameters are present.

* Generated man pages from the html pages. These are installed
  automatically at build time.

* A number of minor bug and security fixes were made, as well as a new port
  to the Intel icc compiler.

* Upgraded autoconf to 2.57.

For a list of changes in this release, see:

	http://hea-www.harvard.edu/saord/funtools/changelog.html

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.

Changes in this patch release include:

* Added ack=false to XPAInfo() (and corresponding -n to xpainfo)
  so that client does not wait for a response from the server.

* Generated man pages from the html pages. These are installed
  automatically at build time.

* Under Windows, the Tcl event-handling code now blocks for 1/1000 of a
  second instead of not blocking at all (which inadvertently used 100%
  of the cpu in ds9).

* A number of minor bug and security fixes were made, as well as a new port
  to the Intel icc compiler.

* Upgraded Tcl/Tk support to 8.4 and autoconf to 2.57.

For a full list of changes in this and previous releases, see:

        http://hea-www.harvard.edu/saord/xpa/changelog.html

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

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 Linux, Solaris, Alpha OSF1, Mac OSX (darwin) and various flavors
of Windows (NT/2000/ME/XP) using Cygwin. 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>

Both packages are available for download from the Web site:

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

Alternatively, they can be retrieved directly via anonymous ftp from
sao-ftp.harvard.edu in the pub/rd directory.

(NB: You must have Cygwin (www.cygwin.com) installed to build under Windows.)

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

Work on these projects was performed with support from the Chandra
X-ray Science Center (NAS8-39073) and the Chandra High Resolution Camera
(NAS8-38248).

Mailing List
------------

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---------------------------------------------------

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						Eric Mandel
						eric at cfa.harvard.edu