3.6-3

All menus are now accessible using keyboard mnemonics. These are indicated by an underlined character in the menu name. Pressing the <Alt> (platform dependent) key followed by that character should post the menu. Some menu items can be then activated by pressing a single character (again underlined) or navigated to using the arrow keys.

Keyboard accelerators have also been assigned to some more useful menu items. These can be activated by pressing the <Control> key and the designated character, when the keyboard focus is in the associated window of the menu item. The accelerator of an item is written next to the item in the menu.

Some one character accelerators have been assigned to plot actions. For instance you can now hide any overlay graphics by pressing the `h' key, zoom in X by pressing the `=' key etc. Consult the plot help menu for more about these bindings.

Other changes in this release.

• An optional synopsis figure has been added to each plot. This shows some details of the current spectrum, such as it's name, the telescope, instrument, object, position of extraction (when used together with GAIA), etc.

• The SSAP query has been remodelled so that all queries are performed concurrently. This means that a failing service will not block access to all the others.

• When defining ranges (for fitting backgrounds and spectral lines) the associated plot window is now brought forward and the cursor is changed. Ranges can now be created without any graphical interaction (under these circumstances the a range is initially created that covers the range between the current axes).

• An integrated flux option has been added to the statistics toolbox. This can be used to estimate the flux in line of a background subtracted spectrum.

• Some useful UI defaults in the filter toolbox are now saved between sessions.

• New controls for replacing the currently displayed spectrum with the result spectrum have been added to the polynomial, filter and interpolate toolboxes.

• The order of the polynomial is now saved as a UI default.

• A new filter that rebins a spectrum to reduce its resolution has been added.

• NDF/NDX spectra can now also be saved to NDF using NDX support. This is useful on platforms that do not have native NDF support.

• When fitting spectral lines of spectra whose coordinate systems run high to low, rather than low to high, the widths etc. are now correctly reported as positive values.

• When deleting spectra in the global list the selection now remains set at the next spectrum in the list (rather than selecting the first spectrum).

• A bug when reading text files that use whitespace column separators, other than simple spaces, has been fixed and the previous behaviour should be restored.

• The set of automatically chosen colours are now dimmed slightly so that they are always distinguishable from overlay graphics elements.

• The percentile autocut now just applies to the data within the X range, when the X range is not being autoranged. When autoranged it applies to all the data.

• An integrated flux option has been added to the statistics toolbox. This can be used to estimate the flux in line of a background subtracted spectrum.

• The statistics toolbox had an off-by-one difference between the selected stats and the individual region stats, giving slighty different results. That has been fixed.

• The use of file type `guessing' has been extended beyond the File->Browse dialogue. This can now be selected from the command-line, or from the File->Open dialogue. Guessing requires that the spectrum be opened for each candidate type, so is intrinsically slower than file extension based typing. Remote resources will, in general, be opened using guessing.

• SPLAT-VO has also been extended so that it can now interoperate with other VO-enabled desktop tools using the PLASTIC protocol.

• It is now possible to define a spectral origin. This allows the plotting of offset coordinates.

• The quick change of units dialog has been extended to allow a change in standard of rest. A option has been added that controls how dual sideband spectra are aligned, by default this remains in the same sideband.

• The axes of a plot should now always be drawn on on the edges, unless the option to plot them in the plot interior is selected.