ChangeLog of Munipack

# ChangeLog

Summary of recent development.

## Changelog of 0.5.10 (Flat-fielding) release

Release date: 16. January, 2018.

This release is focused on improving of already developed features.

### Improvements:

- Developed new flat-field approach which is mostly like onto photometry calibration than a plain averaging. I believes the implementation is correct, from different points of view, for the first time.
- Astrometry has faster lucky-match option, input stars are sliced by brightness, has enhanced robust algorithms (estimate of scale, stability, reliability) and some bug-fixes.
- Estimation of the photometry calibration is regularised which leads to more precise and reliable results of photometry, flat-fielding, etc.
- Kombine implements averaging of input frames and the result frames might be rotated.
- Improved estimation of std.errors for aperture photometry leading to better photometric precision as well as conversion of some photometric quantities.
- All robust algorithms has updated their estimate of scale.
- Improved artificial features: background in magnitudes per square arcsecond, documentation.
- Bug-fixes in utilities: phcorr, artificial, votable, list and the graphical interface.

## Changelog of 0.5.9 (Artificial Sky) release

Release date: 18. July, 2017.

This release is bugfix release of previous 0.5.8 (Artificial Sky).

## Changelog of 0.5.8 (Artificial Sky) release

Release date: 14. July, 2017.

This release is mostly focused on an artificial sky and related affairs.

### New features:

- The creation of artificial sky as the testing framework.

### Improvements:

- Robust statistical methods are implemented by more reliable algorithms.
- Flat-fielding problem is fully solved.
- Added UCAC5 catalogue. UCAC4 is still default due wider (photometry) completness.

## Changelog of 0.5.7 (Growth Curve) release

Release date: 25. October, 2016.

This release is mostly focused on growth curve photometry.

### New features:

- Growth curve method is implemented for general radial profiles of stars by using a stable and flexible algorithm. Main goal is photometry calibration of total fluxes (one is superior to aperture correction, independent on seeing) for absolute calibration. A subjective choice of aperture radius is no more need and results are more reliable and less noisy.
- Statistical estimates of data scatter are on base of minimise of entropy rather on maximum-likelihood method. Results has the most minimal dispersion possible and limited mostly by photon statistics.

### Improvements:

- More efficient approach and defaults for astrometry.
- New astrometry core, better estimation of limits on base of statistical tests.
- Implemented astrometry for reflected frames.
- Many important gfortran run-time exceptions (zero division, overflow) bugfixed.
- A correct estimation of Hessian (also errors of parameters) in robust optimalisation.
- An inverse matrix implemented also for singular case.
- The output photometry format is changed: implemented new keywords and features, only results are saved by default.

## Changelog of 0.5.6 (Photon Calibration) release

Release date: January 05, 2015.

This release is mostly focused on the precise photometry calibration.

### Improvements:

- Developed new approach for colour transformations and photometry calibration.
- Robust algorithms improved (precise estimation of statistical errors, initial estimates and better convergence).
- Developed a new flat-fielding algorithm (with precision of up to second order, side product is estimation of gain from series of flats).
- Regular system of packaging is preferred (DEB and RPM builders prepared). Bundle installation is obsolete now.
- Changed structure of photometry files. Removed frameconv utility (merged to phcal).
- Bugfixes: phcorr (saturation, null output), timeseries (reports missing values as undefined) and using of compressed FITSes.
- Docs are generated along with full package.
- Plplot replaced by wxMathPlot. Removed dependency on Plplot (which drops dependency on exact version of wxWidgets).

## Changelog of 0.5.5 (Nights Without Convergence) release

Release date: April 1, 2014.

This release is mostly focused on running tests of improved robust algorithms.

### New feature:

- Robust method uses joint estimator of location and scale which reduces scatter.

### Improvements:

- Gain is proper photometry correction like flat-field since now.
- Cone search supports selection of mirrors of VizieR servers and supports network timeout recovering.
- Preliminary implementation of a general cross-match utility.
- Preliminary attempt for PSF.
- Google code site is planed for shutdown. Its content has been merged with homepage to prevent confusing of users.
- A final test of astrometry calibration can be suppressed to allow calibrate with a low-precision (without knowledge of the exact projection for wide-fields).
- Bugfix: DATE-OBS set by environment variables, undefined values in conversion VOTable to FITS, flat-field scaling,
- Default photometry system is renamed from Landolt to Johnson (older designations is incorrect).
- Clear code for: command-line interface, conventions for negative declinations, exit codes of command-line utilities.
- Clean-up of unused and obsolete parts.
- Updated for wxWidgets 3.0. Planed replace of Plplot by wxMathPlot.

## Changelog of 0.5.4 (Photon Rain) release

Release date: July 31, 2013.

This release is mostly focused on the photometric calibration.

### New features:

- Transformation between photometric systems.
- Full photometric calibration.
- Developed format for light-curve storage.

### Improvements:

- In astrometry matching (speed-up, robustness, brightness as next comaprison atributte, closed path).
- In astrometry (proper motion, UCAC4 as default catalogue).
- New approach on photometry pre-corrections (bias, dark, flat-field).
- FITS header edition.
- Default values for long options.
- Changed structure of FITS tables.
- Building supports system-wide configuration.
- GUI updated to match modern desktops.
- Huge expansion of documentation.

## Changelog of 0.5.3 (New Generation) release

Release date: June 29, 2012.

This release is mostly focused on the astronomical engine: photometry, astrometry, listing and kombine.

### New features:

- New astrometry, photometry and cone search dialogs.
- Tutorials for all basic astronomical tasks.
- New implementations: listing (light curves, catalogues, use astrometry calibration) and kombine (spherical projections, geometrical transformations, mosaicking).
- Backup methods uses GNU conventions (suppresed cfitsio's !clobbers)
- Konve and picko has been removed and ones are provided as externals.
- New image display algorithm in View.
- Atom-feed.

### Improvements:

- Docs converted to HTML5.
- Docs has been restructured and extended for description of completed features and tutorials
- Improved astrometry algorithms (new back-tracking core, abs+rob-fitting code, added least squares, complete update of astrometry code, tuning of parameters and methods on data)
- Improvements in robust estimations (core, precision and stability)
- Implemented astrometry of reference and relative frame.
- Locales-friendly changes
- Improved Tuning: new contrast, color band parameters.
- Updated for new compilers g++/gfortran
- tuning of distribution (used -rpath, clean-ups).
- Implemented exposure mask for kombine

## Changelog of 0.5.2 (Astrometry) release

Release date: Oct. 19, 2011.

This release is mostly focused on astrometry.

### New features:

- Developed GUI and fitting engine for astrometry.
- CLI utilities for astrometry, photometry and listing.
- Initial support for VO (cone-search, VOTable).
- Now, objects and photometry are stored as HDU tables in FITS files.
- New match algorithm on base of back-tracking.
- Code for WCS in FITS.
- Implemented splashing and resume panels.
- Binary builders (and distribution packages) for DEB and RPM based distributions.

### Improvements:

- Config files moved to ~/.xmunipack/ directory.
- Updated homepage (added pages for new utilities, design).
- Adapted for latest wxWidgets (important support for event-driven in without GUI - crutial for run of external utilities, main reason for update to latest wxWidgets, support for floats in spin buttons,..).
- Portable implementations for external processes, CLI parameters parsing.
- Reimplementation of interface to launching of external processes (portable support of pipelining including chained comands and I/O data passing, very important improvement).
- Reimplemented original utilities (classic edition) for new architecture.
- Redesigned GUI for display of images (added right panel).
- Replacement for side panel (for HDU selection is used combo-box).
- Improvemnets of icon (file operation) handling in Browser.
- Reimplemented image tunning.
- Removed bottom toolbars.
- Reimplemented color fits.
- FITS header to single window.
- Enhanced code for displaing, reimplemented zooming and scrolling of images.
- Clean code for threading start/stop, conditional variables (more stability).
- Support of different column types in FITS tables.

The reimplementation of Color FITS is extremely important step. The backward compatibility is broken. External utilities (rawtran and fitspng) are required in versions above 0.3.

## Changelog of 0.5.1 (Coloring) release

Release date: Oct, 17, 2010.

This release is mostly focused on color processing.

### Improvements in color processing:

- added coloring utility (create of natural color images from a set of single-band ones)
- added color space transformation utility (XYZ, Luv, BVR, Scotopic)
- added tuning of colors: saturation, hue, white point (Luv is used as the base transformation color space)
- advanced GUIs for coloring

### Improvements in GUI:

- exporting of FITS headers, images and tables in View to another format (png,jpg for images, txt for header and tables)
- rewrote archive and list implementation for speed, efficiency and fashion
- support for clipboard and DnD, a simple XML serialization
- GUI for corrections and averaging
- added Console and Preferences
- GUI class reimplementation for floating windows (detail, tune,..)
- plotting via plplot library
- enhanced all functions in browser (list types, icons, labels and arrange)
- drop shadow and highlighting icons in browser
- started use of updateUI events, custom dialogs and validator (thx to wxWidget bible)
- improved speedup in archive, list and image display
- reimplemented launching of external utilities in GUI
- added GUI for import of RAW pictures
- implemented search in metadata in Browser
- design improvements
- enhancements in display and tune dialogs
- significant improvements in image displaying

### Improvements in command line utilities:

- corrections for dark,flat and bias
- averaging of dark (biases) and flats
- adapted meandark, autoflat, darkbat and flatbat to a new fashion
- founded munipack CLI interface (we're on the way to use only xmunipack and munipack binaries)

### and finally:

- in docpage, forked classic edition, improvements of homepage design
- new doc pages: color FITS specification, color processing, tune
- reimplemented linux installer (very very hard work!)
- bugfixes (see issues)