NRAO AIPS++ Users Group Meeting - PRELIMINARY AGENDA

Date: 2003-10-8 (Wednesday)
Time: 1300 MDT
Video Hub: CV-conf
Rooms: SOC317/CV311/GB241/TUCN505

AIPS++ Threat Level is: Yellow = Elevated
  [Evil forces are afoot, as always.]

Agenda:

1. NAUG News

   o SS2 has been delayed but will be available next week for testing.
     At this point the NAUG will start its testing cycle.

     *Action Item: Joe and the team will provide example scripts for the
      new functionality to be tested.

   o Bob Zavala has joined the NAUG.  He will be jumping in to the deep
     end testing VLA stuff.

2. AIPS++/ISD Status Report

   o Bug fixing and documentation contines as SS2 is still being built.
     Check-in's for SS3 development will commence next week.

   o We will shift the Stable Snapshot release schedule back two weeks
     in order to move it off the NRAO proposal deadline cycle (Feb1, Jun1,
     Oct1).  This will start with SS4 on 15 Jan 2004.

   o We no longer provide CD releases of AIPS++ (at least for the time being)
     and our ISO image is out of date.  We have been discussing how we want
     to deal with distribution in the near future.

   o Discussions have continued with the former consortium partners ATNF
     and NFRA regarding mutual development of AIPS++.  It appears that an 
     official MOU has been nixed by upper NRAO management, but we hope to 
     continue unofficial collaboration with the partners.

3. ALMA

   o Debra's testing is scheduled to occur mid-January 2004.  We plan to
     deliver a Stable Snapshot SS4 for this test on Jan 15.  The NAUG should
     have exercised most if not all of the testables by that time using the
     SS3 (01Dec03) stable.

   o Debra has compiled a user test definition for Jan 2004 testing.  It
     consists of four datasets and four NAUG testers (Shepherd, Myers,
     Zavala, and Brisken) and four ALMA testers.  See:

   http://www.aoc.nrao.edu/~dshepher/alma/offline.tests/Jan04.TestPlan.26sep04

     for details.

   o ALMA data formats (based on the MS) have been discussed in a series of
     memos.  See:

     http://projectoffice.aips2.nrao.edu/alma/discussion.html

   o Since the last meeting there was a Mini-ALMA Week.  We will try to get
     a summary of what went on there from someone.

4. EVLA

   o Bryan has assumed his position as Software Project Scientist (or
     something to that effect) for the EVLA as of Oct 1.  One of the tasks
     will be to bring the EVLA Post-processing requirements docs up to the
     auditing stage.  We should also decide what to do with the VLA Audit
     that we carried out earlier this year.

   o It would be good to define some (E)VLA based testing along the lines
     of the ALMA testing (see above).  Perhaps an L-band continuum dataset
     and an HI dataset could be found, along with testers (Fomalont &
     Hibbard?).

5. Main Event - Presentations and Discussion Items

   o Sanjay will discuss gridding optimization and its impact on imager 
     performance.  See his document on this topic, available at:

     http://www.aoc.nrao.edu/~smyers/aips++/reports/sanjay-gridding.ps.gz

   o Upcoming discussion items:

     - Visualization (Brisken, 12Nov?)

6. AIPS++ Developments - see latest targets and info at Project Office:
     http://projectoffice.aips2.nrao.edu/

   o Specific development items (for SS2 build 19.156):

     *Performance: I/O improvements implemented.  See

      http://aips2.nrao.edu/projectoffice/imager.ps

     *Performance: calibrater improvements implemented. See

      http://aips2.nrao.edu/projectoffice/calibrater.pdf

     *Infrastructure: MS split capability. See

      http://projectoffice.aips2.nrao.edu/split.html

     *Calibration: correction for specified zenith opacity is available in
      the calibrater.setapply function using the 'TOPAC' type and opacity
      argument. See the calibrater documentation for calibrater.setapply in 
      the daily URM doc tree:

      http://aips2.nrao.edu/daily/docs/user/Refman/Refman.html

     *Calibration: iramcalibrater functionality is now mostly integrated 
      into calibrater.  There are calibrater.setsolvegainspline and 
      calibrater.setsolvepoly functions, and 'BPOLY' and 'GSPLINE' types
      in calibrater.setapply.  See the calibrater documentation for calibrater
      in the daily URM doc tree:

      http://aips2.nrao.edu/daily/docs/user/Refman/Refman.html

     *Viewer - Dave King has added blinking and slicing functionality to
      the viewer.  There is some documentation under 'Graphical User
      Interface' under the viewerdisplaypanel in the URM (see daily docs)

      http://aips2.nrao.edu/daily/docs/user/Refman/Refman.html

      and a more comprehensive description in the Volume 1 - Basic Tools
      section of Getting Results 
      
      http://aips2.nrao.edu/daily/docs/cookbook/cbvol1/cbvol1.html

      under 3. Display of Data (e.g. 3.10.2 Blinking Between Images).

     *Viewer:  parameters added to cursor readout.  See viewer documentation in

      http://aips2.nrao.edu/daily/docs/user/Refman/Refman.html

   Comments on any of these are welcome.

7. Upcoming meetings and deadlines:
   o 2003 Oct 13         AIPS++ SS2 (delayed from Oct1)
   o 2003 Oct 13-15      ADASS Conference (Strasbourg, France)
   o 2003 Nov 14-15      ALMA SSR face-to-face (Socorro, NM)
   o 2003 Dec 1          AIPS++ SS3
   o 2004 Jan 15         AIPS++ SS4
   o 2004 Jan 15         ALMA User Testing begins?
   o 2004 Apr 1          ALMA Release 1.1
   o 2004 Jun 1          ALMA CDR2 = Judgement Day!

   The agendas for past NAUG meetings are archived at:
   http://www.aoc.nrao.edu/~smyers/aips++/agenda/

   The minutes for past NAUG meetings are archived at:
   http://www.aoc.nrao.edu/~smyers/aips++/minutes/