[fitsbits] SAOImage DS9 release 5.7

[William Joye]

SAOImage DS9: Astronomical Image Display
Public Release 5.7
15 Oct 2009

Summary
---------

We are pleased to announce the availability of the new public release  
of SAOImage DS9 5.7.  More information about this package (including   
download links) is available at our web site: http://hea-www.harvard.edu/RD/ds9/

DS9 Description
---------

SAOImage DS9 is an astronomical imaging and data visualization  
application. DS9 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 is a stand-alone application. It requires no installation or  
support files. Versions of DS9 currently exist for Linux,  Windows,  
and MacOSX . All versions and platforms support a consistent set of  
GUI and functional capabilities.

DS9 supports advanced features such as multiple frame buffers, mosaic  
images, tiling, blinking, geometric markers, colormap manipulation,  
scaling, arbitrary zoom, rotation, pan, and a variety of coordinate  
systems.

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.

New features in this release
---------

MacOSX 10.6: DS9 has been ported to Snow Leopard and binaries are  
provided for both Aqua and X11.

MacOSX FITS Bin Table Filters: The DS9 for MacOSX can now filter FITS  
Bin Tables without XTools installed This feature is only supported for  
intel based platforms.

Windows FITS Bin Table Filters: The DS9 for Windows can now filter  
FITS Bin Tables without cygwin installed.

SAMP: DS9 now supports two private SAMP methods, ds9.get and ds9.set.  
These methods implement full XPA functionality. ds9.set maybe called  
via notification, call and call/wait. ds9.get can only be called via  
call and call/wait. For further information, please see the SAMP  
documentation.

DS9 Regions VOTable format: DS9 Regions can now be loaded and saved as  
a VOTable.