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Where to Look

You are in a maze of twisty passages -- all alike. This famous line from the game "Adventure" is also a common reaction to people who attempt to find things, documentation especially, in the AIPS++ system. In the belief that the best way to learn is to do, we've assembled this "How To .*" document to help you (and us too).

Who Can Help Me?

If you just plain get stuck, don't despair. There are a lot of knowledgable, friendly people in the AIPS++ project. If you cannot find the help locally, one of the following people will help your or direct you to someone who can help you:

Tim Cornwell(tcornwel@nrao.edu): Astronomical analysis and design, questions about AIPS++.
Athol Kemball (akemball@nrao.edu): Class libraries and coding, Synthesis development.
Darrell Schiebel (drs@nrao.edu): Glish programming, System installation and utilities.
Wes Young (wyoung@nrao.edu): Documentation.

Directories

There are several major directory areas you should understand if you wish to program or write documentation for AIPS++. You may wish to refer to the AIPS++ System Manual for further details.

1.: There are the master source directories, which contain the sources of code and documentation ^1.1. Since these are master sources, you cannot directly modify them, rather you must modify them by checking them into your personal (see below) directory, modify them, and then check them back.
2.: You modify source (program or documentation) in your personal directories. These directories shadow the master directories. Because new directories are created or deleted on occasion, you will sometimes need to run the mktree program to reflect any directory additions or deletions in the master directories.
3.: Processed documentation directories. Documentation which has been processed (normally by being turned into PostScript and HTML) are placed into common directory tree. During development of the documents you will be working in your personal directories.
4.: Binary directories. These are where common (shared among all programmers) programs and libraries go. These are architecture dependent. During class and program development you will be working in your personal directories.

The exact location of these directories will depend on how your local system was set up, but will be of the following form:

master: /aips++/code
personal: /aips++/code
processed documentation: /aips++/docs
binary: /aips++/sun4sol_gnu or whatever architecture(s) you have at your installation.

Sometimes instead of /aips++ your common directories will be under /aips2/aips++ or /u/aips++ or some other location. You will need to ask locally.

Similarly, your personal directory need not be directly under your home directory -- you may put it anywhere you have Unix "write" permission.

The directory location of a source file is often written as something like code/doc/reference/Coding.latex. If you are working on it in your personal directory you would prepend this path with /aips++ and if you wanted to look at the master version you would prepend the path with /aips++ (or wherever your common installation is).

Documentation

There are several types of documentation in the AIPS++ system.

Memos and Notes

Various pieces of documentation for AIPS++. The distinction is that Memos are meant for external distribution and Notes are more internal. These are under code/doc/memos and code/doc/notes respectively.

Specifications

User requirements and specifications for AIPS++. These are under code/doc/specs.

Papers

Various papers that have been written (e.g., for conference proceedings) are available under code/doc/papers.

Reference

Several reference documents exists

The AIPS++ Programming Manual is found in code/doc/reference/Coding.latex.
AIPS++ System Manual is found in code/doc/reference/System.latex.
How to .* for AIPS++ Programmers (this document) is found in code/doc/reference/HowTos.latex

Multi-file Documents

A simple convention is used to locate and place the individual files used in a multi-source document. Basically, the "included" files are placed in a subdirectory with a .dir extension, however the including file is kept at the outer level. This scheme has the advantage so that if a single-source file later becomes split up, the "including" file itself does not move so you always find it in the same place.

So, as an example, we have a A Guide to Synthesis Processing in AIPS++ under the code/doc/user directory. We call it synthesis.latex. At a later point we might want to split this document into multiple .tex files for convenience, or we might have some .ps files. In this code we would make a directory code/doc/reference/synthisis.dir and place those files within it, however synthisis.latex would remain in code/doc/user.

Processed Documentation

Processed source files (PostScript or plain text, depending upon the source document) are all available under /aips++/docs (assuming your common aips++ area is /aips++). The directory structure of processed documents follows that of the source documents. So, for example, the postscript version of the "Coding" volume ( The AIPS++ Programming Manual) would be /aips++/docs/reference/Coding.ps.gz.

Online Documentation

All of AIPS++ documentation is available via the WWW. Some is in HTML, some in postscript, and some both in postscript and HTML.

For an AIPS++ note or memo to appear in the AIPS++ web, the documenter must add a pointer to the document in either the code/doc/notes/notes.dir/index.tex or code/doc/memos/memos/dir/index.tex files. To generate HTML from ource, the documenter must add the document root name to the makefile file with the desired latex2html options (typically, -split 1).

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