Summary
This document is the Table of Contents for Funtools.
Description
Funtools, is a "minimal buy-in" FITS library and utility package developed
at the the High Energy Astrophysics Division of SAO. The Funtools
library provides simplified access to a wide array of file types:
standard astronomical FITS images and binary tables, raw arrays and
binary event lists, and even tables of ASCII column data. A
sophisticated region filtering library (compatible with ds9) filters
images and tables using boolean operations between geometric shapes,
support world coordinates, etc. Funtools also supports advanced
capabilities such as optimized data searching using index files.
The main goal of the Funtools project has been to develop a minimal buy-in
FITS library for researchers who are occasional (but serious) coders. In
this case, "minimal buy-in" means "easy to learn, easy to use, and easy to
re-learn next month". We have tried to achieve this goal by emphasizing two
essential capabilities. The first is the ability to develop FITS programs
without knowing much about FITS, i.e., without having to deal with the
arcane rules for generating a properly formatted FITS file. The second is
to support the use of already-familiar C/Unix facilities, especially C
structs and Unix stdio. Taken together, these two capabilities should allow
researchers to leverage their existing programming expertise while
minimizing the need to learn new and complex coding rules.
Choose from the following topics:
Last updated: January 6, 2006