The IRAF Users Committee (IUC) held its annual review in Tucson in May 1998. Their report is attached below. I thank the committee members for their perceptive recommendations, and hope to meet the challenges set forth in their report during the coming year. As always, if you have any questions, comments, or concerns about the IRAF project, please send mail to iraf@noao.edu, contact me (jacoby@noao.edu), or one of the IUC members:
Andrea Prestwich (Chair) (prestwich@cfa.harvard.edu)
Mike Bolte (bolte@ucolick.org)
Peter Eisenhardt (prme@kromos.jpl.nasa.gov)
Steve Heathcote (sheathcote@noao.edu)
Jon Morse (morsey@casa.colorado.edu)
Gary Schmidt (schmidt@as.arizona.edu)
George Jacoby, IRAF Project Scientist
Once again, we would like to thank the IRAF group for their interesting and informative presentations. Special thanks to George Jacoby for hosting and organizing the meeting.
The past year has been a highly productive one for the IRAF group. Highlights include the release of V2.11, upgrades to Ximtool, new astrometry and CCD Mosaic packages, and progress on Open IRAF (e.g. the message bus.) The addition of Nelson Zarate and very recently Matt Cheselka to the IRAF group has helped in bringing certain long-overdue projects to completion. We congratulate the IRAF group on their successful proposals for NASA funding, which made the addition of new staff possible. While the total staff is now at the strength recommended by previous IUCs, we caution NOAO management that the obligations and recommendations discussed below may once again overburden the group, and additional personnel may be required.
Management Plan
We once again call for the development of a management plan and the
presentation of this to the committee next year. It is extremely difficult
for the IUC to offer practical advice on priorities, or to justify
additional staff, without an idea of the workload and anticipated schedule
of each project. We ask that the NOAO scientific staff member assigned to
the IRAF group make this a personal priority for the coming year.
Gemini
We are especially concerned about the impact of the Gemini project on the
continued development and maintenance of IRAF. It is clear that a portion of
the Gemini USA obligation will be borne by the IRAF group in the form of
instrument (and telescope?) software development. Our concern stems from the
lack of a clear definition of the nature of this project, in both scope and
longevity. As far as we have been able to ascertain, no estimate exists of
the manpower required to fulfill this obligation. We strongly suggest that
an NOAO scientist be immediately identified who can define the software
requirements for the Gemini instruments. Since the Gemini telescopes are to
be IR optimized, a lead scientist with an IR background would be a real
plus. Such experience would also be valuable to the IRAF group in developing
IR data reduction software recommended below. An outside consultant should
be hired if it is not possible to find someone within NOAO with the
appropriate background. Additional
programmers should be hired to carry out these tasks, such that the impact
on the remainder of the IRAF project, esp. Open IRAF, is minimized.
Software Priorities
We have divided our software priorities into short (3-6 months), medium (1-2
years), and long-term (> 5 years) goals.
Short Term: Our highest priority is the completion of the IRAF GUI science tasks. Prototypes were demonstrated at AAS meetings several years ago, and we were very impressed with the products we saw at the meeting in May. However, the various tasks used different philosophies of operation and presented different appearances to the user. It is time to choose a common interface and release these useful tasks to the community, preferably by the end of 1998.
Medium Term: We recommend the development of a comprehensive set of science tasks for the reduction of IR data. This has been a wish-list for several years, and is even more crucial with the advent of Gemini.
Long Term: Our highest priority for the long term is Open IRAF. IRAF is now 15 years old, and needs to be modernized to take advantage of modern programming technology. Open IRAF architecture is essential to ensure the continued use of IRAF into the next century.
Documentation
IRAF documentation needs improving. There are help files for each task, but
there is a need for more global documentation. This should include not only
NOAO packages, but tasks contributed by other institutions (e.g. STSDAS and
PROS). An example of the frustration caused by inadequate documentation was
given to us by a newcomer to IRAF who spent several hours fiddling with
contour and imtool, only to learn later that xray.tvimcontour
did just what
he wanted! Reference manuals should be cross-referenced (hyperlinked online)
to helpfiles and more cookbooks be collected. Many such primers have been
written by users of IRAF; these should be solicited, collected, evaluated,
and the best examples linked or made generally available. More detailed
documentation for IRAF programmers would also be useful. We note that IRAF
WWW "search" page (http://iraf.noao.edu/iraf/web/search/searches.html) is very useful and should be more widely
advertised.
Cooperation with STScI Developers
The requirements of Space Telescope (and AXAF) instruments continues to have
a major effect on IRAF priorities, and in the past has occasionally led to
the postponement of other work (such as GUI tasks). We strongly advocate
close cooperation to ensure that STScI/STSDAS and AXAF deadlines do not
derail other important tasks. To further cooperation, we suggest that a
representative of the STScI team be invited to attend future IUC meetings.
User input to these activities is extremely important, and many of our
suggestions are relevant to their efforts.