Gnuastro 0.12.37 released

[Mohammad Akhlaghi]

Hi everyone,

I hope you and your families are doing well in this difficult time of
the pandemic and the resulting social distancing.

I am happy to announce the availability of Gnuastro 0.12.36 (36 Git
commits after version 0.12) in preparation for version 0.13.

Here is the compressed source and the GPG detached signature for this
release. To uncompress Lzip tarballs, see [2]. To check the validity
of the tarballs using the GPG detached signature see [3]:

  https://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/gnuastro/gnuastro-0.12.37-5018.tar.lz 
[3.4MB]
  https://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/gnuastro/gnuastro-0.12.37-5018.tar.lz.sig 
[833B]

Here are the MD5 and SHA1 checksums (other ways to check if the
tarball you download is what we distributed):

0b5197e48606c2610222e2da4aa33fa6  gnuastro-0.12.37-5018.tar.lz
5c2d8fcab41059fc36db1be58cb8de4289d98f25  gnuastro-0.12.37-5018.tar.lz

The full list of improvements are described in [1] below (part of the
'NEWS' file, in Gnuastro's source). You will notice many new features
to simplify table operations, as well as the ability to convert WCS
distortions from SIP to TPV and vice versa in the FITS headers (done
by Sachin, who is working on Gnuastro through Google Summer of
Code). Another handy new feature that I enjoy a lot is
CosmicCalculator's '--listlinesatz', allowing you to check the
observed wavelength of all spectral lines in Gnuastro's database, when
you know the observed wavelength of one lines (see the example
below). Finally, the second tutorial has been greatly improved thanks
to input from some new users, also showing some of the very useful and
handy new table manipulation features. I recommend having a new look
at that tutorial to start using those new features comfortably.

It would be great if you could try building and using this version and
report any warnings, crashes or unexpected behavior if you encounter
any. This would help us make version 0.13 as useful and bug/error free
for everyone as possible.

Since Gnuastro 0.12, Sachin Kumar Singh and Joseph Putko have
contributed to the source of Gnuastro and Marjan Akbari, Carlos
Allende Prieto, Leindert Boogaard, Alexey Dokuchaev, Raúl Infante
Sainz, Samane Raji, Joanna Sakowska, Zahra Sharbaf and Ole Streicher
provided very useful comments, suggestions and bug fixes that have
been implemented. Thanks a lot for helping improve Gnuastro :-).

If any of Gnuastro's programs or libraries are useful in your work,
please cite _and_ acknowledge them. For citation and acknowledgment
guidelines, run the relevant programs with a `--cite' option (it can
be different for different programs, so run it for all the programs
you use). Citations _and_ acknowledgments are vital for the continued
work on Gnuastro, so please don't forget to support us by doing so.

This tarball was bootstrapped (created) with the tools below. Note
that you don't need these to build Gnuastro from the tarball, these
are the tools that were used to make the tarball itself. They are only
mentioned here to be able to reproduce/recreate this tarball later.
  Texinfo 6.7
  Autoconf 2.69
  Automake 1.16.2
  Help2man 1.47.16
  ImageMagick 7.0.10-25
  Gnulib v0.1-3714-g50ccda39b
  Autoconf archives v2019.01.06-97-gfd1d25c

The dependencies to build Gnuastro from this tarball on your system
are described here:
  https://www.gnu.org/s/gnuastro/manual/html_node/Dependencies.html

Best wishes,
Mohammad

--
Postdoctoral research fellow,
Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC),
Calle Vía Láctea, s/n, E38205,
San Cristóbal de La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain.





[1] Notable changes since Gnuastro 0.12.

** New features

  All programs:
   - When reading plain-text tables, the blank value for numeric columns
     can be any string (specified in the special comment-line format
     described in the "Gnuastro text table format" of the manual). Until
     now, it had to be a number in the same type.

  Arithmetic:
   - New operators:
     - interpolate-minngb: Fill blanks with minimum of nearest neighbors.
     - interpolate-maxngb: Fill blanks with maximum of nearest neighbors.
          This can be useful to fill the blank values of saturated stars
          for example.
   - To force integers to floats, you can also put a '.' or '.0' after
     them. Until now, it was only possibly by putting an 'f' after
     them. Hence while '5' will be read as an integer, '5.', '5.0' or '5f'
     will be read as floating point. This also applies to column arithmetic
     in Table.

  CosmicCalculator:
   --listlinesatz: Print the wavelength of all pre-defined spectral lines
     at given redshift as a simple table with the line names. This is very
     convenient and can be used in conjunction with '--obsline' for example
     to print the observed wavelength of all lines when Lyman-alpha is at
     4000 Angstroms with this simple command:
        astcosmiccal --obsline=lyalpha,4000 --listlinesatz

  FITS:
   - New '--wcsdistortion' option allows conversion between the various WCS
     distortions. For example if you have a FITS image with the TPV-based
     WCS distortion, and you would like to convert it to a SIP-based
     distortion, you can simply run 'astfits --wcsdistortion=SIP' on the
     file. The inverse conversion is also supported (from SIP to TPV).

  Table:
   - New '--catcolumns' to specify which columns to concatenate (or append)
     to the output. You can specify the file name containing the columns to
     append with the '--catcolumnfile' option and '--catcolumnhdu' (see
     changed features because until now they had different names).
   - New '--catcolumnsrawname' will leave the name of concatenated
     (appended) columns unchanged. By default the names of the appended
     columns will be appended with a '-N' (where 'N' is a counter for the
     file that is used to append columns). The default behavior is to avoid
     multiple columns having the same name.
   - New '--colmetadata' option to add/update column metadata (name, units
     or comments) just before writing the output. This is a very useful
     feature in combination with column arithmetic or column concatenation
     because it will allow you to update the new column metadata in the
     same command. See the manual for more.

  Library:
   - Spectral lines library: SiIII, OIII, CIV, NV and rest of Lyman series.
   - GAL_INTERPOLATE_NEIGHBORS_METRIC_RADIAL: Radial metric for 
interpolation.
   - GAL_INTERPOLATE_NEIGHBORS_METRIC_MANHATTAN: Mahattan distance.
   - GAL_INTERPOLATE_NEIGHBORS_METRIC_INVALID: For 
error-handling/completeness.
   - GAL_INTERPOLATE_NEIGHBORS_FUNC_MIN: Use minimum for interpolation.
   - GAL_INTERPOLATE_NEIGHBORS_FUNC_MAX: Use maximum for interpolation.
   - GAL_INTERPOLATE_NEIGHBORS_FUNC_MEDIAN: Use median for interpolation.
   - GAL_INTERPOLATE_NEIGHBORS_FUNC_INVALID: for 
error-handling/completeness.
   - GAL_CONFIG_HAVE_WCSLIB_DIS_H: if the host's WCSLIB supports 
distortions.
   - GAL_CONFIG_HAVE_WCSLIB_MJDREF: if the host's WCSLIB reads MJDREF 
keyword.
   - GAL_WCS_FLTERROR: Limit to identify a floating point error for WCS.
   - gal_wcs_write: Write the given WCS into a FITS extension with no data.
   - gal_wcs_clean_errors: clean major WCS components from errors specified
       by the FITS keyword 'CRDER', or floating point errors.
   - gal_wcs_distortion_from_string: Return distortion string/name from ID.
   - gal_wcs_distortion_to_string: Return distortion ID from string/name.
   - gal_wcs_distortion_identify: Identify the distortion of given WCS.
   - gal_wcs_distortion_convert: Convert between various WCS distortions.

** Changed features

  Arithmetic:
   - The 'pow' operator can also accept integer inputs. This also applies
     to column arithmetic in Table.

  Table:
   --catcolumnfile ('-L') is new name for '--catcolumn' ('-C').
   --catcolumnhdu is new name for '--catcolhdu' (short option name hasn't
     changed).

  Library:
   - gal_interpolate_neighbors: new name for 
gal_interpolate_close_neighbors.
   - gal_statistics_outlier_bydistance: new name for the old
     'gal_statistics_outlier_positive'. It can now use the same algorithm
     for negative outliers with a new argument.
   - gal_type_string_to_number: Numbers ending in '.' or '.0' will be
     parsed as floating point. Until now, it would only parse numbers as
     floating point if they had non-zero decimals.

** Bugs fixed
  bug #58434: MakeCatalog crash when ordering is required and no usable 
pixels.
  bug #58455: Timezone is not portable and uses flag instead of seconds.
  bug #58696: Warp with --centeroncorner --scale making wrong size.
  bug #58774: Warp' s output on a cube is a 2D image or wrong size.
  bug #58809: NoiseChisel not removing negative outlier tiles.
  bug #58833: Segment crashes when detetion map has blank pixels
  bug #58835: Floating point errors when comparing pixel scale in Crop.
  bug #58898: Plain text string columns touching next, clear first 
character.
  bug #58901: Blank values for non-standard integer types in FITS tables.





[2] Lzip has better compression ratio and archival features compared
to the common `.gz' or `.xz' formats. Therefore Gnuastro's alpha/test
releases are only in this format, but for historical reasons we also
include `.gz' tarballs in the official releases. If you don't have
Lzip (you can check with `lzip --version' command), download and
install it from its webpage:

  https://www.nongnu.org/lzip/lzip.html

If Lzip is present and you use GNU Tar, then the single command below
should uncompress and un-pack the tarball:

  $ tar xf gnuastro-0.12.37-5018.tar.lz

If the command above doesn't work, you have to un-compress and un-pack
it with two separate commands (or use a pipe to feed the output of the
first into the second: `lzip -cd gnuastro-0.12.37-5018.tar.lz | tar -xf -'):

  $ lzip -d gnuastro-0.12.37-5018.tar.lz
  $ tar xf gnuastro-0.12.37-5018.tar





[3] Use a .sig file to verify that the corresponding file (without the
.sig suffix) is intact.  First, be sure to download both the .sig file
and the corresponding tarball.  Then, run a command like this:

  gpg --verify gnuastro-0.12.37-5018.tar.lz.sig

If that command fails because you don't have the required public key,
then run this command to import it:

  gpg --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --recv-keys 71E899012D174B66

and rerun the 'gpg --verify' command.