NRAO AIPS++ Users Group Meeting - DRAFT MINUTES Date: 2005-10-26 (Wednesday) Time: 1300 MDT Video Hub: SOC-conf (CV should call in to Socorro) Rooms: SOC317/CV311 Minutes: Send additions and corrections to smyers 1. NAUG News o general news (Steve) - Joe has proposed to host the aips++ project office here: https://www.us.army.mil o NSF Software Review meeting debrief (Joe) - The interferometry post-processing project (AIPS and aips++) presentations went well. The final report is not out yet, but we do not anticipate any significant changes to what we are doing in the development and testing areas. The PDF of the 2 relevant slides from the NSF presentation that Joe showed can be found at: http://www.aoc.nrao.edu/~smyers/aips++/talks/nsf_sep05.pdf o ADASS quick summary (Joe) - Joe presented the CASA demo (see below). It does look like the astronomical community is converging on Python, so our move in this direction makes sense. o Summer School 2006 (discussion) - The topic of whether tutorials for aips++/casa would be supported for the upcoming June 2006 Synthesis Imaging Summer School to be held at UNM (tutorials would be held at the AOC with students bussed down). The general consensus was that it was probably not good to do a tutorial in glish since that was not going to be the interface after the imminent switchover (see below). It was not clear whether casa tutorials could be supported, with the group split on whether the benefits outweighed the risks. In particular, robustness problems in the interface (a la the 2000 Summer School tutorial) would not be good press. There were also concerns about taking time away from development. On the other hand, it was also thought to be important to keep up our presence at these tutorials, with possible political benefits. It was suggested that a smaller demo as part of a talk could suffice if necessary. It was suggested that the decision wait until after the Interface Focus Group in January, when we will know better what we want users to see and feel with the package, and whether there will be a sufficiently wide path end-to-end through the package to make it more than just running scripts. 2. AIPS++/ISD Status Report o CASA status (Joe) - We are planning to freeze aips++ on 2006.5 and move all future development over to casa. The next 6 months are needed to get the developers up to speed on working in casa and to be fully prepared for the switchover. Standard items: o stable status (Joe) - Expect to see the SS14 Status to be available on the projectoffice page soon. - SS15 is nearing completion. It's a relatively minor build as it does not add the main new stuff needed for the next tests. o defect status (Joe) - a Defect Day was held on Sep 6. o development targets (Joe) - see also project office page: http://projectoffice.aips2.nrao.edu 3. ALMA Standard items: o ALMA Test 4 plans (Joe) - current schedule is 2005.12.1 for commencing NAUG pre-testing, with the test pushed to 2006.01.15. The test is oriented towards single-baseline testing (with simulated ATF data) for ALMA commissioning operations. This will use the new PyCASA interface (which should have the needed stuff bound in by then). o ALMA development targets (Joe, Steve) - see schedule at http://projectoffice.aips2.nrao.edu 4. EVLA Standard items: o EVLA Test 2 plans (Joe, Steve, Sanjay. Bryan) - No discussion on this topic. Formally, next EVLA "test" is the Interface Focus/Working Group 2006.01 (AE2006.1) which counts as EVLA Test 2 and ALMA Test 5. The next functional test after that is 2006.06 (EVLA2006.06-3). o EVLA development plan & requirements (Steve, Sanjay) - see schedule at http://projectoffice.aips2.nrao.edu 5. Main Event - Presentations and Discussion Items ******************************************************* Joe McMullin : A demonstration of the Python interface to the CASA toolkit Joe gave a nice demonstration of casa running under iPython (using pysh). CASA toolkit elements currently bound were image and imager (plus a stripped down qtviewer), with calibrater on the way (succeeded later in the day) along with ms, msplot. He will give an updated demo in the November meeting. *** Link to CASA page: *** http://casa.nrao.edu/ *** NOTE: this page is a prototype and still contains incomplete *** links. Info on the features described below can be found at: *** http://casa.nrao.edu/gettingstarted.shtml Features demonstrated included: - shell command access (e.g. ls) - tab completion of commands and filenames, which print the method options - help using pdoc and pdef - python log file - history (plus macro creation and saving of commands to file) - im.* tools, qtviewer (currently just display pane) - no glish was used in tools or interface! Also noted: - can set initialization options in the .ipythonrc file - math operations will be available via scipy - by default tools like im are constructed at startup; invoking methods such as im.open are in this same tool so they close previous image files. There is a way to construct new objects, but might be a bit "arcane" at the moment. - should be able to make dictionaries (aliases) to make commands and syntax familiar to users (e.g. AIPSlike INP, EXPLAIN, HELP) if desired Issues: - argument defaulting (as in glish tools) is close to being solved - online docs for pdoc/pdef will need to be made accessible to casa - I/O parameters (e.g. returning variables as in glish records) needs to be solved - logger (user-friendly, not just python log) needs to be implemented - trapping of types and ranges for params (via XML info) to be implemented - need clean and user-friendly way of constructing tool objects (e.g. im1 := image('foo.im') in glish). - are there issues with interaction between multiple instances of casa? - get remaining tools into casa! calibrater soon... ******************************************************* ONLINE PYTHON INFO (courtesly Walter): http://python.org/ is the root web page for python. On this page is linked a very good tutorial: http://python.org/doc/2.4.2/tut/tut.html Once you've learned the basics and want to actually do something the language reference is the place to go: http://python.org/doc/2.4.2/ref/ref.html Note that many of the features Joe highlighted today were IPython/pysh add-ons to the interface. To learn more about those you'll need to seek its documentation: http://ipython.scipy.org/ There is an "introduction tutorial" on this page that explains a lot of what you saw today. SciPy core (used to be numpy and scipy) seems to be at http://numeric.scipy.org/ ******************************************************* Future Topics o Flagging (ms) implementation plan (George) o Tasking demo (Joe) o suggestions welcome 6. AIPS++ Developments - see latest targets and info at Project Office: http://projectoffice.aips2.nrao.edu/ 7. Upcoming meetings and deadlines: o 2005 Fall EVLA Software PDR (followed by CDRs) o 2005 Nov ALMA test ALMA2005.11-4 (probably delayed to Jan06) o 2006 Jan Interface Focus Group 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/