The SAOtng program is started from the saotng script by typing:

    saotng [filename] [command options ...]

If a filename is supplied, that image will be displayed in frame 1. Files (except for FITS files) are identified by their extension as follows:

• IRAF image files (.imh .stf)
• IRAF QPOE files (.qp)
• FITS images (any extension: SAOtng checks for legal FITS)

The command line options are listed below. Most users will not have occasion to use these command options under ordinary circumstances:

-accel [accel list]

Replace the list of accelerator commands with the specified list. These accelerator commands are displayed as command buttons at the left of the SAOtng GUI. See Adding New Accelerator Buttons.

-accelcolor ["default"|"multi"|user-defined color]

Set the colors of the accelerator buttons. Specifying "default" (which is the default) will set all accelerator buttons to a shade of grey (the color of the help button). Specifying "multi" will utilize the colors in the accel list (currently a rainbow of pastel colors). Specifying a specific color will make all of the buttons that color. This is the most hotly debated element of the user interface!

-allowtcl [True|False]

Allow TCL commands to be sent to SAOtng through the "tcl" public access point. Because any TCL command can be sent in this way, the facility is turned off by default.

-analysis [analysis tools list name]

Add the analysis tools in the specified list to the system-defined list of analysis routines. This is the means by which new analysis routines are integrated into SAOtng without changing the code. See Adding New Analysis Routines.

-backgroundcolor

Set the primary background color for the GUI.

-b or -beautiful

Use beautiful colors for the SAOtng GUI. The default GUI is grey and more grey in order to avoid color flashing when Netscape is present. This switch will assign more attractive colors to the GUI.

-block [block factor]

Set the initial image block factor (default = 1). This is the blocking factor at which an image section will be extracted. See -section.

-blocking_preference [sum|average]

Set the initial blocking_preference (default = "sum"). Some file types (e.g. IRAF and FITS) support both summing and averaging when extracting an image section. The blocking preference can be changed from the Section menu.

-cmaps [directory]

Add the colormaps in the specified directory to the system-supported colormaps. Colormaps are ASCII files containing (up to 255) normalized RGB triplets (i.e. ".5 .5 .25", etc). The colormap name will be the root part of the file name (without extension). See Adding New Colormaps.

-commandbackground

Set the background color for the GUI command buttons.

-commandforeground

Set the foreground color for the GUI command buttons.

-display [X display]

Set the X display options in order to display SAOtng on a remote server.

-drab

Use black and white only for the SAOtng GUI. The default GUI is grey and more grey in order to avoid color flashing when Netscape is present. However, CDE hogs so many colors that even that is too much. This switch goes to ultimate lengths to make the GUI visible. See also -beautiful.

-fifo [fifo name]

Set the name of the IRAF input and output fifos. The default is "none". These fifos are used by IRAF to communicate with SAOtng.

-files [file access list name]

Add the file types in the file access list to the system-defined list of supported file types. This is the means by which new file formats are supported by SAOtng without changing the code. See Adding New File Formats.

-flip [x|y|xy|none]

Set the initial flip state for each new frame. The default is to flip in "y", so that the origin of the image is in the lower left corner.

-frame [full|center|section of frame ...|frame number]

Select a part of the display frame. The image will be displayed in that section. The choices are: full, center, upper_left, upper_right, lower_left, lower_right. Alternatively, a frame number can be specified (but why would you want to do this?)

-frameheight [height]

The default size of the image frame which holds the image data. The default is 512. More data can be maintained in memory than is displayed on the screen at one time (specified by the -winwidth and -winheight switches). The panner will display a representation of the full image frame. Moving the panner cursor will change the part of the image being displayed. The .ximtoolrc file can be used to specify frame sizes for individual frames. See also -winheight, -winwidth, and -frameheight.

-framewidth [width]

The default size of the image frame which holds the image data. The default is 512. More data can be maintained in memory than is displayed on the screen at one time (specified by the -winwidth and -winheight switches). The panner will display a representation of the full image frame. Moving the panner cursor will change the part of the image being displayed. The .ximtoolrc file can be used to specify frame sizes for individual frames. See also -winheight, -winwidth, and -frameheight.

-gui [gui file]

Specify an alternate graphical user interface (GUI) for SAOtng. The GUI file contains a TCL-based widget server code that defines the user interface. See Modifying the SAOtng GUI

-hog [True|False]

Determines whether SAOtng hogs memory in order to run faster. If True (default, except for Linux), SAOtng will retrieve and maintain in memory both scaled data and raw data for the displayed image section. Otherwise, raw data is not maintained in memory and must be re-extracted for rescaling and some data analysis operations. See SAOtng Memory Considerations for more information.

-init [command list]

Specify a list of initialization commands to be executed when SAOtng is run.

-input_fifo [fifo name]

Set the name of the IRAF input fifo. The default is "none". The input fifo is used by IRAF to communicate with SAOtng.

-kbprefix [""|KP_|other?]

The keys on the keypad are specified differently for X11R5 and X11R5. This can cause problems with the up, down, left, and right arrow keys. SAOtng tries to determine from the build which keypad specification to use. The choice can be overridden with the -kbprefix switch. If, for example, you are running a version of SAOtng built under X11R5 but displaying it under X11R6, you probably will want to use -kbprefix KP_ or else the arrow keys will not work. If you have problems with this confusing issue, please contact us.

-maxsize [bytes]

The maximum size of a FITS file that will be maintained in memory by SAOtng. Maintaining a FITS file in memory speeds up image sectioning operations. If a FITS file exceeds this size, sectioning operations will be processed externally (as occurs with other file formats). The default value is 1 Mb for Linux, 2.5 Mb for other platforms.

-menubackground

Set the background color for the GUI menus.

-menuforeground

Set the foreground color for the GUI menus.

-ncolors

The size of the colormap to allocate for image data. The default is 200. SAOtng will compete with other programs (such as Mosaic) for colormap resources. This often causes flashing of the colors when moving from one window to another. If you are experiencing excessive colormap flash or other colormap problems and you need to have other colormap hogs on the screen at the same time, you can try allocating fewer colors for SAOtng. It probably won't help but ...

-output_fifo [fifo name]

Set the name of the IRAF output fifo. The default is "none". The output fifo is used by IRAF to communicate with SAOtng.

-scales [scale list file name]

Add the scaling routines in the scale list to the system-defined list of scaling routines. This is the means by which new scaling algorithms are added toy SAOtng without changing the code. See Adding New Scales.

-scale [scale name]

Use the named scale as the initial scaling algorithm.

-section [full|center|section name ...]

Set the section for image extraction. The choices are: full, center, upper_left, upper_right, lower_left, lower_right. If full is specified, the block factor is set so that the full image will be displayed. Otherwise, the section and block factor will be used to determine how much of the image can be displayed in the current frame size.

-title [name]

Set the title of this run of SAOtng. The default is "SAOtng". This switch should be used when more than one copy of SAOtng is being run simultaneously on the same X server. It changes the name of the program's XPA access point from "SAOtng" to [name], so that commands can be sent to the right place.

-winheight [height]

The height of the image display window. The default is 512. This is the size of image that is displayed on screen and can be different from the size of the image maintained in memory. See also -winwidth, -frameheight, and -framewidth.

-winwidth [width]

The width of the image display window. The default is 512. This is the size of image that is displayed on screen and can be different from the size of the image maintained in memory. See also -winheight, -frameheight, and -framewidth.

-winsize [size]

The height and width of the image display window. The default is 512. This is the size of image that is displayed on screen and can be different from the size of the image maintained in memory. See also -winheight, -winwidth, -frameheight, and -framewidth.

-xrm [Xt resource]

Arbitrary Xt resource values for SAOtng can be passed to SAOtng using the usual Xt -xrm switch. Note, however, that there cannot be any whitespace in the resource specification, since the shell will process the whitespace incorrectly: use -xrm "*resource:value" instead of -xrm "*resource: value".