Follows is a list of known problems and desirable enhancements to the tasks in the CALTOOLS sub-package of FTOOLS. This list is intended primarily for the members of the HEASARC CALDB Team. The listing is in purely alphebetical order by task name, and in no way reflects the priority given that bug-fix/limitation/enhancement.

Remember to check out the FTOOLS/CALTOOLS Release Notes.

Bugs 6.4a

• gtcalf.f subroutine doesn't return remote files if the $CALDB begins with "http://". This affects users who are using Remote Access to the HEASARC caldb. Routines that use gtcalf (like quzcif) will identify but not download data files if $CALDB is set to http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/FTP/caldb. Users can try defining $CALDB as $CALDB = ftp://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov but may run into GSFC firewall problems if this definition is used). This will be fixed in a future update.

Bugs 6.3.1

• CALDB boundary keyword (CBDN0001) values must be in upper case.

Bugs pre-version 6

• caldbinfo: as of FTOOLS 5.3.1, caldbinfo does not give reliable information about the setup of the SWIFT XRT caldb if the instrument name is given in lower-case letters ("xrt"). A work-around is to specify the instrument in upper case.

• cmprmf: versions of cmprmf as of the FTOOLS 5.3.1 release do not update the LO_THRES keyword in the output RMF file.

• Remote Access: Due to networking changes at GSFC, Remote Access of the HEASARC CALDB no longer works as of Jan 1, 2004. The FTOOLS patch release 5.3.1 fixes this problem

• UDCIF - FTOOLS 4.2 release (Corrected in the FTOOLS 5.0/HEASOFT 5.0 release)
  1. will allow user to enter the same file as both "good" (CAL_QUAL=0) and "bad" (CAL_QUAL=5) in a CALDB.INDX file, which could potentially result in the incorrect file being returned by GTCALF.
  2. UDCIF fails under OSF

Limitations

• Directory paths + filenames should be less than 256 characters, otherwise an incomplete CALDB filename will be returned by GTCALF
• Directory paths should be less than 80 characters, otherwise incomplete filenames will be written to the headers of FITS PHA spectrum files by the routines ASCAARF, PCARF (and possibly others).
• UDCIF requires that calibration file names be 80 characters or less.

Plans

• Allow GTCALF to access files specified by URLs remotely, if $CALDB == ftp://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/caldb (Included in the FTOOLS 5.0/HEASOFT 5.0 release)