[gnuastro-commits] master 89db01d: NEWS: minor edits in the parts for next stable release

[Mohammad Akhlaghi]

branch: master
commit 89db01d031d458ae8a9fd3837c86f9dcf8ba92f3
Author: Mohammad Akhlaghi <mohammad@akhlaghi.org>
Commit: Mohammad Akhlaghi <mohammad@akhlaghi.org>

    NEWS: minor edits in the parts for next stable release
    
    Until now, the various components of the NEWS file were written separately
    with each new feature or bug fix. But after an alpha release based on the
    previous commit, some improvements could be found.
    
    With this commit, I went over the full text and implemented some edits to
    make it more easier to read, highlight somethings and also do a
    spell-check.
---
 NEWS | 72 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++-------------------------------
 1 file changed, 39 insertions(+), 33 deletions(-)

diff --git a/NEWS b/NEWS
index 8c0bf43..30038c0 100644
--- a/NEWS
+++ b/NEWS
@@ -23,7 +23,7 @@ See the end of the file for license conditions.
      the other columns (any MakeCatalog measurement is possible).
 
   All programs:
-   --wcslinearmatrix: new option in all programs that let's you select the
+   --wcslinearmatrix: new option in all programs that lets you select the
      output WCS linear matrix format. It takes one of two values: 'pc' (for
      the 'PCi_j' formalism) and 'cd' (for 'CDi_j'). Until now, the outputs
      were always stored in the 'PCi_j' formalism (which is still the
@@ -33,7 +33,7 @@ See the end of the file for license conditions.
    - New "Image surface brightness limit" section added to the third
      tutorial (on "Detecting large extended targets"). It describes the
      different ways to measure a dataset's surface brightness limit and
-     upper-limit surface brightness level on the dataset of this tutorial.
+     upper-limit surface brightness, while discussing their differences.
 
   Arithmetic:
    - New operators (all also available in Table's column arithmetic):
@@ -48,7 +48,7 @@ See the end of the file for license conditions.
      - tanh: Hyperbolic tangent.
      - asinh: Inverse of hyperbolic sine.
      - acosh: Inverse of hyperbolic cosine.
-     - atabh: Inverse of hyperbolic tangent.
+     - atanh: Inverse of hyperbolic tangent.
      - counts-to-mag: Convert counts to magnitudes with given zero point.
      - counts-to-jy: Convert counts to Janskys through a zero point based
           on AB magnitudes.
@@ -61,35 +61,38 @@ See the end of the file for license conditions.
 
   Fits:
    --wcscoordsys: convert the WCS coordinate system of the input into any
-     recognized coordinate system (currently supports: equatorial (J2000,
-     B1950), ecliptic (J2000, B1950), Galactic and Supergalactic. For
-     example if 'image.fits' is in galactic coordinates, you can use this
-     command to convert its WCS to equatorial (J2000):
+     recognized coordinate system. It currently supports: equatorial
+     (J2000, B1950), ecliptic (J2000, B1950), Galactic and
+     Supergalactic. For example if 'image.fits' is in galactic coordinates,
+     you can use this command to convert its WCS to equatorial (J2000):
           astfits image.fits --wcscoordsys=eq-j2000
      This option only works with WCSLIB 7.5 and above (released in March
-     2021), otherwise it will not work (abort with an informative warning).
+     2021), otherwise it will abort with an informative warning.
 
   MakeCatalog:
    - Newly added measurement columns:
      --upperlimitsb: upper-limit surface brightness for the given label
        (object or clump). This is useful for measuring a dataset's
-       realistic surface-brightness limit (not extrapolated like the
-       surface brightness limit, but using the actual object footprint).
+       realistic surface brightness level for each labeled region by random
+       positioning of its footprint over undetected regions (not
+       extrapolated from the single-pixel noise level like the "surface
+       brightness limit").
 
   Table:
    - When given a value of '_all', the '--noblank' option (that will remove
      all rows with a blank value in the given columns) will check all
      columns of the final output table. This is handy when you want a
      "clean" (no NaN values in any column) table, but the table has many
-     columns.
+     columns. Until now, '--noblank' needed the name/number of each column
+     to "clean".
    --rowlimit: new option to specify the positional interval of rows to
-     show. Until now the '--head' or '--tail' options would just allow
-     seeing the first or last few rows. You can use this to view a
-     contiguous set of rows in the middle of the table.
+     show. Until now, the '--head' or '--tail' options would just allow
+     seeing the first or last few rows. You can use this new option to view
+     a contiguous set of rows in the middle of the table.
    --rowrandom: Make a random selection of the rows. This option is useful
-     when you have a large dataset and just want to see a random sub-set of
+     when you have a large table and just want to see a random sub-set of
      the rows. It takes an integer, selects that many rows from the input
-     randomly.
+     randomly and returns them.
    - New column arithmetic operators:
      - 'set-AAA' operator (which allows storing the popped operand into a
        named variable for easy usage in complex operations) is also usable
@@ -98,21 +101,23 @@ See the end of the file for license conditions.
      - 'date-to-sec' Convert FITS date format ('YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss') into
        seconds from the Unix epoch (1970-01-01,00:00:00 UTC). This can be
        very useful in combination with the new '--keyvalue' option of the
-       Fits program to sort your FITS images based on observation time.
+       Fits program to operate on FITS dates (for example sort your FITS
+       images based on observation time).
 
   Fits:
    --keyvalue: Print only the values of the FITS keywords given to this
-     option in separate columns. This option can take multiple values and
-     many FITS files. Thus generating a table of keyword values (with one
-     row per file). Its output can thus either be piped to the Table
-     program for selecting a certain sub-set of your FITS files, or sorting
-     them for example.
+     option in separate columns. This option can take multiple keyword
+     names and many FITS files. Thus generating a table of keyword values
+     (with one row per file where the first column is the file name). Its
+     output can thus be written as a Table file or be piped to the Table
+     program for selecting a certain sub-set of your FITS files based on
+     key values, or sorting them for example.
 
   Query:
-   - NED's Galactic extinction calculator is now available for any
-     coordinate with a command like below. See the description of the
-     'extinction' dataset of NED in the "Available datasets" section of the
-     manual.
+   - The Galactic extinction calculator of the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic
+     Database (NED) is now available for any coordinate with a command like
+     below. For more, see the manual (the description of the 'extinction'
+     dataset of NED in the "Available datasets" section).
          astquery ned --dataset=extinction --center=49.9507,41.5116
 
   Library:
@@ -158,13 +163,14 @@ See the end of the file for license conditions.
      that. So to be safer in general it was incremented by 2 hours.
 
   MakeCatalog:
-   - Surface brightness limit calculations are now written as standard FITS
-     keywords in the output catalog/table. Until now, they were simply
-     stored as 'COMMENT' keywords with no name so it was hard to parse
-     them. From this version, the following keywords are also written into
-     the output table(s), see the "MakeCatalog output" section of the book
-     for more: 'SBLSTD', 'SBLNSIG', 'SBLMAGPX', 'SBLAREA', 'SBLMAG'.
-   - Upper-limit settings are also written into the output tables as
+   - Surface brightness limit (SBL) calculations are now written as
+     standard FITS keywords in the output catalog/table. Until now, they
+     were simply stored as 'COMMENT' keywords with no name so it was hard
+     to parse them automatically. From this version, the following keywords
+     are also written into the output table(s), see the "MakeCatalog
+     output" section of the book for more: 'SBLSTD', 'SBLNSIG', 'SBLMAGPX',
+     'SBLAREA', 'SBLMAG'.
+   - Upper-limit (UP) settings are also written into the output tables as
      keywords (like surface brightness limit numbers above): 'UPNSIGMA',
      'UPNUMBER', 'UPRNGNAM', 'UPRNGSEE', 'UPSCMLTP', 'UPSCTOL'.