Changes Introduced in V5.4-0

The following describes the most significant changes which occurred in the AST library between versions V5.3-2 and V5.4-0:

  1. the FitsChanFitsChan class now has an option to support reading and writing of FITS-WCS headers that use the -TAB algorithm described in FITS-WCS paper III. This option is controlled by a new FitsChan attribute called TabOKTabOK. See the documentation for TabOK for more information.

  2. A new class called “TableTable” has been added. A Table is a KeyMapKeyMap in which each entry represents a cell in a two-dimensional table.

  3. A new class called “FitsTableFitsTable” has been added. A FitsTable is a Table that has an associated FitsChan holding headers appropriate to a FITS binary table.

  4. KeyMaps can now hold byte values. These are held in variables of type "unsigned char".

  5. KeyMaps have a new attribute called KeyCaseKeyCase that can be set to zero to make the handling of keys case insensitive.

  6. a memory leak associated with the use of the astMapPutElem<X> functions has been fixed.

  7. A new method called astMapRenameastMapRename has been added to rename existing entry in a KeyMap.