Appendix B : List of XAS environment variables

General purpose

These variables are used to control the XAS user interface
• command : name of a command file used instead of runstring or terminal
• cmdstat : controls if command file setting is retained
• quiet : may allow no or moderate verbosity of output
• verbose : allows large verbosity of output

  The following user-interface variables are used seldom.

• echo : enables/disables echo of prompt and answers
• ask : enables reasking in case of errors
• askterminal : changes terminal escape character
• placeholder : changes runstring placeholder character

• result : used to return calculation results to the shell
• hms : allows times to be displayed in hh:mm:ss format
• observer : sets the observer name in the file headers
• flight : reserved for use with ground calibration data

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  File and directory location

  These variables are used to determine the file name or type, or the name of the program to be run, or to locate the file.

• context : set default filetype extension
• spacecraft : satellite mission name
• instrument : current instrument being analysed
• slew : select part of observing period

  These variables are used to build the directory names where files are searched or created.

• rootdir : the top logical root
• order : the default order of components used to build path names
• fotdir : the second level path for FOT data storage
• fotorder : an alternate order of components used to build FOT path names
• datadir : the second level path for reduced data storage
• date : a lower level path for data arranged by date
• target : a lower level path for data arranged by source name
• printdir : the second level path for ancillary printouts
• printorder : an alternate order of components used to build print path names

• mycaldir : an alternate private directory for calibration data
• caltype : default filetype extension for calibration files

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  Accumulation control

  (see also file and directory location)

  These variables are of common use, and are used to select part of the data, or to control the kind of processing done.

• obschain : stores the current chain of observations
• timewindow : the current time window file
• correction : whether instrument-specific corrections are enabled
• gainhistory : the current gain vs time correction file
• selectfile : the current spatial selection file (if any)
• selectmethod : whether the above file is a region or image file
• countaxis : whether bins contain count/sec or raw counts
• matform : whether response matrices are in XAS or OGIP format

  These other variables are used less often to allow variants in accumulations

• accummode : to use other than X,Y or PHA for images and spectra
• badtimes : whether events with anomalous time are rejected or recovered
• hkconvert : control HK conversion to engineering units
• xquantity : what is on the X axis of an image or spectra
• yquantity : what is on the X axis of an image
• timeunits : select unit for times

  These are used for fine tuning of the gain history program(s)

• calfact : select an intensity cut of the spectrum
• caljump and
• calpass and
• calstep : are used together to select the fitting range
• filespectra : allows output of individual spectra

  These are of miscellaneous nature

• includegap : include missing data gaps in intensity windows
• zerogap : whether zero-valued time bins are used or ignored

• xyunit : to allow expressing XY in other than linearized pixels
• useimage : whether attitude info is taken from last plotted image
• overlay : whether a computed position is overlaid on the current image plot

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  Graphics

  These are used very often for general settings.

• plotter : choose current plotting server
• plotcomment : amount of plot annotations
• timeaxis : time axis labels in seconds or hours
• tquantity : which data column to plot vs time
• countunits : whether spectra are plotted in cts/s or cts/s/keV, cts/s/channel et sim.
• scroll : direction for time profile scrolling
• scrollsize : fraction of x-axis (0.0-1.0) for time profile scrolling

  These are used to control the plotting axes.

• xaxis and
• yaxis are the ranges of X- and Y-axis (xasplot)
• xscale and
• yscale controls whether the X- and Y-axis are linear or logarithmic

  These are used for colour selection.

• axispen : the colour for axes
• bkgpen : the colour for the background
• datapen : the colour for data
• textpen : the colour for text
• pen : the default colour for everything not defined otherwise

• nlevel : the number of levels for image displays
• zscale : the kind of scaling for image displays

  The following variables are used internally

• overcount : the number of overplotted data files
• overwrite : transient flag for overplotting
• servers_xx : list of registered graphics server
• viewport : current plotting viewport
• oldtimeref : reference time of last light curve plotted
• lastbins : bin range of last time profile plot
• lastcomment : annotation of last plot
• lastplot : data file of last plot
• fitplot : flag for best fit plotting
• lastfit : last spectrum fitted

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