Project news

2009-04-16: New release of JSky published, version 3.0.

Changes:

  • Added support for VO catalogs and tables, registry discovery, protocols: SIAP, SSAP, SLAP, Cone Search (Based on StarJava code written by Mark Taylor). The list of available VO catalogs is cached, but can be updated via the "Catalog/Refresh Catalog List" menu item.
  • Added SAMP and PLASTIC support and a new Interop menu (Based on StarJava/Topcat code)
  • Added a feature (a URL table cell renderer) to send URLs in query results pointing to tables, spectra or images directly to other applications via SAMP or PLASTIC. HTML URLs can also be sent to the default web browser.
  • Added support for sending table row selections via SAMP to selected (or all) clients.
  • Updated the "Save table with FITS image" feature to work with VO query results (The query results are saved in a FITS table. An additional FITS HDU named VOTMETA-tableName is used to store the VOTABLE header.)
  • Added a WCS grid feature (contributed by Hiroshi Yatagai)
  • Added support for rotating image overlay graphics (based on code contributed by Hiroshi Yatagai)
  • Updated the "Save Graphics with Image" feature, which saves the image graphics in a FITS table, to support rotated graphics and added an option (on by default) to delete the graphics when a new image is loaded.
  • Removed support for internal frames. Removed parent component (JFrame or JInternalFrame) parameter to GUI panels. Now the parent JFrame is determined automatically at run time.
  • Replaced log4j with java.util.logging.Logger
  • Removed jsky-html package and moved the classes there to jsky-catalog-gui. These are no longer used by jskycat, since in Java6 it is easy to send a URL to the default browser.
  • Updated code to Java6 standards (for loops, generics, general cleanup). The code now also requires Java6 (Rotating graphics requires use of the Java6 Path2D class, and sending URLs to the default browser is also a new Java6 feature).
  • Changed the name of the directory where JSky stores settings and caches files from ~/.jsky to ~/.jsky3 to avoid any conflicts with older versions.
  • Added documentation (in the ./doc directory) in ODT and PDF format. This also covers some of the new features.