Relationship to HEAsoft

HEAsoft is the amalgamated distribution of XANADU (which includes XSPEC) and FTOOLS. FTOOLS contains general purpose tools for manipulating files in FITS format. It also contains specialized tools for spectral and response files, and mission-specific tools for dealing with the data products of particular X-Ray satellites. Some of these tools are listed in Chapter 7. As well as being available as a standalone package, XSPEC is also distributed as part of the HEAsoft package. If FTOOLS (V5.3) is already installed on your system, XSPEC can be built with (or linked to) the libraries provided with it. If not, the (standalone) XSPEC distribution package can be used to build those libraries. The FTOOLS package is available by anonymous ftp from

ftp://legacy.gsfc.nasa.gov .