                       Image::DS9 Version 0.17
                       =======================

NAME

Image::DS9 - interface to the DS9 image display and analysis program

DESCRIPTION

Image::DS9 is an interface to the DS9 program developed by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory's High Energy Astrophysics R&D Group. DS9 is a flexible and feature laden image display and analysis program. While targeted at the astronomical community, it is versatile enough to be used with success by others.

Image::DS9 communicates with DS9 via the XPA librariy. It supports most of DS9's XPA access points. It is built to interoperate with PDL.

For details on DS9, including the source (and binaries for some platforms), please refer to

http://hea-www.harvard.edu/RD/ds9/

DEPENDENCIES

This module requires the IPC::XPA module to communicate with ds9. IPC::XPA is available from CPAN; it requires the XPA library available at

http://hea-www.harvard.edu/RD/xpa/

It requires DS9 v2.2. Due to a change in the colormap XPA access point, it is not compatible with older versions of DS9. Sorry!

INSTALLATION

This package has been tested on Perl 5.6.0, and xpa 2.1.2. It has been tested on Solaris 2.8.

You will need to install IPC::XPA first.

To compile, test and install Image::DS9,

        perl Makefile.PL
        make
        make test
        make install

PLEASE NOTE! the tests will start up a DS9 in the background using system(). For some reason the first time the tests are run (and DS9 is started) the first test hangs after completion (at least on my system). Interrupting the test and running "make test" a second time succeeds.

CHANGES

Major changes only. See the Changes file for more details.

0.17

Image::DS9::Constants added, to get at the constants in the new, approved, fashion.

0.16

most of DS9's access points are now supported.
now uses a table driven parser to generate the methods and data conversion between Perl and DS9.
realized the futility of keeping the docs up-to-date in parallel with DS9. Now just list the options supported, rather than duplicate the DS9 docs.
the display() and tile_mode() methods are no longer supported. display() was an attempt to unify tile, blink, and single in a clean way. I've decided to just track the actual XPA access methods rather than foist my view of how things should tie together. So, display() should be replaced with the appropriate calls to tile(), blink(), or single(). tile_mode() was really tile() all along...
earlier versions of this package had a gadzillion constants for all of the commands and subcommands and enumerated values. this was a real mess. the constants have been moved to Image::DS9::OldConstants, and are deprecated.

0.15

Added dss().

0.13

Image::DS9 is now GPL'd.

There is a large number of changes since the last public release, 0.09. Substantially more of DS9's capabilities are now available.

There are a few incompatibilities:

DS9 v2.1 has changed the colormap XPA access point to cmap. Image::DS9 now required DS9 v2.1
the constants TRUE and FALSE have been removed, due to Export problems.
renamed T_Grid, T_Column, and T_Row to T_grid, T_column, T_row

COPYRIGHT

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA

AUTHOR

Diab Jerius ( djerius@cfa.harvard.edu )