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GBTIDL Version 2.0 Patch (2.0.1) Release Notes

• Introduction
• Bug Fixes
• New Contributed Routines
• Getting Started
• Running GBTIDL in Green Bank or Charlottesville:
• Running your own copy of GBTIDL
  • IDL License
  • Download GBTIDL

Introduction

These are the release notes to the first patch of GBTIDL version 2.0, known as GBTIDL version 2.0.1. See the release notes for version 2.0 for a complete list of the new features and bug fixes in version 2.0. As of 4:30 PM on Wednesday, June 28, 2006, gbtidl at all NRAO sites corresponds to version 2.0.1 and includes the patches described in this note.

The starting point for GBTIDL documentation, bug reporting and tracking, and discussion is here: http://gbtidl.nrao.edu/

GBTIDL is an interactive package for the reduction and analysis of spectral line data taken with the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope. The package consists of a set of straightforward yet flexible calibration, averaging, and analysis procedures (the "GUIDE layer") modeled after the UniPOPS and CLASS data reduction philosophies, a customized plotter with many built-in visualization features, and Data I/O and toolbox functionality that can be used for more advanced tasks. The entire package is written in IDL.

GBTIDL version 2.0.1 is a patch of GBTIDL version 2.0. This patched version contains several bug fixes, as described in these release notes.

Using the gbtidl command in Green Bank or Charlottsville will automatically bring up this patched version of GBTIDL. If you are using a local installation, you will need to download and install this latest version from the Source Forge site.

Bug Fixes

The following bugs are fixed in this patch.

• The !g.version string was still at '1.2'. In this patch, this is '2.0.1'.
• avgstack has been broken for some time. It would appear to run, but the records indicated in the stack were not averaged and the final result was simply whatever was at the first record in the stack.
• chantorec did not work correctly when the dc keyword was used to specify an alternative data container to use. More examples have also been added to this function's documentation.
• replace failed when the region to be replaced was selected graphically and that region included channels larger than 32767.
• flagrec failed when multiple records were flagged in the same call. For example, flagrec, [2,4,6,8] would only appear to flag record 2. Upon a restart of GBTIDL, all 4 records would be flagged.
• Printing and generating a postscript copy of the contents of the plotter failed when gbtoplot was used to plot a set of X,Y points.
• The freq_switch_offset and tsysref header fields were not being set by getfs.
• It is possible to set a baseline region, using setregion, that is outside of the range of x values of the data. That was causing problems with the code that makes use of the regions and various errors would be reported as a consequence of that action.
• Trailing whitespace was not being stripped from string values in the SDFITS files when they were read back in to a data container. The most obvious symptom is that if you saved a data container with a standard unit, e.g. "Ta" it would come back in with a padded string, e.g. "Ta " and the plotter was not recognizing that as a known, standard data unit.
• The contributed procedure find_gbt_polcal was patched by the author to fix a bug.

New Contributed Routines

Getting Started

• The starting point for GBTIDL documentation, bug reporting and tracking, and discussion is here: http://gbtidl.nrao.edu/

Running GBTIDL in Green Bank or Charlottesville:

• At the unix prompt, simply type 'gbtidl'

Running your own copy of GBTIDL

IDL License

• You must have an IDL license to run GBTIDL. IDL version 6.0 and later is supported. If you don't have a license you can run GBTIDL remotely, using the computers in CV or GB. See the GBTIDL homepage for details.

Download GBTIDL

1. To obtain GBTIDL, download the files here
2. Create a directory for the installation and unzip the tar ball:
   • ex: mkdir mygbtidl
   • ex: cd mygbtidl
   • ex: gzip -d gbtidl-2.0.1.tar.gz
   • ex: tar -xvf gbtidl-2.0.1.tar
3. go to the top level directory, 'gbtidl':
   • ex: cd gbtidl
4. copy 'run_gbtidl' to 'gbtidl':
   • ex: cp run_gbtidl gbtidl
5. edit the 'gbtidl' script to replace "PLACE_INSTALLATION_DIR_HERE" with the full path to the gbtidl executable script:
   • ex: export GBT_IDL_DIR=/home/mygbtidl/gbtidl
6. start the package by calling the script 'gbtidl':
   • ex: ./gbtidl
7. You may wish to add the installation directory to your unix path

-- BobGarwood - 22 Jun 2006