Various small help fixes for next release

[Jason Quinn]

Here are a bunch of small fixes, mostly dealing with help database issues:

The UTILITIES package has a handful of issues:

1) "help detab option=source" is looking for "detab.x" when it should be "t_detab.x"

2) "help entab option=source" is looking for "entab.x" when it should be "t_entab.x"

3) "help translit option=source" is looking for "tranlist.x" when it should be "t_translit.x"

4) "help bases" needs a help file

In the SYSTEMS package:

1) "help spy option=source" is pointing to a file that doesn't exist. The actual source for spy seems to be in hlib for some reason.

2) The "bench" command is generally undocumented.

In the COLOR package:

1) "help rgbto8 option=source" is looking for "rgbto8.cl" when it should be "t_rgbto8.x"

2) There are some residual files from an apparently extinct "rgb8bit" task that can be removed.

In the PROTO.VOL package:

1) "help pvol option=source" has something wrong with it. I couldn't figure this bug out as the "vol.hd" seems correct. Probably indicates a problem in another ".hd" file somewhere. There appears to be duplicate ".hd" files in the doc directory. It's probably worth doing a general check on this package and its help databases to make sure all is kosher.

In GUIAPPS.XAPPHOT package:

1) "help xguiphot option=source" points to "src/t_xguiphot.x" but there's no "src" directory and the source file is actually called "x_xapphot.x".

2) "help xgphot option=source" points to a non-existence "src" directory

In IMMATCH doc directory:

1) There's a file "imcentroid.hlp.old" that can/should probably be removed.

=========================================

In general, it's unclear to me what the convention is for using "t_" as a prefix for the SPP sources.

Cheers,
Jason

[fitz]

[Jason Quinn]

Here are a couple more:

In IMAGES.IMCOORDS

1) "help mkcwcs option=source"

2) "help mkcwwcs option=source"

In IMAGES.TV.IIS

1) "iis.hd" incorrectly states "# Help directory for the TV package".

2) "help cv option=source" gives bad output.. not sure how to fix this one.

Jason

PS How close are things to the next release?

[fitz]

[Jason Quinn]

[quote="fitz"]

[fitz]

[Jason Quinn]

1) "help specshift" has "dopcor" spelled wrong in the "See also" section

2) In the "see also" section of both "specshift" and "sapertures", "proto.wcsreset" appears to be in the imcoords package now instead of proto.

3) help "declarations" in the "see also" section lists "begin" but there is no such help for "begin" (nor for "end"). Should probably just be removed from the listing.

4) The "spy v" command throws an error because it looks for a MACH environment variable, which tends not to be set on modern Linux distributions. Not sure how to fix this in an architecture independent way. Maybe just eliminate this option. Or maybe test if variable is test and fallback on just "spy" if not.

5) "help commands" has a couple minor mistakes:

A) In the SYNTAX section:

taskname (arg1, ... argN, par=val, ... par=val redir)

is missing a comma before "redir" and I think should be

taskname (arg1, ... argN, par=val, ... par=val, redir)

B) In the ELEMENTS section:

>>[GIP] append graphics output to a file, e.g, >G file

is missing a bracket in the example. Should be

>>[GIP] append graphics output to a file, e.g, >>G file

Actually, the "[GIP]" is kind of confusing. It looks like a choice of letters. The only valid way to use this is ">G" and ">>G", right? On the other hand, if GIP is an acronym, it is never defined.

C) In the DESCRIPTION section, right at the end, there's a mention that a command block can be sent to the background with "& queuename". This is the only reference I'm aware of that IRAF has a named queuing system. Computers are so fast today I'm having trouble creating a command that takes a while to finish to test this. Does IRAF support named queues? What's an example of its use?

D) There is surprisingly no mention in the IRAF help files anywhere (that I recall) about using escaped system commands (eg.. "!ls"). so at the moment, it's technically an undocumented feature. I've noticed often in the IRAF sources a double-bang (eg "!!ls") is used instead of a single-bang. Is this some VAX vs UNIX difference?

[fitz]

Hi Jason,

Thanks for the careful reading. The documentation changes have been made for the next release. Similarly, the SPY command no longer relies on the MACH variable.

[Jason Quinn]

Some more quick fixes for "help strings" this time:

1) In USAGE changing "substr (str, start, end)" to "substr (str, first, last)" would make the arguments match the names used in the description section.

2) In the DESCRIPTION section for substr, this sentence: "The last value may be larger than first, in which case the returned string is reversed." has it backwards.

I would recommend changing the section to something like this:

[fitz]

Thanks, the changes have been made!

[Jason Quinn]

More or less, the documentation of IRAF is in decent shape and I'm looking forward to the new release. I will continue to collect minor issues as I notice them while using IRAF but they are fairly infrequent now and getting more minor.

1) In "help imdelete", the second example is a little messed up. Instead of

[Jason Quinn]

Successfully installed IRAF 2.16. Congratulations on the release! I haven't gotten the chance to try out the new features but they sound exciting. No major problems.

One of the help fixes I submitted previously still has an error.

[fitz]

Hi Jason,

Thanks as always for the careful read, these have been fixed (for real, this time) for the next update.

Cheers,
-Mike