This is the source distribution for aXe2html version 1.1 ======================================================== 1. The aXe2html software ------------------------- AXe2html is an extension of the aXe-spectral extraction software. Its purpose is to visualize the output created by aXe. This is done by creating html-pages where the reduced data is displayed. Each object is shown in the row of a html-table. The different columns show some basic information like the object magnitude and object coordinates as well as stamp images extracted from the direct and the grism image. Of course the most important output, extracted spectra in counts and in physical units is also given. Besides the pages which show the details on individual objects there exist an index page, a page with an overview over all objects als well as and info page which references the used files/data and stored the settings used on the aXe2html-run. All pages are heavily crosslinked to enable a fast navigation within the data. Examples of html-pages produced by aXe2html can be found at: http://www.stecf.org/software/aXe/aXe2html/nbarncross/apples_ub_over.html http://www.stecf.org/software/aXe/aXe2html/wbarwcross/apples_un_over.html AXe2html is not a program to analyze you data. However it is a tool to quickly get an overview on your extracted data. Looking over the webpages created by aXe2html you can address and pinn down problems in the data reduction or pick out intersting object out of the large amount of reduced data or compare the output of two different aXe-runs on the same input data. 2. Requirements ---------------- - Python Imaging Library version 1.1.4 or higher - Gnuplot.py version 1.6 or higher - pyfits version 0.8.0 or Please install those packages according to the instructions given with the respective distribution. In case that you do not have the privileges to install the packages at their default location (usually at the 'site-packages' close to the location of python) it may be wise to install them at a common location, e.g. under "/yourpath/pythonlibs/", where "yourpath" is the location of a directory accessible to you. In this case do not forget to: - put the path to those packages on your variable '$PYTHONPATH'. Then python can find and load them. 3. Installing aXe2html ---------------------- Installing aXe2html should be easy and straightforward. Simply type: python setup.py install and the disutil package of python should do the rest for you! By default aXe2web is installed next to the 'python' script (aXe2web) and in the site-packages of the python distribution. If you do not have write access to those directories, you can redirect the installation directory using the option 'python setup.py install --prefix=' with a directory of your choice. Use 'python setup.py install --help' to get information on all install options. 4. What's new in aXe2html-1.1 ----------------------------- Version 1.1 does not introduce dramatic changes, however improves the usability of the program on several areas: - a new column with the sequence number was introduced on the object pages - aXe2web uses css-style sheets now. By manipulating the default aXe2web style file the user can change the colours and the layout of all html pages (see setting '--css_file) - aXe2web can create html pages only for a small subset of a larger data set. To do this the ID's of the objects must be listed in a selection file (see setting '--sel_file'). - aXe2web can produce gnu-zipped files with the spectral data. Links lead from the 'Object ID' column on the obect pages to these files (see '--data_out'). - aXe input catalogues can now have multiple magnitude columns. The user can specify with the setting '--mag_lambda'at what wavelength the magnitude values reported on the webpages should refer to. 5. Using aXe2html ----------------- AXe2html consists of the python script 'aXe2web'. By default this was installed next to 'python' itself. Therefore it should be on your path. To test that simply type 'aXe2web' in a new window, and the command help does appear. The general usage of aXe2web is of the form: aXe2web --setting1 value1 --setting2 value2 ... For convenience some settings can be collected in a parameter file an given to the program with the setting '--parfile filename'. There is only a small number of mandatory settings. Most of the settings have an effect on the appearance of the output-webpages. For the not mandatory settings reasonable default values are taken in case that they are not explicitly given. For a detailed description of all the settings look at the documentation which comes along with this distribution, or simply invoke the online-help typing 'aXe2web --help'. 6. Documentation ----------------- The available documentation is in the subdirectory '/site-packages/aXe2html/doc'. There you find the file 'aXe2web_help.html' which contains a detailed description of the usage of aXe2web. You also find there the inline documentation of all modules and classes, extracted with the pydoc command. Start with '/site-packages/aXe2html/doc/aXe2html.html' and follow the links through the different modules. The code is documented very extensively, and the documentation may help you to change aXe2html for your purposes or even to contribute to the further development of aXe2html. For new releases and/or new features of aXe2html, please look at: http://www.stecf.org/software/aXe/index.html 7. Contact and information --------------------------- In case of problems with this source distribution, or to get further help and more information concerning aXe and its use, do not hesitate to contact us at acsdesk@eso.org M. Kuemmel 1 December 2005