Last modified: October 2011

URL: https://cxc.cfa.harvard.edu/chips/ahelp/chips_utils.html
AHELP for CIAO 4.11 ChIPS v1

chips_utils

Context: contrib

Synopsis

Utility routines for ChIPS (CIAO contributed package)

Syntax

import chips_contrib.utils
from chips_contrib.utils import *

The module provides the following routines:

xlabel(text)
ylabel(text)
title(text)
xlog()
ylog()
xylog()
xlin()
ylin()
xylin()
xlim()
ylim()
xylim()
add_ds9_contours()

Description

The chips_contrib.utils module provides utility routines for CIAO users, and is provided as part of the CIAO contributed scripts package.

Please see "ahelp add_ds9_contours" for help on the add_ds9_contours() routine; the other rountines are described below.

Loading the routines

The module can be loaded into ChIPS, Sherpa, or Python scripts by saying one of the following:

from chips_contrib.utils import *
from chips_contrib.all import *

where the second line will load in all the ChIPS contributed routines, not just the utils module.

Contents

The utils module currenly provides the routines:

Routine Description
xlabel() Set the label of the X axis
ylabel() Set the label of the Y axis
title() Set the title of the plot
xlog() Change the X axis to use a logarithmic scale
ylog() Change the Y axis to use a logarithmic scale
xylog() Change the X and Y axes to use a logarithmic scale
xlin() Change the X axis to use a linear scale
ylin() Change the Y axis to use a linear scale
xylin() Change the X and Y axes to use a linear scale
xlim() Change the X axis limits
ylim() Change the Y axis limits
xylim() Change the X and Y axis limits
add_ds9_contours() Add the contours from a ds9 *.con file to a ChIPS plot (with optional coordinate conversion).

The xlabel, ylabel and title routines

All three routines take a single argument, a string containing the text for the axis label. Use "" to remove the label. If the label contains LaTeX symbols that begin with a "\" character then prepend the letter r to the string. Examples of use are:

chips> xlabel("Energy (keV)")
chips> ylabel(r"photon/cm^2/s/\AA")
chips> title(r"Light curve: mean rate = 2.3 \pm 0.2 count s^{-1}")

These commands are short forms for the ChIPS set_plot_xlabel(), set_plot_ylabel() and set_plot_title() routines.

The xlog, ylog, and xylog routines

These routines take no arguments and change the current axis - or axes - to display with a logarithmic scale. They are short forms for the ChIPS log_scale() routine, and examples of use are show below:

chips> xlog()
chips> ylog()
chips> xylog()

The xlin, ylin, and xylin routines

These routines take no arguments and change the current axis - or axes - to display with a linear scale. They are short forms for the ChIPS lin_scale() routine, and examples of use are show below:

chips> xlin()
chips> ylin()
chips> xylin()

The xlim, ylim, and xylim routines

These routines take up to two arguments and change the limits of the current axis or axes. They are short forms for the ChIPS limits() routine, and examples of use are show below:

chips> xlim(10,100)
chips> xlim(AUTO,100)
chips> xlim(10,AUTO)
chips> xlim(AUTO,AUTO)
chips> ylim(1e-6,1e-2)
chips> xylim(1, 100)

The xylim() command can only be used to change both axes to display the same range; the ChIPS limits() command should be used if the ranges for the X and Y axes are different.


Changes in the October 2011 Release

New routine

The add_ds9_contours() routine was added to the module.

Changes in the December 2010 Release

Module name change

To load in all the ChIPS contributed modules you now have to say one of

import chips_contrib.all
from chips_contrib.all import *

rather than

import chips_contrib
from chips_contrib import *

which no longer loads in any code.


Bugs

See the bugs pages on the CIAO website for an up-to-date listing of known bugs.

See Also

limits
limits, panto, pick_limits, zoom