Keith's blog on XSPEC, related software and anything else I need to remember
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
HEAsoft 6.10 available
The latest version of HEAsoft is available from the usual place. The only change to xspec is to include bug patches up to 12.6.0q. However, this release includes an update to QDP/PLT which fixes a problem when saving xspec plots to qdp files.
We installed 6.10 at HEAD. I used it to save qdp files, and the spurious 79 column format is now gone. So far, so good. Now I am trying to identify all the columns; also there are several sets of rows separated by NO NO NO NO ...
Is there any aid to figuring all this out?
Do people commonly use these qdp files as input to some other plotting software?
I experience the use of .pco files as buggy. When you read them back they don't always set up the plot the way they should.
Ed - the qdp format is a bit strange. The rows with all NOs are to divide vectors with different X values. For instance suppose you want to plot two vectors, the first has (X,Y) values (0,0), (1,1), (2,2) and the second (0.5,0), (1.5,1), (2.5,2). These would appear in the qdp file as 0 0 1 1 2 2 NO NO 0.5 0 1.5 1 2.5 2
I don't think people usually use qdp files as input to other software. There are other ways of getting the plot data out of xspec. You can do it through a Tcl script using the tclout command or with our new alpha test of the Python interface.
If you run into specific problems with .pco files not reproducing a plot let me know and I'll pass along the complaint to Allyn Tennant.
3 comments:
We installed 6.10 at HEAD. I used it to save qdp files, and the spurious 79 column format is now gone. So far, so good. Now I am trying to identify all the columns; also there are several sets of rows separated by
NO NO NO NO ...
Is there any aid to figuring all this out?
Do people commonly use these qdp files as input to some other plotting software?
I experience the use of .pco files as buggy. When you read them back they don't always set up the plot the way they should.
Ed - the qdp format is a bit strange. The rows with all NOs are to divide vectors with different X values. For instance suppose you want to plot two vectors, the first has (X,Y) values (0,0), (1,1), (2,2) and the second (0.5,0), (1.5,1), (2.5,2). These would appear in the qdp file as
0 0
1 1
2 2
NO NO
0.5 0
1.5 1
2.5 2
I don't think people usually use qdp files as input to other software. There are other ways of getting the plot data out of xspec. You can do it through a Tcl script using the tclout command or with our new alpha test of the Python interface.
If you run into specific problems with .pco files not reproducing a plot let me know and I'll pass along the complaint to Allyn Tennant.
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