Dec 2012 (v12.8.0 release)
· Major rewrite and expansion of the ‘Walkthrough’ section, including examples with features that are new for v12.8.0.
· New ‘parallel’ command.
· New models compmag and comptb.
· New ‘test’ option for the ‘statistic’ command, and new choices for statistics.
· Enhanced the ‘Poisson data’ subsection of the ‘Overview’.
· New <critical beta> option for ‘method’ and ‘fit’ commands.
· New options for the ‘chain’ command: ‘type’ and ‘walkers’.
· Added several sections in Appendix B for new statistics.
· Added ‘plot goodness’ and ‘thin’ option to ‘plot chain’.
· Note on grouped spectra added to fakeit.
· Note on uniform binning added to gsmooth model.
· Updated description for simpl convolution model.
· New tclout options: ‘tclout ignore’ and ‘tclout goodness sims’. Also added units to ‘tclout lumin’ description.
· Added to ‘ftest’ a warning against using on a multiplicative component.
· Added clarification on trace element abundances when using ‘apec’ and ‘vapec’ models.
Feb 2012 (v12.7.1 release)
· Compps, eqpair, and nteea models descriptions modified for change in handling Compton reflection.
· Corrections made to the model strings table for the ‘xset’ command.
· Added RFLABD Fortran wrapper to the Appendix F table.
· For ‘rmodel ‘ command, the ‘none’ option now also resets responses to their initial state.
· Initpackage and lmod are now supported on Cygwin. The “static_initpackage” workaround has been removed.
· New ‘tclout’ options: nullhyp and rerror. Tclout eqwidth, flux, and lumin now also have an ‘errsims’ option for returning error values array.
· New additive models: eplogpar, gadem, vgadem, logpar, optxagn, optxagnf, pexmon.
· Correction to parameter description in kerrconv model.
· Minor rewording in cflux model description to improve clarity.
· For apec and bapec models, replaced ATOMDB 2.0 with version 2.0.1.
· Correction to description of par3 in gabs model.
May 2011 (v12.7.0 release)
· Appendix B, formerly limited to a discussion of the Cash statistic, has been expanded to a generalized description of statistics used in XSPEC, including the new ‘pgstat’ option.
· New model pages: cplinear, eqpair, zigm, zashift, zmshift.
· Statistic command now allows for setting of individual spectra, also has new low-counts option ‘pgstat’.
· The ‘error’, ‘flux’, and ‘eqwidth’ command descriptions now include mention of Monte Carlo Markov Chains. The ‘chain’ command now also refers back to these three.
· For ‘cpd’ command, added clarification for ‘/xs’ vs. ‘/xw’.
· Apec and bapec models now have vvapec and bvvapec variants.
· For bexrav, bexriv, pexrav, pexriv, and reflect models: corrected errors in *_PRECISION xset keywords. For bexrav and bexriv, also fixed typo in definition of high-energy cutoff.
· In ‘bayes’ command, new prior types added.
· For cabs model, added Klein-Nishina corrections.
· In ‘pileup’ model, clarified the meaning of the PSF fraction parameter and added warning to turn off renorming.
· New ‘version’ option added to tclout.
· Fixed typo in equation for redshifted variant zpcfabs on pcfabs model page.
· Correction to E units in description of grbm additive model component.
· In newpar command description, removed obsolete line about the setting of soft limits outside of hard limits to allow a parameter to equal its hard limit.