120.text

From: Geoff Croes
Subject:  aips++ progress report
Date: Thu, 19 Mar 92 11:37:45 EST


	aips++ progress report.

	The aips++ project has started two months ago, and it might
therefore be useful for the astronomical community at large to hear
about progress made so far.

	After a first week of orientation, in which the group that
was gathering in Charlottesville was settling in and personalizing
workstations, work was started on January 13. The nine user
requirement documents that were received were reviewed, the group
of 12 programmers was divided into five working parties and each
extracted out of the requirment documents that which they believed
relevant to their area of work. After some discussion, the groups
started on the analysis of the requirements from an object oriented
point of view. This analysis was done in Green Bank for the
calibration/imaging area by a group of six aips++ team members and
six invited experts. A similar effort was made in Charlottesville
by the remainder of the aips++ team to cover the other areas: image
manipulation/display, user interface, general libraries and system
management.

	The report from the Green Bank meeting was distributed and
discussed. We received two critical comments. One of these (Bill
Cotton's) was partially justified, and his comments will be taken into
account in future work.

	The main results from the first two months have been:
1. a consolidation of the diverse user requirement documents into
	a single unified document (distributed for comments);
2. object analysis for the calibration/imaging domain (reported
	and distributed for comments);
3. a 15,000 line working prototype, covering the entire area from
	calibration through imaging to image manipulation and display
	in a shallow fashion (reported and to be distributed shortly
	for comments);
4. two reports on system configuration, installation and management
	have been written and distributed for comments;
5. a report on the choice of basic libraries is finished and
	will be distributed shortly;
6. various other support systems (Interviews, CIC, PEX, Phigs) are
	being investigated and a choice will be announced in the near
	future.

	We are currently reviewing our experiences and drafting a plan
for the next three months. This plan will be discussed at the forthcoming
aips++ steering committee meeting.

	We were assisted in the above activities by two experts in Object
Oriented programming, using C++, who acted as consultants. They were
Dr. James Coggins of the University of Northern Carolina at Chappel
Hill and  Andrew Klein of Bell Labs.

			Geoff Croes.