15 June 2007

First release that uses numpy

Platform Support

Normally, platform support issues do not apply to Python tasks, as most Python code will run on all platforms on which Python has been installed. This distribution was tested to correctly support installation on Linux, Mac OS X, and Solaris, while also being provided for installation under Windows. The single exception is that the text-based epar functionality now available in PyRAF (in addition to the already existing GUI-based epar) is not available under Solaris, and likely will never be.

Documentation

Documentation for these tasks has been consolidated into a single location complete with a index viewable as a local web page. The documentation includes any available user guides and API documentation generated using 'EPYDOC' for the modules or packages. This index can be accessed using:

--> import stscidocs
--> stscidocs.viewdocs()
--> stscidocs.help()

This will automatically bring up the default web browser application to display the index page. All the available documentation for software packaged with this distribution can be accessed through this interface, as this documentation resides locally upon installation.

Python Environment

Python 2.3 or later is required. We recommend using the latest version of Python if there is a choice (2.5.x)

PyRAF 1.4

• Support for IRAF ECL-style error handling
• Added unlearn method to IrafPkg class so that all tasks in package can be unlearned if the package is loaded.
• No dependence on Numeric (now uses numpy) (ticket #36)
  
• Added epsilon variable to PyRAF to match that of IRAF (for testing equality of floats). (ticket #62)
• Support for next statement in for loops (ticket #60)
  

• lpar now encloses strings in quotes (ticket #58)
• lpar prints out non-hidden parameters before hidden parameters.
• The real() and int() functions were not robust enough (not as forgiving as the IRAF CL versions) (ticket #61)
• Problem opening parameter filename specifications that use iraf variables as part of path. (ticket #64)
  
• setup.py failing to find X11 libraries when using --with-x= flag on 64-bit systems.
• PyRAF was ignoring the IPython user configuration options.
• Added global names like 'yes' and 'no' to the ipython shell.
• IPython new support for unicode broke PyRAF (within ipython).
• Overloaded IPython's cd command with that of PyRAF.
  
• Fixed the execution of long command lines in the ipython shell.
• Exception thrown when fscan can't convert a string to the type of the receiving variable (no longer raises exception). (ticket #63)
  

PyFITS 1.1

The following changes were made:

• Modified to use either NUMPY or NUMARRAY.
  
• New file writing modes have been provided to allow streaming data to extensions without requiring the whole output extension image in memory. See documentation on StreamingHDU.
• Improvements to minimize byteswapping and memory usage by byteswapping in place.
  
• Now supports ':' characters in filenames.
• Handles keyboard interrupts during long operations.
• Preserves the byte order of the input image arrays. 
  

numdisplay 1.3

imagestats 1.1

Pytools

• Deleted extraneous NAXIS keyword from primary header in fileutil.getHeader (if no data in primary). This corrects a problem interpreting the reference WCS with the latest PyFITS.
• The function readAsnTable has been modified to recognize the case when only rotations are provided without shifts for application to the data.
  
• Added testtil.py to pytools. This module extends the functionality o f the unittest module by providing a FPTestCase class to facilitate floating point and array comparisons, as well as some other convenience tools.
• Corrected numcombine.py bug arising from a name collision.
  

Applications

MultiDrizzle 3.0

• The 'group' parameter is now added by PyDrizzle so it no longer needs to be populated.
• A new feature was added to Multidrizzle.  This new feature allows for the automatic generation of inverse variance maps for weighting the final mosaic of ACS and WFPC2 data.  If the user specifies 'IVM' as the final_wht_type but does not supply inverse variance maps, Multidrizzle will automatically generate these images based upon the detector's characteristics and reference flatfield file.  This is an experimental feature that has not been fully tested.
  

• Fixed a problem with IRAF INDEF value not working on 64-bit systems
• Added code to guard against users supplying an integer value for the runfile parameter.
• Now properly passes the 'output' parameter to PyDrizzle for the single file input case.

PyDrizzle 6.0

• Moving target support has been implemented.
• PyDrizzle can now be run without doing a distortion correction.
  
• The in_units parameter has been exposed to select the units of the input image. The allowable values are 'counts' (default) and 'cps'.
• The default WFPC2 idckey set to 'idctab'.
  
• Now writes all output images in FITS byte order in order to minimize memory usage.

• Problems handling binned images and distortion models provided through cubic coefficient files.
• Problems with the value of BUNITS keyword depending on user-supplied values for output units.
  

RNLINCOR

SAACLEAN

STIS Data Analysis

•  in stisnoise; the code referred to 'ampl' instead of 'iraf.stisnoise.ampl', and this resulted in incorrect values of fwhm, one of the output parameters computed by stisnoise.
• Changes were made to wx2d to improve the speed by using array operations when possible.