NRAO AIPS++ Users Group Meeting Date: 2003-10-22 (Wednesday) Time: 1300 MDT Video Hub: CV-conf Rooms: SOC317/CV311/GB241/TUCN505 Draft Minutes: 1. NAUG News o SS2 has been further delayed due to some problems in calibrater. It should be available this week. *Update: This was made available on Oct 27. To use, setup your environment via . /aips++/stable_ss2/aipsinit.sh or source /aips++/stable_ss2/aipsinit.csh and then invoke aips++ as usual. o Joe and the team will provide example scripts for the new functionality to be tested. These will appear on a new testing page. *Update: this is available from the project office page http://projectoffice.aips2.nrao.edu/ under the SS2 targets. Click on the link under the "Ready" items in the "NAUG Test" column. You will find links to the relevant docs, scripts, and test data. Happy testing! 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 as soon as the stable is blessed. *Note: CVS will be online end of the first week of Nov, so checkins will be done using this as a trial. o We have been discussing how we want to deal with distribution in the near future (we no longer provide CD releases of AIPS++, and and our ISO image is out of date as a basis for aupdate). We are investigating options such as supplying .rpm files. *Note: this will be available for Linux only. o Discussions have continued with the former consortium partners ATNF and NFRA regarding mutual development of AIPS++. Joe met with some of the developers at ADASS, and it appears there is willingness to move forward with an informal partnership (without an MOU). *Note: there was a visit to the AOC by Win Brouw on Oct 31 (scary, eh?). Useful discussions occurred, and will be summarized by Joe in some minutes later on. 3. ALMA o The current plan is still that the NAUG should have exercised most if not all of the testables by that time using the SS3 (01Dec03) stable. 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.21oct03.txt is the latest version) for details. Debra will be providing an updated "IRAM with AIPS++" cookbook by the end of November (for the use of those trying out IRAM datasets). These tests will use general AIPS++ functionality (ie. not in the iramcalibrater module) wherever possible. 4. EVLA o The EVLA Post-processing requirements document was completed, and an audit is the next order of business. It is not clear what the timescale for this should be. *Action Item: STM should clean up and finish the VLA Audit we did earlier this year. o John Hibbard and Ed Fomalont have agreed to take charge of testing the (E)VLA HI line and L-band continuum datasets, which will parallel the ALMA testing. 5. Main Event - Presentations and Discussion Items o Joe (and others who was there) recapped ighlights from ADASS. *Note: there was a big ALMA presence there, but no EVLA presence. Maybe EVLA should target next time which is in Pasadena I think. o Upcoming discussion items: - Visualization (Brisken, 12Nov?) 6. AIPS++ Developments - see latest targets and info at Project Office: http://projectoffice.aips2.nrao.edu/ NOTE -- these are the same as last meeting. o Specific development items (for SS2 build 19.156): *Performance: I/O improvements implemented. See http://aips2.nrao.edu/projectoffice/imager.ps STATUS: NAUG test ready. *Performance: calibrater improvements implemented. See http://aips2.nrao.edu/projectoffice/calibrater.pdf STATUS: NAUG test ready. *Infrastructure: MS split capability. See http://projectoffice.aips2.nrao.edu/split.html STATUS: developer testing. *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 STATUS: developer testing. *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 STATUS: developer testing. *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). STATUS: developer testing. *Viewer: parameters added to cursor readout. See viewer documentation in http://aips2.nrao.edu/daily/docs/user/Refman/Refman.html STATUS: developer testing. Comments on any of these are welcome. 7. Upcoming meetings and deadlines: 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/