TABLES v2.1 Full Release Notes

The primary changes incorporated in this release are:

1) FITS Table I/O is now based on CFITSIO instead of the SPP
   version of FITSIO. The change was made for two basic reasons:
   first, CFITSIO is better maintained than the SPP version (and is more
   current); and second, it speeds up FITS Table I/O by a factor of two.
   The drawback is that it does not currently support IRAF networking.
   (If that is needed, there is an option to build TABLES with
   the SPP version. See the detailed release notes for information
   on how to do so.)
2) The TABLES interface now supports text tables with column names and
   attributes. See the full release notes for more information.
3) TPRINT can now produce output in HTML format.
4) Several TTOOLS tasks can now have their input or output redirected
   without getting a CL parameter prompt.
5) The columns parameter or column selectors in TTOOLS tasks can now
   accept either ! or ~ as the negation character.
6) Tasks that create an output table based at least partly on an input
   table will copy the primary header of an input FITS table under
   certain conditions. This makes tasks behave in a more intuitive
   way with regard to FITS Tables.
7) There is a new TTOOLS task, TUNITS, to change the units of a column
   (it changes the values of the column in a way consistent with the
   change in units).
8) GFLIB was changed to support FITS files as well as GEIS files.
   This capability will be used in future releases to allow WFPC2
   tasks to read and write FITS files with image extensions as well
   as GEIS files.

************************************

Y2K Status

We have searched all STSDAS/TABLES source code for possible Y2K 
problems by  searching for strings like 1900, year, date). The
problems uncovered by that search did not find any problems with
TABLES tasks. Further testing was performed with tasks that
potentially had date sensitivities on a date-advanced system.
No problems with TABLES were uncovered. The above precautions
cannot rule out all possiblities of Y2K problems but we believe
that we have taken reasonable precautions against such problems.

***********************************************************************

Packages or tasks that have seen significant changes include: 

ttools.tcreate
      .tinfo
      .tjoin
      .tmatch
      .tprint

Packages or tasks that have had minor enhancements or bug fixes include:

fitsio
tbplot
ttools

Parameter files that have changed (new parameters or new default values
excluding changes to version or related parameters, or changes to
parameter comments).

tbplot/pltpar.par                       - 'errtype' removed.
ttools/tcreate.par                      - 'tbltype' list changed.
      /tinfo.par                        - added 'subtype'
      /tlcol.par                        - 'nlist' default changed.
      /tprint.par                       - 'option' list changed.
      
    

TABLES v2.1 Full Release Notes