TABLES 3.0 RELEASE NOTES


GENERAL CHANGES

  A FITS IMAGE extension may be opened as a table in order to access the
  header keywords.  Some applications test whether the input is a table,
  image or text file by attempting to open the file using tbtopn or immap;
  these were modified to use either tbtacc or whatfile instead of tbtopn.

CHANGES to APPLICATIONS

TABLES.FITSIO

- CATFITS

  This task was modified to properly skip the data portion of table
  extensions with variable length arrays. The section handling the
  skipping of random group data was also corrected.

- STRFITS, STWFITS

  These tasks will recognize POA extensions as text files that should
  be converted to FITS tables (and likewise back to text files) to
  support ST-ECF FOS Post Operational Archive products.

TABLES.TTOOLS

Existing Tasks:

- KEYSELECT

  Changes were made to free unneeded memory allocated by evexpr.

  TABPAR

  A new boolean format parameter was added to allow the user to specify
  whether the value should be gotten from the table using the print
  format for that column. The default is yes to preserve the previous
  behavior in the event it is being relied on.

- TCOPY

  A memory leak was fixed.

- TCREATE

  The limit for input lines was increased from 1024 to 8192.

- THEDIT

  An example was added to the help file illustrating the use of the task
  on an image extension header.

  Changes were made to free unneeded memory allocated by evexpr.

- TINFO

  Image extensions now are described as "image" instead of "primary header"
  for the value of the 'subtype' task output parameter (now that image
  extensions are permitted as input).

- TJOIN

  If only one tolerance value was specified when multiple join columns
  were specified (so the same value was to be applied to all columns),
  the amount of space allocated for the tolerance array was only large
  enough for one value. Space is now allocated for a value for each
  column.

- TPRINT

  A specific format is now used for int and short columns. This change
  was made because if a print format was x or o, the printed value
  would be hexadecimal or octal respectively, but it could be
  misinterpreted by the user as decimal.

- TREBIN

  The task was failing to properly delete the output FITS table when the
  independent variable in the input table is not monotonic. This resulted
  in a confusing error message from tbdel instead of one regarding the
  input variable. This has been fixed.

- TSELECT

  tblsearch.x now releases memory allocated by evexpr.


SYSTEM LIBRARY CHANGES

- CFITSIO

  Upgraded to version 2.401

  The default number of HDU's that can be handled was increased from the
  CFITSIO install default of 1000 to 15,000.

- GFLIB

  Previous enhancements to GFLIB allow opening FITS files mapped from
  GEIS files (where groups appear as image extensions). There was a bug
  that caused history records to disappear in propagated headers. This was
  fixed by keeping track of history records in a temporary spool file.

  The incorrect FITS extension spec was being built when the file name was
  of the form [extname, extver]. This was fixed by appending the ksection
  string provided by imparse.

  Unused function declarations were removed.

  MAXDB was changed from 64 to 128 to allow opening more FITS files.

- TBTABLES

  A FITS IMAGE extension may be opened as a table in order to access the
  header keywords.  Some applications test whether the input is a table,
  image or text file by attempting to open the file using tbtopn or immap;
  these were modified to use either tbtacc or whatfile instead of tbtopn.

  Newlines are now removed from error messages that are passed as the
  second argument to the error function.


  (tbtopn.x) The file name was added to the error message for the case
  where the table file does not exist or cannot be opened. The buffer size
  for the error message was increased in the event the file name is long.

  (whatfile.x) Now uses tbtacc instead of tbtopn to test for a table.

  (tbtacc.x) For a FITS extension (or primary header), return NO if
  the subtype is image.

  (tbfhp.x) When keywords are blank, sprintf only eight spaces before
  the value to agree with CFITIO behavior. Previously copying header
  records with blank keywords resulted in the value (comment) being
  shifted two spaces to the right on a copy.