Requested Patch Features (for ALMA Cycle 2)

• Changes to the handling of WEIGHT and SIGMA as described in Weights.pdf. Changes in accordance with Phase I of the Implementation plandescribed in the document.
  • CAS-3522: Quantitative documentation of data weights
  • CAS-6129: Weights improvements (Only the parts of this ticket consistent with the Implementation plan referenced above).
• Flagging Fixes
  • CAS-6006: Whitespace handling
  • Summary flagging agents in flagdata list mode
  • CAS-6205: Add a time buffer option in flagdata list mode to increase the timerange selections
• Fix to the application of flags in calibration (by George).
• Bug fixes to Setjy (by Tak).
• Bug fixes to the Viewer
  • CAS-6037: Cursors dock widget remains blank when an image is opened in one particular way.
  • As a baseline, include all fixes committed to trunk since the 4.2.0 branch was created. If a fix has been requested by a user, fixed, and then tested by the user, it should be included in the patch.
    • This approach aims to minimize the differences between the viewer code on trunk and the 4.2.1 branch.
• Fixes/features in PlotMS
  • Automatically generate multiple pages for hardcopy.
    • CAS-6169: Plotms-Generate multiple pages for hardcopy
    • Allows for calibration plotting and other features in the Pipeline.
    • Need hardcopy per iterations, e.g. if the pipeline is iterating over antennas, we would like to option of generating one plot file per antenna. Pipeline will address the arrangement and rendering of those plots.
  • Framebuffer issue resolution (by Darrell)
• Plotbandpass fixes (from Todd).
• Single-dish features & fixes:
  • Interface changes to single dish tasks.
    • CAS-5526 and its sub-tickets: Re-design single dish task interfaces
    • These are major changes to most of SD tasks to make task interfaces close to the other CASA tasks. ACA total power telescopes are about to start observation which means people are going to start using single dish tasks in CASA. It is better switching to new tasks sooner than the later so that users can get started with new SD tasks.NOTE there are a couple of developments that the new tasks depend on, i.e.,
      • CAS-5841: Make the scan numbers between scantable, asdm, and MS consistent ... All new unit tests are affected by the change
      • CAS-5842: Make sd.splitant available in sdsave ... the new sdsave task depends on the development.
  • Provide a way to fill the WEIGHT(_SPECTRUM) column in single dish MS.
    • CAS-6181: SD processing needs to incorporate ata weights.
    • This is a counterpart of CAS-6129 in interferometer task.
  • Enable channel selection in Tsys calibration.
    • CSV-2986: SD calibration in CASA is not adequately removing the effects of atmospheric lines.
    • Band-7 observations by ALMA are affected by this issue.
• Bug fixes and features in mstransform:
  • CAS-6206: mstransform does not re-index the SPECTRAL_WINDOW sub-table fully.
  • CAS-6179: Make a wrapper of hanningsmooth to use the MSTransform framework.
• Isolated bug fixes that do not present an undue burden to merge from Trunk to the branch, and are both necessary and well tested.
  • CAS-6280: gaincal combine='spw,scan' crosses obsid boundaries
  • CAS-5776: Linux distro of release 4.2 should contain complete set of include files (Requested by Dirk - problem for anybody who wants to link to our copy of, e.g. the casacore libraries.)
  • All changes by Michel Caillat to the alma module (bug fixes to casacore).
  • All changes Dirk has committed to the repository (bug fixes and small features to casacore and code).
  • (Will likely be time-constrained by the feature freeze date.)

Explicitly Excluded Features

• New Imaging refactor code.
  • The CSSC requested that the weights implementation be released discretely from the imaging refactor to simplify testing.
• Any experimental additions to the code.

Other Requirements

• Timing:
  • Be available for ALMA Cycle 2 in June, 2014.
  • It is desirable that a limited patch be available for the Synthesis Imaging Workshop on 13-20 May, 2014.
• Testing
  • Typical package acceptance testing for a CASA deliverable.
  • Typical user acceptance testing for a CASA deliverable.
    • Weekly test packages for evaluation.
• Pipeline integration
  • Integration of the new PlotMS feature to generate hardcopy per iteration.
    • Calibration plotting.
  • Other features called for in the ALMA punch-list.