UNIX/IRAF Site Manager's Guide
UNIX/IRAF Site Manager's Guide
Image display for IRAF running in the X11 environment is provided by
XImtool or a comparable IRAF-compatible display server (e.g.
SAOimage). The current
XImtool program provides a basic display capability, including
programmed access from the IRAF environment to load images, interactive
windowing of the display, pseudocolor, an interactive image cursor readback
capability, zoom and pan, a variety of frame buffer sizes, independent frame
buffer and display window sizing, up to four frames, each with its own
state, and programmable frame blink. ximtool runs as a display
server, meaning that it sits idle most of the time, waiting for some client,
e.g., IRAF, to send it an image to be displayed via some form of
interprocess communication.
To use ximtool from within IRAF one must define the logical device and
enable image cursor input. For example,
cl> reset stdimage = imt512
would configure IRAF and ximtool for use with a 512 pixel square frame buffer
(image display image memory). A variety of frame buffer sizes are
predefined; see the imtoolrc file (normally in /usr/local/lib) for a
complete list of possible configurations or use the IRAF gdevices
command.
- The image cursor is enabled by
cl> reset stdimcur = stdimage
- This is the default for Unix/IRAF. Setting
stdimcur to "text"
disables the image cursor, allowing cursor values to be typed in interactively
in the terminal window. This is useful, for example, when running image
oriented programs from a simple terminal.
The standard IRAF interface to the display server is the display program
in the TV package. Automatic determination of the optimum intensity mapping
to the 200 ximtool greylevels is provided. Entire frames can be displayed,
or one can write to subregions of the display. Other programs useful with
the image display include imexamine, used to interactively examine
images under image cursor control, imedit, used to edit images using
the display, and tvmark, used to write color graphics into a display
frame.
The display server has the capability of displaying the cursor (mouse)
position and pixel value in image pixel units as the mouse is moved about
in the window. In addition, text file cursor lists can be generated and
displayed, or the image cursor can be read interactively from within IRAF.
The image cursor may be called up at any time by typing
cl> =imcur
into the CL. Applications programs which read the interactive image cursor
will do this automatically during program execution.