VIS is a software package designed to display the visibilities and other associated data as received from the correlator control computer at the Australia Telescope Compact Array.
The basic VIS documentation
The basic VIS documentation includes:
Introduction for the new user
VIS commands
baseline selection
plotting graphs
More information on VIS
Further information has been provided, detailing the various aspects of the VIS program. The following is a more complete list of the WWW documentation that is available.- There is a section for the new user.
- Starting VIS and the VIS DCL command line interface..
- Instructions on the use of baseline selection.
- Information on plotting graphs and quantity designations.
- A summary of all VIS commands.
- VIS polarisation designations.
- A guide to what all the symbols and graphical notation on VIS graphs actually means.
- Trouble shooting VIS.
- FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions.
- and finally, some spiffy things you can do with VIS.
New Features
The following lists some of the more recent changes to VISVersion 7.6
- The closure
command now has the option of automatically selecting closure triplets.
When doing so, it decides which antennas to use based on the antennas
selected by the array
command. To activate this, specify
autoafter theclosurekeyword and the IF specifier. A full description exists in the closure reference documentation. (21-Apr-1995). - A minor, technical bug fix was made to the point command so that the rough pointing searches the database properly. (Implemented 11-May-1995).
Version 7.7
- The dump command now takes an optional argument to allow users to speicify a filename for the PostScript file. When this feature is used, the type of file argument (b&w or colour) must be specified first. Also, when this feature is used, automatic printing is disabled.
Version 7.8
- The help command has now been replaced so that the user is linked into the WWW using a spawned lynx browser.
- The plots will now always appear on
SCREEN 0.
Version 8.0
- The initial startup options have been changed. sort (sorting of baselines by length) is automatically set, but phase (phase tracking beyond +/- 180 degrees) has been disabled. Of course, these features can still be toggled on and off, or recovered using the save and recall. The initial history and number of baselines selected were left at the previous values of 10m and 12AA for the benifit of on-call staff operating over slow modem lines or users on VT100 style displays. Such users are reminded of the labels and bells commands
- The dump command now has an alias, print. Their functions are identical.
- The suppress command has been superceded; it no longer available. Instead, there is now an expert command which is generally left disabled. When in such a state, VIS makes intelligent decisions about what baselines to use (the old functionality of suppress), which graphs to hold the aspect ratio to 1:1, and other ploting details. To over-ride these decisions, the user must invoke the expert command.
- A few bug fixes have also been carried out.