NRAO AIPS++ Users Group Meeting - MINUTES Date: 2006-01-26 (Thursday) NOTE NONSTANDARD DAY AND ROOM Time: 1300 MST Video Hub: SOC-280 (CV should call in to Socorro) Rooms: SOC280/CV311 ******************************************************************* Minutes: Send additions and corrections to smyers 1. NAUG News o general news (Steve) - Walter has returned from his antipodal adventures and reported that the Swinburne group (e.g. Emil Lenc) is using aips++ handily. The codebase is being used down under for the SKA NTD effort (e.g. in simulation) and hopefully much of this development can make it into the general package. Not sure if they plan to also migrate to casapy. - The summer school is coming up in June and we discussed whether to have an aips++/casa tutorial or demo. It was suggested that we give a demo such as the one that will be given at Calgary AAS/CASCA, for example during the lunch at AOC during the tutorial day. As for a full tutorial, it is not clear yet whether the functionality will be there for a prime-time use by students. We would like to keep the option open, for example by allowing interested students to get a "hands-on demo" late in afternoon following regular tutorials. 2. AIPS++/ISD Status Report Standard items: o CASA status (Joe) - We are still aiming for a 2006.5 switchover from aips++ to casa. o stable status (Joe) - A stable will be built this coming weekend, in time for NAUG testing. RPMs will be available for this stable. Patches will later be made to this stable for external testing. o defect status (Joe) - Bug ("issue") handling in casa is being done through the JIRA issue tracking system. See the JIRA link at http://casa.nrao.edu/ Note that you will need a login and a password to use this system, contact Joe for these. In the meantime you can send email to Joe or to casareq AT nrao.edu - The plans are to port only the high severity bugs from DDTS to JIRA. - Joe will provide a list of known casa problems in time for testing. o development targets (Joe) - See also project office page: http://projectoffice.aips2.nrao.edu 3. ALMA Standard items: o ALMA Test 4 plans (Joe, Steve, Debra) - see main event o ALMA development targets (Joe, Steve) - mosaicing developments (Steve): as part of preparing Crystal's ALMA Imaging talk for URSI, I did some ALMA compact array imaging simulations. See Crystal's talk: http://www.aoc.nrao.edu/~smyers/aips++/talks/BroganURSI06jan06.pdf I found some issues with the ftmachine='mosaic' option in imager which are being worked on. An example glish script that will generate and image a mosaic of point sources can be found at: http://www.aoc.nrao.edu/~smyers/aips++/scripts/20060113_sim_pointmos.g - see schedule at http://projectoffice.aips2.nrao.edu 4. EVLA Standard items: o EVLA Test 2 plans (Joe, Steve, Sanjay, Bryan) - The default testing targets are still full-beam polarimetric imaging and pointing corrections. The possibility of retargeting towards wide-band full-polarization calibration was brought up by Frazer - this should be decided once the requirements and timescales for post-processing capabilities are assessed by the EVLA project. o EVLA development plan & requirements (Steve, Sanjay) - pointing corrections & mosaicing (e.g. ALMA) Note that the application of pointing corrections during gridding (Sanjay's work) is exactly the same as convolutional mosaic gridding as done in ftmachine='mosaic' in imager (a mosaic is just data with intentional pointing offsets). We are planning on unifying these schemes and updating the ftmachine to use Sanjay's more optimal gridding. Note that this means this work is important for ALMA also. - documentation Frazer brought up concerns on the need for user documentation for the new matplotlib capabilities in casapy. This is actually a more general problem, and its clear that the NAUG will have to step in and help with user documentation as there is no slop in developer target deadlines in the foreseeable future. - see schedule at http://projectoffice.aips2.nrao.edu 5. Main Event - Presentations and Discussion Items *************************************************************** - Joe McMullin : Kickoff for ALMA NAUG pre-testing See the testing page http://projectoffice.aips2.nrao.edu/ALMA2006.01/ALMA2006.01.html for info on the test, in particular the NAUG test page http://aips2.nrao.edu/projectoffice/ALMA2006.01/naug.html THE NAUG TESTING IS SCHEDULED TO START NEXT MONDAY JAN 30. Currently, the only distribution in CV is apparently on the EPO Mac. Hopefully we can make an up-to-date version available to John and Tony Remijan so they can do some testing also. At the AOC the pre-testers are Myers, Rupen, Shepherd and Whysong. Joe demo'd a simple test script which ran through the test data and threw up various plots. Actual NAUG testing would involve running through these sequences manually and exploring various options (including different datasets). This was invoked through casapy (see instructions on the page above). Scripts are linked at the naug.html page. Note that there is a "quickhelp" command that lists available tools etc. A proto-cookbook draft is available for the NAUG test: http://aips2.nrao.edu/projectoffice/ALMA2006.01/casacb.pdf It still has leftovers from the previous glish cookbook but is coming along. The intro stuff is helpful for casapy intro material. There are still some issues with the casapy that the NAUG will need to bear in mind. These include logging - not the final logger version, but should be usable debug messages - too verbose but needed for developer debugging docs - getting better but not yet final, input welcome matplotlib - somewhat buggy and inefficient, working on this hard Bugs can be submitted by email direct to Joe or casareq AT nrao.edu or through the JIRA system (see above). See cookbook. Joe is working on a list of known problems that will be available next week. The test nominally uses the msplot (mp) and/or plotter (pl) tools to display data and calibration results, but the old viewer is still available (albeit in all its glish glory). Note if you have invoked the usual aipsinit.csh (e.g. stable) you can just use "viewer" from unix shell to start up a standalone viewer. Note David is working hard on viewer migration using qt (see cover of cookbook for an example) which is targeted for June. *************************************************************** 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 2006 Jan 30 ALMA test ALMA2006.01-4 NAUG pre-testing o 2006 Feb 15 ALMA test ALMA2006.01-4 external testing o 2006 Mar 27-31 Interface Focus/Working Group (ALMA/EVLA) 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/