[AstroPy] PyFITS Version 2.2 NOW AVAILABLE

[jtaylor2 at stsci.edu]

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PyFITS Version 2.2 NOW AVAILABLE

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The Science Software Branch of the Space Telescope
Science Institute wishes to announce the availability
of version 2.2 of PyFITS.  This is the first announced
release since version 2.1 in April 2009 and contains
a number of enhancements and bug fixes.


Notable Enhancements
====================

  - Provide support for the FITS Checksum Keyword Convention.
    Adding the checksum=True keyword argument to the open
    convenience function will cause checksums to be verified
    on file open.
  
       hdul=pyfits.open('in.fits',checksum=True)

    On output, CHECKSUM and DATASUM cards may be output to
    all HDU's in a fits file by using the keyword argument
    checksum=True in calls to the writeto convenience
    function, the HDUList.writeto method, the writeto methods
    of all of the HDU classes, and the append convenience
    function.

       hdul.writeto('out.fits',checksum=True)

  - Implemented a new insert method to the HDUList class that
    allows for the insertion of a HDU into a HDUList at a
    given index.

       hdul.insert(2,hdu)

  - Provided the capability to handle unicode input for file
    names.

  - Provided support for integer division required by
    Python 3.0



Release Notes
=============

Release notes for all versions of PyFITS may be found
at:

http://www.stsci.edu/resources/software_hardware/pyfits/release


Where to Obtain this Software
=============================

PyFITS can be downloaded for the PyFITS download web site:

http://www.stsci.edu/resources/software_hardware/pyfits/Download

Installation instructions are available on the web site.


STSCI_PYTHON Support
====================

STSCI_PYTHON v2.8 contains PyFITS version 2.1.1.


Array Package Support
=====================

While the NUMARRAY array package is still supported at
the PyFITS version 1.1 level, all updates in this
release are for NUMPY only.  Compatibility with NUMARRAY
will be eliminated entirely after this release.  As a
result, you are advised to migrate to NUMPY as soon as
possible, as no further support will be provided for the
user of NUMARRAY.

Information on making the switch to NUMPY form NUMARRAY
can be found in this document:

http://www.stsci.edu/resources/software_hardware/numarray/numarray2numpy.pdf