Package uk.ac.starlink.ndx

Classes for manipulating N-dimensional astronomical data objects.

See: Description

Interface Summary

Interface	Description
MutableNdx	Extends the Ndx interface to provide methods for setting the data and metadata.
Ndx	N-dimensional astronomical data.
NdxHandler	Interface for objects which can construct an Ndx from a URL.
NdxImpl	Interface for the implementation end of the Ndx bridge pattern.

Class Summary

Class	Description
BridgeNdx	Default Ndx implementation.
DefaultMutableNdx	Provides a simple implementation of the MutableNdx interface, so provides mutator methods as well as the accessor methods of Ndx.
NdxIO	Performs I/O between Ndx objects and resources named by URLs.
Ndxs	Utility methods for Ndx manipulation.
WrapperNdxImpl	Provides an NdxImpl based on an Ndx.
XMLNdxHandler	Turns URLs which reference XML files into Ndxs.

Package uk.ac.starlink.ndx Description

Classes for manipulating N-dimensional astronomical data objects.

World coordinate systems

The JNIAST package, i.e. classes in uk.ac.starlink.ast is currently used for treatment of world coordianate systems (WCS) within this package. JNIAST is based on native compiled code, which may not be available on all platforms/installations. In the absence of the JNIAST package shared libraries (on unix, this typically means that libjniast.so is not on the LD_LIBRARY_PATH), the NDX classes will still function without crashing, but will in general ignore WCS information where it exists. Cases which explicitly require WCS information however will generally cause a fatal error (some sort of LinkageError).

For example, if JNIAST is not installed the Ndx.hasWCS() method will always return false, but the Ndxs.getAst(uk.ac.starlink.ndx.Ndx) method will throw an error.