Requirements for Standard Applications and Libraries

THis page gives a first draft of requirements for standard application and libraries which are considered essential for using the environment in an efficient way for reduction and analysis of astronomical data.

Visualization of data

1. The visualizing tool must be usable both interactively and as part of a user defined application
   1. It must be directly accessible via a dedicated GUI,
   2. It must be possible to use it as part of an user defined/built application/GUI
   3. It must have scripting capabilities
   4. It must be expandable
   5. It must be possible to use multiple datasets simultaneously, and have multiple instances of the visualization tool simultaneously
   6. It must be possible to compare different data relating to the same target (e.g. field, object) by graphical means
2. It must have graphical capabilities
   1. It shall be able to handle scalars,vectors and images
   2. It must be possible to show errors associated to data on the graphical representations
   3. It must have "data picker" capabilities (i.e. returning information depending on cursor input)
   4. It must support logarithmic scales
3. It must be able to display 2D images and 3D Data Cubes
   1. It should have volume rendering capabilities
   2. It should support time sequence files (e.g. to build animations)
   3. It must provide a Lookup Table editor
   4. It must know, and be able to handle the IAU approved WCS,
   5. It should be able to overlay images with different WCS
   6. It should have in built first level re-coordination and astrometric correction capabilities
4. It must allow the usage of different data formats
   1. It must be capable of directly handling the most common astronomical data formats (e.g. FITS)
   2. It should allow direct connection with databases to make overlays for images
   3. It should have "visualization saving capabilities" (e.g. save as ps, or gif, etc)
   4. It should support ASCII files for overlay on images (e.g. region files)
   5. It should support FITS tables for overlay

-- BiancaGarilli - 20 Jun 2005

-- PrebenGrosbol - 21 Sep 2005
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