[News] New header handling module in Astro-WISE

[John P. McFarland]

Dear All,

As a part of scheduled upgrades and to fix a problem with value length 
limits, Eclipse headers will be replaced in AWE.  Unless you maintain your 
own scripts that manipulate headers in AWE, you need to read no further as 
no functionality will be lost and the changes will be transparent.

For those who require it, please refer to the "current" version of the 
AWEPIPE checkout for examples of the new header handling ("AWBASE" will be 
updated in approximately one week).  Pay particular attention to 
$AWEPIPE/astro/main/BaseFrame.py as it illustrates two major interface 
changes: the new package import and saving of the new headers to Eclipse 
written FITS files.

The new headers are the first insertion of DARMA into AWE.  DARMA is a new 
Data Access, Representation, and MAnipulation interface that uses PyFITS and 
NumPy to access FITS files.  It will eventually replace all Eclipse 
functionality and will eventually include additional support for tabular 
data and non-FITS data formats.  Currently, only the header module is 
supported and is completely compatible with the Eclipse header interface by 
importing it as eclipse (e.g., from astro.util import darma as eclipse).

The most notable advantage of DARMA headers over Eclipse headers other than 
the before mentioned value length limit (Eclipse's header interface, QFits, 
cannot handle CONTINUE cards) is the FITS Standard header verification 
provided by PyFITS.  DARMA headers implement this in an on-demand fashion 
that guarantees the header has the correct form every time it is accessed or 
written to a file.

Please feel free to send any questions or comments.

Cheers,


-=John