Individual functions, such as the transformation to numarray,
numpy or the FITS format, obviously require the python
modules for the formats they convert to. But there is no general need to install them.
The current version 1.1 of AstroAsciiData is distributed as the source
archive asciidata-1.1.tar.gz from the AstroAsciiData webpage
at
http://www.stecf.org/software/PYTHONtools/astroasciidata/.
Installing the module is not difficult. Unpack the tarball with:
> gunzip asciidata-1.1.tar.gz > tar -xvf asciidata-1.1.tar
Then enter the the unpacked directory and do the usual:
> cd asciidata-1.1 > python setup.py install
After installation, some Unit Tests can be executed with:
> python setup.py testIf there are no errors reported in the Unit Tests, the proper working of the module is assured. Failed tests may happen due to missing pyhon modules (numpy, PyFITS or numarray) and can be neglected if you do not intend to convert into these formats.
In all classes and sub-modules the epydoc-conventions have been used in the inline documentation. In case that epydoc (http://epydoc.sourceforge.net/) is installed, the command
> epydoc Lib/creates webpages from the inline documenatation, which are written to the the directory './html'. This would be certainly a very good start for users who really want to find out what is behind the module or intend to subclass it to e.g. support their own, custom made ASCII table format with column names. In case that you just want to use the AstroAsciiData module, there is no need to look at its inline documentation.