[slang-users] XPA and Gtk S-Lang modules updated

[Michael Noble <mnoble@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

New versions of the XPA and Gtk modules for S-Lang are now available at:

	http://space.mit.edu/cxc/software/slang/modules/xpa/
	http://space.mit.edu/cxc/software/slang/modules/slgtk/

The release:

   -	Updates imdisplay to: support scaling/flipping/flopping of
	composite image at launch, more intelligently manage screen
	real estate via window chaining, and include online help.

   -	Includes gPrompt, a lightweight terminal-like widget with an
	embedded S-Lang prompt, scrolling output, and a simple history
	mechanism.  gPrompt facilitates the complementary use of a GUI
	& interactive command line within a single application process,
	without resorting to the complexity of multithreading.

   -	Provides Gtk 2.10.9 support, including binaries for i686 Linux
	and Mac OS/X (both PowerPC and Intel).

   -	Bundles TESS [The (Te)st (S)ystem for (S)Lang] version 0.3.0, to
	reduce by one the dependencies for end-user regression testing.

More details on SLxpa and SLgtk are given below.

Regards,
Michael S. Noble

------------------------------------------------

SLxpa is a set of bindings which facilitate using the XPA interprocess
communication library directly from S-Lang.  It may also be used to
drive the popular DS9 astronomical imager directly from S-Lang,
combining the strength of DS9 imaging with the power and speed of
S-Lang's array-based mathematical capabilities.

SLgtk augments the core numerical strengths of S-Lang by making it
possible to quickly construct sophisticated graphical interfaces from
relatively simple, and highly portable, scripts.  One example is the
"VWhere," a tool for visual data mining and correlation, described in

                http://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0412003

Two others are the volview 3D volume visualizer described at

	http://space.mit.edu/cxc/software/slang/modules/volview/

and the lightweight imdisplay rendering tool described at

  http://space.mit.edu/cxc/software/slang/modules/slgtk/doc/html/slgtk-6.html

Imdisplay allows an effectively unlimited number of images to be easily
stacked into a composite image.  Transparency is respected, in the sense
that if any input image contains an alpha channel then the rendered result
will, too, and be suitably blended.  A wide variety of file formats are
supported on input, including raw S-Lang arrays, FITS, JPEG, PNG, GIF,
XPM, TIFF, and animations.  The rendered result may also be saved to a
variety of formats, including JPEG, PNG, and FITS.