National Aeronautics and Space Administration

******************************************************************************
                        RELEASE NOTES FOR HEASOFT 6.4.1
                               April 15, 2008
******************************************************************************

The HEASoft 6.4.1 release is primarily driven by the release of the
Suzaku (version 8) software, but also includes Suzaku-related updates
to xselect/extractor, a handful of bug fixes made since the 6.4
release, and the latest patch level of Xspec v12 (with the latest
version of CCFits).

As before, configuration-related changes thoughout the package means that
users who already have HEASoft v6.x.x installed will need to completely
replace their software installation; there is no clean way to simply
overlay this new release or to update an existing installation.

******************************************************************************
                               CONFIGURATION
******************************************************************************

- Change name of unpackaged top-level directory to heasoft-X.X.X instead
  of headas-X.X.X.

- Use "-libcX.X.X" suffix on installed platform-specific directory name
  for all Linux OS, not just (32-bit) PC Linux.

- Various improvements in handling compiler choices, optimization settings,
  X11 tests, etc.

******************************************************************************
                                ATFUNCTIONS
******************************************************************************

New version 3.0:

- Bug fix in atInterpolateQuat(), judging (sin_phi < EPS) as same q-parameter

******************************************************************************
                                  CALTOOLS
******************************************************************************

- Allow "http://" syntax in $CALDB environment variable.

******************************************************************************
                                   CCFITS
******************************************************************************

New version 2.0:

- The scale and zero set functions (public in HDU) will now write
  or update the keywords rather than call fits_set_bscale.  They also
  now check for allowed image data type changes as a result of changing
  the bscale and bzero values.  Added private zeroInit/scaleInit functions
  for use in HDUCreator.  Also added new public function,
  HDU::suppressScaling. (01/08)

- Changed access of HDU's bitpix set function from public to private.
  This requires that HDUCreator be a friend class of HDU. (01/08)

- Removed the redundant non-const version of FITS::filePointer and made
  the const version public instead of private.  It also no longer returns
  by reference.  (01/08)

- Reorganized ImageExt<T> constructor/assignment visibility and added
  virtual declaration to destructor.  Also added docs.

- Added #include statements for <cstring> and <iterator> to allow
  compilation on g++ 4.3 (patch submitted by Aurelien Jarno) (01/08)

- Added the function getRowsize to the Table class, a wrapper for
  fits_get_rowsize. (Patrik Jonsson)

- Made the const version of the Column parent accessor function public,
  and removed the non-const version.

- Reorganized and improved keyword modification functions in HDU and
  Keyword classes.  This includes new HDU addKey, copyAllKeys, and
  keywordCategories functions, and the removal of HDU::setKeyWord.
  Also fully implemented the Keyword value set function, with template
  specialization similar to the value get function, and added doc
  descriptions for both of these. (01/08)

- Bug fix to 2 of the 3 constructors which call the create() function.
  If create() returns false, they need to throw a CantCreate exception.
  They were appending the new primary hdu as an extension to the
  pre-existing file. (01/08)

- To eliminate unnecessary dependences upon CFITSIO internals, removed
  the FITSUtil::copyFitsPtr function and everything using it: FITS copy
  ctor and clone functions, FITSBase copy ctor and clone functions.  (Note
  that copyFitsPtr was never properly impelemented in its attempt to
  perform a deep copy of a fitsfile pointer.) (12/07)

- Added 4 new functions to HDU class to provide an interface to
  CFITSIO's checksum capabilities. (12/07)

- Error messages are now stored in the FitsException base class, which
  allows them to be retrieved and copied with the public function
  message(). (12/07)

- For Column write functions (both scalar and vector), all cases where
  the nulval pointer = 0 were treated as (*nulval) = 0 in the lower-level
  calls to fits_write_colnull.  This effectively meant there was no way
  for the user to turn off null value checking.  (12/07)

- Calling FITS constructor in Write mode on a read-only file was
  causing a segmentation fault. (12/07)

******************************************************************************
                              XSELECT & EXTRACTOR
******************************************************************************

- When running extract on Suzaku XIS event files convert 5x5 files to 3x3
  if input files are a mixture.  This ensures that any output event file
  is a correct 3x3 file.

******************************************************************************
                                   XSPEC 12
******************************************************************************

HEASoft 6.4.1 includes Xspec v12.4.0x.  See

  http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/xanadu/xspec/issues/issues.html

for information about v12.4.0x and to get patches beyond level 'x'.


=============================================================================
                           MISSION-SPECIFIC SOFTWARE:
=============================================================================


******************************************************************************
                                   SUZAKU
******************************************************************************

Suzaku software Version 8 - Changes since HEASoft v6.4:

--------------
General tools
--------------

aebarycen
  - Modified to ignore TIME=0.0 in column.

---------------------
 HXD specific tools:
---------------------

hxdarfgen
  - Bug fix: The par file hxdarfgen.par was lacking of some parameters
    (create_name etc.).

hxdmkwamspec
  - Bug fix: Correction in the way the exposure was calculated when the
   TIME_MODE = 0 in the  HXD-WAM data.

---------------------
 XIS specific tools:
---------------------

xissim
  - Ray-tracing library version up, preparing for the forthcoming
    CALDB updates of XRT. The XRT mis-alignments and scattering
    parameters are removed from the parameter file, "xissim.par".
    Fix Keywords RADECSYS EQUINOX in the output file

xissimarfgen
  - Ray-tracing library version up, preparing for the forthcoming
    CALDB updates of XRT. The XRT mis-alignments and scattering
    parameters are removed from the parameter file, "xissimarfgen.par".
  - WMAP image is usable for "source_image" when source_mode=DETFITS.
  - WMAP image is usable for "regfileN" when region_mode=DETFITS or SKYFITS.

xispi
  - Bug fix: Correction to retrive appropriate CALDB file when processing the
    NXB event files containg long time periods. This bug do not affect the
    the normal scinece data file.

xisnxbgen
  - WMAP image is usable for "regfile" when region_mode=DETFITS or SKYFITS.

Web page maintained by: Bryan K. Irby