NRAO AIPS++ Users Group Meeting - MINUTES

Date: 2005-03-30 (Wednesday)
Time: 1300 MST
Video Hub: SOC-conf (CV should call in to Socorro)
Rooms: SOC317/CV311

NOTE: THIS NAUG MEETING WAS POSTPONED FROM ITS NORMAL DAY 3/23.

Send corrections and additions to smyers

1. NAUG News

   o general news (Steve)

2. AIPS++/ISD Status Report

   o stable SS11 and SS10.5 patch status (Joe)	

     - SS10.5 has been successfully patched and will be the basis of the
       ALMA test.  This is the version obtained by invoking standard
       "stable" at the AOC for example.

     - SS11 has yet to be tagged (Friday?), and will be available as
       "stable2b" (e.g. /aips++/stable2b/).  There are a number of items
       to be tested by the NAUG, including: table plotting and history.
       See http://projectoffice.aips2.nrao.edu/ss11.html

   o defect status (Joe)

     - A defect day was held at the AOC on 3/29.  A number of defects were
       fixed, though not as many as was hoped due to Joe supplying a
       juice bar instead of the traditional supply of Jolt cola and cheetos.
       The number of defects in the system is under 800 (with a total of
       defects plus enhancements under 1000).

   o development targets (Joe)

     - SS12 targets are posted.  This cycle will be a bit lighter in
       development than others due to the overhead of supporting the
       testing (ALMA and EVLA) plus a number of vacations that fall in
       this period.

3. ALMA

   o Test A2005.1/ALMA TST2.0 (Feb05/Apr05) testing targets (Joe, Steve)

     - see Main Event below

   o Test A2005.2/ALMA TST2.1 (Sep05/Oct05) deliverables (Joe, Steve)

     - will focus on single-baseline commissioning at ATF.  Some targets
       (single-baseline fringe fitting) now in development.

4. EVLA

   o Test E2005.1 (Apr05) test plans & issues (Joe, Steve, Sanjay)

     - Due to overhead on Joe and a couple of other key people, we 
       have decided it was best to stagger the EVLA testing from the
       ALMA testing by 1 month.  Thus the first test (E2005.1) will
       start on May 15, with the second test starting Nov 15.

     - Testers will be Walter Brisken, Bryan Butler, Ed Fomalont,
       Gustaaf van Moorsel, and possibly Frazer Owen.

     - Focus is wide-field imaging and deconvolution.  It looks like
       we will have the capability to deal with putting fields on 
       flanking sources (far out in the beam away from the main image
       area).

     - This test uses deep L-band field datasets from Ed and Frazer.
       Note that these take a long time to process due to image size
       and deconvolution.  We will get hold of comparison images from
       AIPS, and should also have some AIPS timing available also.

   o development plan & requirements (Steve, Sanjay)

     - We need to revisit the requirements (to check completeness and
       priority) and development plans soon.  Action item for Joe,
       Steve, and Bryan.

5. Main Event - Presentations and Discussion Items

   o Update on history stuff (changes based on NAUG recommendations)

     - Most of the changes based on the feedback at the previous NAUG 
       meeting have been incorporated.  The volume of autoflag history
       output is still too high, hopefully that will be fixed soon.
       There are now (SS11) ms.listhistory and ms.writehistory methods
       (rather than being part of ms.summary).  Action Item: Joe will
       provide a prototype history editing procedure.

   o Testing status and pre-testing progress for ALMA Test 2005.1

     Summary of some of the discussion items:

     - The new rpms install easily.  Some testers had some initial problems
       (depending on flavor of RedHat OS) but that seems to have been 
       dealt with now.

     - The scripts provided for pre-testing need better notes.  These
       were based off regression scripts.

     - The external ALMA testers will not be provided with scripts (as per
       the previous test policies).  This generated a lively debate as
       some thought that this was counter-productive (slowing down the 
       process of getting to the point of exploring different avenues) 
       while some thought it was essential (testing the documentation,
       preventing short-cuts during testing).  It may be that EVLA will 
       adopt a different process.

     - Most of the testers commented that the imager.feather function should
       be possible without an MS, since all the information is available in
       the images and PSFs themselves (it is essentially a weighted sum
       in the gridded Fourier plane).  The easiest course would be to 
       allow the construction of an imager tool without an MS (either by
       changing the tool or by constructing with a dummy MS).  This seemed
       to be accepted as reasonable.  A longer term solution might be to
       incorporate this into the image tool (it is co-adding the Fourier
       transforms of the images with weights given by the transforms of the
       PSF images).  It was noted in the future Task-based system this would
       all be transparent to the user (as the details of implementation would
       be hidden from the user).

     - The pre-testing group was having difficulty reproducing Debra's 
       original Orion image.  It was not clear why this was so and it will
       be important to sort this out soon!  We should ask Tim Cornwell about
       this (I believe he helping in the original reduction) before he leaves
       town.

     - There was discussion about adding documentation to the cookbook about
       the proper quality assessments that should be made (e.g. residual
       images, etc.).

     - There were differing opinions on the stability and ease of multi-scale
       clean usage.  Ed found it to be reasonably easy to find workable
       sets of control parameters, while Debra had the opposite experience.
       It may be necessary to provide the external testers with a set of 
       working inputs to this function (a mini-script?).

     - John Hibbard commented that the N4826 data barely needed the
       single-dish addition.  Some questions about flux recovery were
       raised, as it seemed the combined deconvolution recovered a total
       flux between the single-dish and pure interferometer values (rather
       than finding all of the SD flux).  Questions about region setting
       were also raised.

     - Joe noted that feathering was one of the ACS-based Tasks that will
       be available for testing soon (will require ACS installation though).
       Hopefully next meeting Joe can demo some of these tasks!

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

7. Upcoming meetings and deadlines:
   o 2005 Apr 4          External ALMA TST2.0 begins
   o 2005 Apr 13-15      AUI Visiting Committee (CV)
   o 2005 May 12-13      NRAO Users Committee (GB)
   o 2005 May 15         Internal NAUG EVLA test E2005.1 begins
   o 2005 May or June?   ALMA CDR3
   o 2005 Fall           EVLA Software PDR (followed by CDRs)
   o 2005 Oct 15         External ALMA TST2.1
   o 2005 Nov 15         EVLA Test E2005.2

   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/