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GBTIDL Version 2.2 Patch (2.2.1) Release Notes

• Introduction
• Bug Fixes
• Enhancements
• Register as a GBTIDL user
• Running GBTIDL in Green Bank, Socorro, or Charlottesville:
• Running your own copy of GBTIDL
  • IDL License
  • Download and Installation of GBTIDL

Introduction

These are the release notes to the first patch of GBTIDL version 2.2, known as GBTIDL version 2.2.1. See the release notes for version 2.2 for a complete list of the new features and bug fixes in version 2.2. As of 4:30 PM on Wednesday, October 3, 2007, gbtidl at all NRAO sites corresponds to version 2.2.1 and includes the patches described in this note.

The starting point for GBTIDL documentation, bug reporting and tracking, and discussion is the GBTIDL home page.

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 2.2.1 is a patch of GBTIDL version 2.2. This patched version contains a small number of bug fixes and enhancements, as described in these release notes.

Using the gbtidl command in Green Bank, Charlottesville or Socorro 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 SourceForge?. This download includes the complete set of IDL scripts necessary to use GBTIDL. It is not necessary to install the previous version of GBTIDL before installing this patch.

Bug Fixes

The following bugs are fixed in this patch.

• A flagging rule using more than one channel range and more than one spectrum was being applied incorrectly. For example, flagging two channel ranges for all data in scans 20 through 22: flag,scanrange=[20,22],bchan=[100,500],echan=[150,550] In the best case, when this rule was applied to the data some spectra did not have those channels blanked. In the worst case, IDL entered an infinite loop and a control-C was required to stop the program. This bug has been fixed. This bug was only present when there was more than on channel range in the rule.

• A memory leak in clear has been fixed.

• summary provides a better error message and behavior when used before any data files have been opened.

• Some minor errors in the GBTIDL User's Guide have been corrected.

Enhancements

The following enhancements are included in this patch.

• A new Quick Reference is available (includes changes introduced with GBTIDL v2.2).

• GBTIDL now uses the same mechanism for locating the online sdfits directory that the online sdfits filler uses. This is only relevant for use in Green Bank.

• Some code useful for user's of the Zpectrometer is now present (low level i/o code as well as code in the contrib directory). This functionality is primarily of interest to Zpectrometer developers.

Register as a GBTIDL user

• You can do this from the User's tab on the GBTIDL web site.

Running GBTIDL in Green Bank, Socorro, 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. IDL 6.3 later is needed for large file support on a Mac.

Download and Installation of GBTIDL

• To obtain GBTIDL, download the files here
• Create a directory for the installation and unzip the tar ball:

    mkdir mygbtidl
    mv gbtidl-2.2.1.tar.gz mygbtidl/.
    cd mygbtidl
    gzip -d gbtidl-2.2.1.tar.gz
    tar -xvf gbtidl-2.2.1.tar

• go to the top level directory, 'gbtidl':

    cd gbtidl

• copy 'run_gbtidl' to 'gbtidl':

    cp run_gbtidl gbtidl

• edit the 'gbtidl' script to replace "PLACE_INSTALLATION_DIR_HERE" with the full path to the gbtidl executable script. It should then look something like this:

    export GBT_IDL_DIR=/home/mygbtidl/gbtidl

• start the package by calling the script 'gbtidl':

    ./gbtidl

• You may wish to add the installation directory to your unix path.