New IRAF user / Learning IRAF
Sona Hosseini wrote on Sep 02, 2009
TO: new IRAF users
Hello new IRAF users! ;D
I am a first year graduate student. I just have started learning IRAF and i have NO one near me (around 50 miles!) who knows IRAF that i could chat about my questions or i could sit and see how s/he works with IRAF. i also just learned how to use UNIX (the first computer i had was windows based!)
For some reasons i always though there should be some regular IRAF workshops, seminars or lectures but i never found one when i googled for it, i left a post in here and one response was simply there isn't any!
OK.... so the reason i am writing this post is as i go trough the posts it seems like every one in here are really professional IRAF users,... i feel kinda embarrassed if i post my question referencing page number 7 in IRAF tutorial!!! therefor i want to make this post/page and ASK people like me, who are just starting to learn IRAF, to participate and hopefully we wouldn't get too embarrassed in our little forum page. ;D
after lots of looking! i am starting from scratch studying "a beginner's guide to using IRAF". If you are a new IRAF learner i would appreciate if you do so or let me know what is your source/plan so we could study together and answer each other's problems.... It would be great if we could be couple people and study and learn IRAF together from one source until we get and learn as much as we want ....
the reason why i want to learn IRAF for now is to use dohydra package and work with some hydra data....
any how... i would REALLY appreciate if you participate in this plan. I also would be happy if you share your view or commands on how to have a study group among far away new IRAF learners! ;D
Thanks
Sona ;D
Hello new IRAF users! ;D
I am a first year graduate student. I just have started learning IRAF and i have NO one near me (around 50 miles!) who knows IRAF that i could chat about my questions or i could sit and see how s/he works with IRAF. i also just learned how to use UNIX (the first computer i had was windows based!)
For some reasons i always though there should be some regular IRAF workshops, seminars or lectures but i never found one when i googled for it, i left a post in here and one response was simply there isn't any!
OK.... so the reason i am writing this post is as i go trough the posts it seems like every one in here are really professional IRAF users,... i feel kinda embarrassed if i post my question referencing page number 7 in IRAF tutorial!!! therefor i want to make this post/page and ASK people like me, who are just starting to learn IRAF, to participate and hopefully we wouldn't get too embarrassed in our little forum page. ;D
after lots of looking! i am starting from scratch studying "a beginner's guide to using IRAF". If you are a new IRAF learner i would appreciate if you do so or let me know what is your source/plan so we could study together and answer each other's problems.... It would be great if we could be couple people and study and learn IRAF together from one source until we get and learn as much as we want ....
the reason why i want to learn IRAF for now is to use dohydra package and work with some hydra data....
any how... i would REALLY appreciate if you participate in this plan. I also would be happy if you share your view or commands on how to have a study group among far away new IRAF learners! ;D
Thanks
Sona ;D
Sona Hosseini wrote on Sep 02, 2009
OK my first question from the refrence i mentioned above is:
-page 7:
" The IRAF CL maintains a table of "environment variables" which affects the operation of
many IRAF tasks. A complete list of these variables can be viewed by typing the following
(the output of SHOW is "piped" to the input of the PAGE command, a simple task for looking
at one page of text at a time):
cl> show | page
"
first of all i do not know how to type the line between "show" and "page" ! where is that line on the keyboard! (sorry ;D)
second i don't get what does "environment variables" mean? i typed :
cl>show
and i got some thing like:
twodspec=noao$twodspec/
surfphot=noao$surfphot/
rv=noao$rv/
onedspec=noao$onedspec/
obsutil=noao$obsutil/
nproto=noao$nproto/
nobsolete=noao$nobsolete/
it is not clear to me what are these... can i chance them? in what case should i ever use/change them?
-page 7:
" The IRAF CL maintains a table of "environment variables" which affects the operation of
many IRAF tasks. A complete list of these variables can be viewed by typing the following
(the output of SHOW is "piped" to the input of the PAGE command, a simple task for looking
at one page of text at a time):
cl> show | page
"
first of all i do not know how to type the line between "show" and "page" ! where is that line on the keyboard! (sorry ;D)
second i don't get what does "environment variables" mean? i typed :
cl>show
and i got some thing like:
twodspec=noao$twodspec/
surfphot=noao$surfphot/
rv=noao$rv/
onedspec=noao$onedspec/
obsutil=noao$obsutil/
nproto=noao$nproto/
nobsolete=noao$nobsolete/
it is not clear to me what are these... can i chance them? in what case should i ever use/change them?
Mike Fitzpatrick wrote on Sep 02, 2009
first of all i do not know how to type the line between "show" and "page" ! where is that line on the keyboard! (sorry ;D)
Depends on the keyboard you're using, for US keyboards the '|' tends to be above the '\' key.
Second i don't get what does "environment variables" mean? i typed
Environment variable are just, well, variables in your environment. The ones you listed are package path definitions and should NOT be changed, but others such as your preferred printer or image display are set in your login.cl file and are meant to be changed.
Sona Hosseini wrote on Sep 02, 2009
Oh OK! ;D Thank you so much..
Now there is an other problem:
In here: (http://www.phy.ohiou.edu/~tss/ASTR410/irafsetup.html)
says:
1. XGTERM Windows
IRAF should be run from an XGTERM window, not an ordinary "Terminal" Window. If you don't already have your workspace set up to use xgterms by default, edit your .cshrc file and add the following:
alias newxg '(xgterm -fn 9x15bold -geometry 80x24+110+100 -sb -rw -bg black -fg white -cr black -ms red -sl 200 &)'
(Be careful, that's one long line!) Exit the editor and type 'source .cshrc' at the Unix prompt. From sona@astrosona:/$ cd etc
sona@astrosona:/etc$ ls -a
now on you will always be able to get a new xgterm window by typing 'newxg'. You can fiddle with the parameters if you want a different window size, font, etc.
This was really useful because up to now i was using the terminal and it wasn't working good! ;D
But what does it mean by ".cshrc" file... in my system i have a "csh.cshrc" file.. i am not sure if the file it is talking about is any .cshrc file or it has to be exactly "source.cshrc"... any how i installed "emacs" editor and i tried to edit my "csh.cshrc" file...
sona@astrosona:~$ pwd
/home/sona
sona@astrosona:~$ cd /etc
sona@astrosona:/etc$ su
Password:
root@astrosona:/etc# emacs csh.cshrc
now in here i have:
# /etc/csh.cshrc: system-wide .cshrc file for csh(1) and tcsh(1)
if ($?tcsh && $?prompt) then
bindkey "\e[1~" beginning-of-line # Home
bindkey "\e[7~" beginning-of-line # Home rxvt
bindkey "\e[2~" overwrite-mode # Ins
bindkey "\e[3~" delete-char # Delete
bindkey "\e[4~" end-of-line # End
bindkey "\e[8~" end-of-line # End rxvt
set autoexpand
set autolist
set prompt = "%U%m%u:%B%~%b%# "
endif
alias newxg '(xgterm -fn 9x15bold -geometry 80x24+110+100 -sb -rw -bg black -fg white -cr black -ms red -sl 200 &)'
************ and i saved it
root@astrosona:/etc# source csh.cshrc
bash: csh.cshrc: line 24: syntax error: unexpected end of file
root@astrosona:/etc# source .cshrc
bash: .cshrc: No such file or directory
root@astrosona:/etc# source.cshrc
bash: source.cshrc: command not found
root@astrosona:/etc#
i tried copying the line before and after the "endif" but still it doesn't work!
any idea what is wrong? or what can i do?
Now there is an other problem:
In here: (http://www.phy.ohiou.edu/~tss/ASTR410/irafsetup.html)
says:
1. XGTERM Windows
IRAF should be run from an XGTERM window, not an ordinary "Terminal" Window. If you don't already have your workspace set up to use xgterms by default, edit your .cshrc file and add the following:
alias newxg '(xgterm -fn 9x15bold -geometry 80x24+110+100 -sb -rw -bg black -fg white -cr black -ms red -sl 200 &)'
(Be careful, that's one long line!) Exit the editor and type 'source .cshrc' at the Unix prompt. From sona@astrosona:/$ cd etc
sona@astrosona:/etc$ ls -a
now on you will always be able to get a new xgterm window by typing 'newxg'. You can fiddle with the parameters if you want a different window size, font, etc.
This was really useful because up to now i was using the terminal and it wasn't working good! ;D
But what does it mean by ".cshrc" file... in my system i have a "csh.cshrc" file.. i am not sure if the file it is talking about is any .cshrc file or it has to be exactly "source.cshrc"... any how i installed "emacs" editor and i tried to edit my "csh.cshrc" file...
sona@astrosona:~$ pwd
/home/sona
sona@astrosona:~$ cd /etc
sona@astrosona:/etc$ su
Password:
root@astrosona:/etc# emacs csh.cshrc
now in here i have:
# /etc/csh.cshrc: system-wide .cshrc file for csh(1) and tcsh(1)
if ($?tcsh && $?prompt) then
bindkey "\e[1~" beginning-of-line # Home
bindkey "\e[7~" beginning-of-line # Home rxvt
bindkey "\e[2~" overwrite-mode # Ins
bindkey "\e[3~" delete-char # Delete
bindkey "\e[4~" end-of-line # End
bindkey "\e[8~" end-of-line # End rxvt
set autoexpand
set autolist
set prompt = "%U%m%u:%B%~%b%# "
endif
alias newxg '(xgterm -fn 9x15bold -geometry 80x24+110+100 -sb -rw -bg black -fg white -cr black -ms red -sl 200 &)'
************ and i saved it
root@astrosona:/etc# source csh.cshrc
bash: csh.cshrc: line 24: syntax error: unexpected end of file
root@astrosona:/etc# source .cshrc
bash: .cshrc: No such file or directory
root@astrosona:/etc# source.cshrc
bash: source.cshrc: command not found
root@astrosona:/etc#
i tried copying the line before and after the "endif" but still it doesn't work!
any idea what is wrong? or what can i do?
gdrude wrote on Sep 02, 2009
These dot files confused me as well. They are used by different programs (including your shell) as a means of preserving startup, preferences, and other information when the programs are run. In your home directory type "ls -a" and take a gander at all of the hidden files! I am new to the whole iraf thing as well. I have been working with the software since June, and I still get confused about how things work.
Best of luck,
Jerry
Best of luck,
Jerry
Last post on Sep 02, 2009