Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!ncar!noao!grandi
From: grandi@noao.edu (Steve Grandi)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: Character aliases are Satanic exten
Message-ID: <1089@noao.UUCP>
Date: 22 May 89 16:16:01 GMT
References: <592@mbph.UUCP> <50500128@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu> <105003@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> <595@mbph.UUCP>
Reply-To: grandi@noao.edu (Steve Grandi)
Organization: National Optical Astronomy Observatories, Tucson AZ
Lines: 29

In article <595@mbph.UUCP> hybl@mbph.UUCP (Albert Hybl  Dept of Biophysics  SM) writes:
>
>I have seen an impressive demonstration of what I think was the AIPS
>software during a visit to the Space Telescope Science Institute in
>Baltimore.  Just because astronomers measure events in light_years,
>is not a good reason to allow AIPS to become obsolete.  How many
>other programs contain these aliases?

What you saw at STScI was almost certainly not AIPS but rather IRAF (Image
Reduction and Analysis Facility) which has been adopted by STScI to host
the Hubble Space Telescope reduction software STSDAS.  IRAF is a product of
the National Optical Astronomy Observatories and is optimized for optical
astronomy; AIPS is a product of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory
and is optimized for radio astronomy.

A brief plug.  The scientific portions of IRAF are programmed in a
high-level language that is preprocessed into FORTRAN (I don't know how
character aliases are handled).  The host system interface is written in C.
IRAF is running on several versions of Unix, VAX/VMS and AOS/VS; we have
exported IRAF systems to over 200 sites around the world. 

You can contact the IRAF project at iraf@noao.edu.  From the latest  AIPS
letter, try aipsmail@nrao.edu for questions on AIPS.

Don't you just love acronyms!
-- 
Steve Grandi, National Optical Astronomy Observatories, Tucson AZ, 602-325-9228
UUCP: {arizona,decvax,ncar}!noao!grandi  or  uunet!noao.edu!grandi 
Internet: grandi@noao.edu             SPAN/HEPNET: NOAO::GRANDI (NOAO=5355)