NRAO Applications Users Group Meeting - DRAFT MINUTES Date: 2008-08-27 (Wednesday) Time: 1300 MDT (1500 EDT) ******************************************************************* Minutes: Send additions or corrections to smyers 1. CASA General News o News on the CASA Manager search We have at least one plausible candidate, interviews will start soon. o CASA Management Musical Chairs Starting around Oct 1 2008, CASA will be managed once again by ALMA and EVLA jointly rather than e2e. We do not anticipate that this will directly impact the day-to-day development work. Somewhat different management and reporting structures will be put in place. o Gustaaf is organizing a Fall AOC CASA Tutorial (in October or November). We will decide on and announce the date in the near future. o CASA web page I have done significant updating of the page since Patch 2, take a look (comments welcome): http://casa.nrao.edu 2. Version 2.2 (Beta Patch 2) status o This is the current released version plus updates. See: http://casa.nrao.edu/betarelease.shtml Note that the Beta is now "open", with direct download possible. o There will be an update Patch 2.2 this week to fix a plotxy 64bit startup issue NOTE: This is available as version 5655 as of 26-Aug-2008, e.g. for non-root install: http://polaris3.cv.nrao.edu/casa/linux_distro/ The latest Mac version remains 5654. o There is an updated 21-Aug-2008 Cookbook also: http://casa.nrao.edu/Doc/Cookbook/casa_cookbook.pdf o Updated post-Summer School scripts are posted: http://casa.nrao.edu/casatraining.shtml#scripts 3. Version 2.3 (Beta Patch 3) development and testing o Development freeze scheduled for Sept 15, release Oct 15 o key NAUG testing will be near or after Sept 15 freeze o see main event below 4. Planning (beyond Patch 3) o parallelization effort - new cluster for development purchased, but installation has been delayed due to the recent security issues diverting staff time o viewer task force - many small viewer issues, plus the ability to call the viewer from casapy tasks/tools o plotting refurbishment - we need improvements in plotting infrastructure, as there are many issues with plotxy/plotcal and use of backends (e.g. matplotlib) 5. Main Event - Patch 3 features and testing o Data Handling - importasdm (support for ATF and EVLA proto-widar) BDF now writing from EVLA, need to incorporate into SDM ATF asdm issues reported, once this is stabilized would like to have a "standard" test observation and regression script - exportuvfits (support for ASDM to AIPS in simple modes) o Calibration - cross-spw support for BPOLY (polynomial bandpasses) will be available end of this week - channel exclusion for BPOLY (maskedge, maskcenter, e.g. maskline in sdfit) keep maskedge, maskcenter (units are channels, or fraction) allow full spw specification, plus negation - GSPLINE improvements along the lines of BPOLY, may still get into Patch 3 - ATF: want single-baseline calibration in gaincal/bandpass in addition to blcal Ed and George to test - atm library: do we have the latest version? o Imaging - widefield task version available, Ed is testing outlier fields from boxfile working full multi-field capability checked in tonight should come up with set of "rules" for optimal choice of wproj, facets, etc. - heterogeneous array support (e.g. different dish sizes) should be available soon wanted by 12 Sep for ANASAC meeting to demo must have by 1 Oct for ASAC to show capability o Analysis - imfit (single Gaussian) Gareth made improvements, see B1608 regression at: http://www.aoc.nrao.edu/~smyers/naug/scripts/b1608_demo_regression.py NOTE: outputs a component list, but if choose clean beam deconvolution the cl is the un-deconvolved one can use toolkit to manipulate this component list (e.g. make residual image) - specfit (no news from Shannon) o Plotxy / Plotcal - improved axes labels (get rid of default offset behavior and give axis labels right number of decimal places) now xaxis='frequency' gives sensible tick labels - plotxy expand flags (channels and correlations) work ongoing, do in-row (channels in a spw, correlations) first - bug fixes see JIRA - plotcal GUI does not appear first time you call for it verified in devel, test, and patch2.2 (5655) by STM does not occur on Mac (5454) possibly related to plotxy fixes? note plotxy gui appears behind other windows (related?) submitted as CAS-998 o CASAViewer - printing to PNG (can set size of output image) - printing to PS (postscript commands instead of to raster) prototypes from Darrel look good - save/restore settings progress continuing o ALMA Simulator See: https://wikio.nrao.edu/bin/view/ALMA/SimulatorCookbook - now can add noise Remy would welcome testing should get a tutorial-style regression script for Patch 3 - Remy and Rob are going to ALMA simualtor meeting in Grenoble Sep 8 or thereabouts o Single Dish - a number of single-dish task improvements Should provide a tutorial-style regressable script for one or more use cases o Interface - parameter GUI prototype available in devel e.g. clean.paramgui() problems in today'd devel, coredump, Wes is fixing note some parameters have wrong type etc. - python task building by users BG was going to check on this o Test/Use Cases We would like to add new cases for scripts and regressions. Example cases would include: - VLA 43GHz line obs (with fast switching) - VLA low-frequency/widefield continuum - Big datasets for parallelization testing (lots of channels?) ******************************************************************* The agendas for past NAUG meetings are archived at: http://www.aoc.nrao.edu/~smyers/naug/agenda/ The minutes for past NAUG meetings are archived at: http://www.aoc.nrao.edu/~smyers/naug/minutes/