FIORD Keyword Library Overview

The FITS input/output routine database keyword library (FIORD keyword library) provides I/O routines for communicating FITS keyword values with remote processes via KTL (the Keck Tasking Library). It includes a table with keyword entries mapping FITS keywords to information required to communicate with the remote processes providing services for the keywords. Included in this information is the name of the service process known by the central traffic process and the I/O routines called to handle keyword requests.

A core set of general purpose functions handle common types of message communication with the remote processes. These core functions are called from instrument specific routines that are generated automatically from information in the memes database.

Both the core routines and the generated code are written in C. It was developed and tested on Sun systems running Solaris and has been built and tested on Linux systems. It has been designed to be as platform independent as possible. It can be built with little or most likely no modification on any machine with a C compiler and standard set of libraries.

The Observer documents are hand-written. The Technical Documents are produced from plain text files in the CVS source tree by some Tcl scripts written at UCO/Lick Observatory. The Reference Documents are mostly generated by software from data in a relational database. Individual authors are responsible for the content of the Observer and Technical Documentation. The Lick SPG as a whole is responsible for the content of the Reference doco. Send mail to de@ucolick.org to report inconsistencies or errors in the documentation.