PyRAF 1.1 now available

[Perry Greenfield]

The Science Software Branch of the Space Telescope Science Institute
wishes to announce the availability of version 1.1 of PyRAF.

PyRAF is intended to be used with the astronomical data reduction system
called IRAF (http://iraf.noao.edu) PyRAF allows one to run IRAF tasks
from within a Python interpreter. IRAF CL syntax can be used
interactively from within PyRAF, and a number of new interactive
features are provided (notably command line recall). It also allows
Python to be used to script IRAF tasks. See the PyRAF home page for
more information.

http://www.stsci.edu/resources/software_hardware/pyraf

The primary change in this version  (from 1.0) is that it uses a 
different default graphics kernel that removes the dependence on the 
software components that have proved the most difficult to install and 
maintain, namely those items related to OpenGL. It is the first version
of PyRAF that works on Mac OS X.

This release includes upgraded versions of numarray and PyFITS, as well
as a new module (numdisplay) that allows displaying numarray arrays on
x11iraf or ds9 (or any compatible image display program). Also included 
are two new utilities: readgeis, which can read GEIS files into
numarray, and fitsdiff which compares the headers and data of two
different FITS files. See the PyRAF web page (use link below) for more 
details on all of these modules and packages. 

Some tasks in STSDAS 3.1 (released concurrently) require PyRAF 1.1.
Users using these tasks (e.g., PyDrizzle) must upgrade from PyRAF 1.0.
Furthermore, PyDrizzle in STSDAS 3.0 will not work with PyRAF 1.1;
users will need to upgrade to STSDAS 3.1 to use PyDrizzle with PyRAF 1.1.

PyRAF 1.1 is supported on Solaris, Redhat Linux, and Mac OS X. It should
work on other Unix and Linux systems though it has not been tested by us
on those platforms, and support for debugging problems may be limited
(and effectively nonexistent for some platforms, such as Tru64, AIX,
and IRIX).

Unlike previous releases, this release does not include binary
distributions and will need to be built from source; this should be
straightforward now that dependencies on OpenGL have been removed.
If feedback indicates that source installations are too difficult or
problem-prone on some platforms, will provide binary distributions
for those as needed. Please contact help@stsci.edu if any difficulties
are encountered with installation.

It may be downloaded from

http://www.stsci.edu/resources/software_hardware/pyraf/current/download

This release also fixes a number of bugs and makes some small
changes in functionality. Consult the release notes for details.
PyRAF is released with an OpenSource BSD license.