The main focus of the current Newsletter is all the new science applications software added to IRAF in the past year or two. Most of the applications software that will be in V2.11 IRAF is available now, either in the V2.10.3BETA release for Sun platforms (including Solaris), or in the form of layered packages that can be installed into older versions of IRAF on various platforms. Getting this software out to users now gives us the opportunity to more extensively beta-test the software prior to the V2.11 release (this is why V2.10.3BETA is being called a beta release---in many respects 2.10.3 is really V2.11BETA).
The next Newsletter will come out about the time of the V2.11 release and will focus on this major new release of IRAF and all that entails. Also covered will be the new GUI facilities and the GUI applications being developed for IRAF, both at NOAO and elsewhere in the IRAF community.
Our system software activities this past year focused initially on continued development of the GUI system software. This was the major systems project in the first half of 1994. The project lead to the release of usable, fairly stable and complete versions of ximtool and xgterm in the summer of 1994. NOAO and the ICE observing environment on Kitt Peak were converted over to X11 at that time. Since that time many IRAF users have begun using these new facilities as well.
In the second half of 1994 we have had to spend less time on development of X11 support and the GUI facilities, and cut back on GUI applications development as well, in order to catch up on other things. IRAF was ported to Solaris and a new version of IRAF, V2.10.3BETA, was released.
The IRAF network information services, while a back-burner project for us, are continuing to evolve. This is getting to be quite a useful facility---check it out if you haven't already. The new FAQ, the ADASS newsgroups, and the Web support are all very useful new facilities. The FTP archives have been reorganized. In particular we would eventually like to see some of the 5000 or so email inquiries we receive each year move onto the ADASS newsgroups so that all may benefit from the discussion.
The main systems projects for the near future include IRAF ports and platform support, preparation of the V2.11 release, and further work on the GUI system facilities, the X11IRAF utilities, and the GUI applications. Porting activities will include enhancements to our Solaris support, full support for the DEC Alpha running OSF, and a major effort to support IRAF on personal computer platforms, mainly x86 boxes (including Pentium) running UNIX variants such as Linux, Solaris, and BSD. We are particularly excited about the potential of IRAF on PCs, especially the prospect of running interactive IRAF GUI applications on PC platforms.
Once this work is out of the way we plan to start work on the "Open IRAF" initiative. This includes many things but probably the most notable items will be programming-related enhancements such as enhanced support for IRAF programming in C and other languages, and a major upgrade to the IMFORT interface to support host level access to the IRAF runtime environment. We also plan to revise our applications development plan, and start looking into major revisions and upgrades to some of the older IRAF packages, as well as new software for (for example) reduction of data from the new IR instruments, improved support for Solar astronomy, enhancements to IRAF support for data acquisition and quick look, and reduction of data from the Gemini instruments.
Further information on these and many other topics will be found in the articles in this Newsletter.
Doug Tody
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