****************************************************************************** RELEASE NOTES FOR HEASOFT 6.4.1 April 15, 2008 ****************************************************************************** The HEASoft 6.4.1 release is primarily driven by the release of the Suzaku (version 8) software, but also includes Suzaku-related updates to xselect/extractor, a handful of bug fixes made since the 6.4 release, and the latest patch level of Xspec v12 (with the latest version of CCFits). As before, configuration-related changes thoughout the package means that users who already have HEASoft v6.x.x installed will need to completely replace their software installation; there is no clean way to simply overlay this new release or to update an existing installation. ****************************************************************************** CONFIGURATION ****************************************************************************** - Change name of unpackaged top-level directory to heasoft-X.X.X instead of headas-X.X.X. - Use "-libcX.X.X" suffix on installed platform-specific directory name for all Linux OS, not just (32-bit) PC Linux. - Various improvements in handling compiler choices, optimization settings, X11 tests, etc. ****************************************************************************** ATFUNCTIONS ****************************************************************************** New version 3.0: - Bug fix in atInterpolateQuat(), judging (sin_phi < EPS) as same q-parameter ****************************************************************************** CALTOOLS ****************************************************************************** - Allow "http://" syntax in $CALDB environment variable. ****************************************************************************** CCFITS ****************************************************************************** New version 2.0: - The scale and zero set functions (public in HDU) will now write or update the keywords rather than call fits_set_bscale. They also now check for allowed image data type changes as a result of changing the bscale and bzero values. Added private zeroInit/scaleInit functions for use in HDUCreator. Also added new public function, HDU::suppressScaling. (01/08) - Changed access of HDU's bitpix set function from public to private. This requires that HDUCreator be a friend class of HDU. (01/08) - Removed the redundant non-const version of FITS::filePointer and made the const version public instead of private. It also no longer returns by reference. (01/08) - Reorganized ImageExt<T> constructor/assignment visibility and added virtual declaration to destructor. Also added docs. - Added #include statements for <cstring> and <iterator> to allow compilation on g++ 4.3 (patch submitted by Aurelien Jarno) (01/08) - Added the function getRowsize to the Table class, a wrapper for fits_get_rowsize. (Patrik Jonsson) - Made the const version of the Column parent accessor function public, and removed the non-const version. - Reorganized and improved keyword modification functions in HDU and Keyword classes. This includes new HDU addKey, copyAllKeys, and keywordCategories functions, and the removal of HDU::setKeyWord. Also fully implemented the Keyword value set function, with template specialization similar to the value get function, and added doc descriptions for both of these. (01/08) - Bug fix to 2 of the 3 constructors which call the create() function. If create() returns false, they need to throw a CantCreate exception. They were appending the new primary hdu as an extension to the pre-existing file. (01/08) - To eliminate unnecessary dependences upon CFITSIO internals, removed the FITSUtil::copyFitsPtr function and everything using it: FITS copy ctor and clone functions, FITSBase copy ctor and clone functions. (Note that copyFitsPtr was never properly impelemented in its attempt to perform a deep copy of a fitsfile pointer.) (12/07) - Added 4 new functions to HDU class to provide an interface to CFITSIO's checksum capabilities. (12/07) - Error messages are now stored in the FitsException base class, which allows them to be retrieved and copied with the public function message(). (12/07) - For Column write functions (both scalar and vector), all cases where the nulval pointer = 0 were treated as (*nulval) = 0 in the lower-level calls to fits_write_colnull. This effectively meant there was no way for the user to turn off null value checking. (12/07) - Calling FITS constructor in Write mode on a read-only file was causing a segmentation fault. (12/07) ****************************************************************************** XSELECT & EXTRACTOR ****************************************************************************** - When running extract on Suzaku XIS event files convert 5x5 files to 3x3 if input files are a mixture. This ensures that any output event file is a correct 3x3 file. ****************************************************************************** XSPEC 12 ****************************************************************************** HEASoft 6.4.1 includes Xspec v12.4.0x. See http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/xanadu/xspec/issues/issues.html for information about v12.4.0x and to get patches beyond level 'x'. ============================================================================= MISSION-SPECIFIC SOFTWARE: ============================================================================= ****************************************************************************** SUZAKU ****************************************************************************** Suzaku software Version 8 - Changes since HEASoft v6.4: -------------- General tools -------------- aebarycen - Modified to ignore TIME=0.0 in column. --------------------- HXD specific tools: --------------------- hxdarfgen - Bug fix: The par file hxdarfgen.par was lacking of some parameters (create_name etc.). hxdmkwamspec - Bug fix: Correction in the way the exposure was calculated when the TIME_MODE = 0 in the HXD-WAM data. --------------------- XIS specific tools: --------------------- xissim - Ray-tracing library version up, preparing for the forthcoming CALDB updates of XRT. The XRT mis-alignments and scattering parameters are removed from the parameter file, "xissim.par". Fix Keywords RADECSYS EQUINOX in the output file xissimarfgen - Ray-tracing library version up, preparing for the forthcoming CALDB updates of XRT. The XRT mis-alignments and scattering parameters are removed from the parameter file, "xissimarfgen.par". - WMAP image is usable for "source_image" when source_mode=DETFITS. - WMAP image is usable for "regfileN" when region_mode=DETFITS or SKYFITS. xispi - Bug fix: Correction to retrive appropriate CALDB file when processing the NXB event files containg long time periods. This bug do not affect the the normal scinece data file. xisnxbgen - WMAP image is usable for "regfile" when region_mode=DETFITS or SKYFITS. HEASoft / FTOOLS Help Desk If FTOOLS has been useful in your research, please reference this site (https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/ftools) and use the ASCL reference for HEASoft [ascl:1408.004] or the ASCL reference for the original FTOOLs paper [ascl:9912.002]: Blackburn, J. K. 1995, in ASP Conf. Ser., Vol. 77, Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems IV, ed. R. A. Shaw, H. E. Payne, and J. J. E. Hayes (San Francisco: ASP), 367. Web page maintained by: Bryan K. Irby HEASARC Home | Observatories | Archive | Calibration | Software | Tools | Students/Teachers/Public Last modified: Thursday, 20-Nov-2008 15:07:56 EST |