ctools

The ctools parameter names are basically a legacy from the Fermi/LAT Science Tools, yet the tools do not have always a coherent a clear naming convention. I think we should correct this for the ctools before we bring out release 1.0.

This thread is for discussion a naming convention.

Here a list of suggestions (subject to discussion, of course):

• Files that are input or output should have names starting with “in...” and “out...”. The “...” should correspond to the file type. For example, if we deal with observation definition files or optionally event lists or counts maps, I would propose “obs”. This would result in “inobs” for an input parameter and “outobs” for an output parameter. For the moment we have “infile” and “outfile”, which becomes non-informative once more than a single file is used. I recognize, however, that in the initial ftools idea one probably is always dealing with a single input and output file ...
• Following the above logic, models should be expanded from “mdl” to “model” to be more informative. Hence “inmodel” and “outmodel”. The term “srcmdl” is anyways confusion as the model contains in general source and background components.
• For event lists (i.e. if only a single event list file is given), use “events”, i.e. “inevents” and “outevents”
• For counts maps (i.e. if only a single counts map is given), use “cube”, i.e. “incube” and “outcube”; counts map is anyways not a proper terms as we’re dealing with cubes
• Keep “ra”, “dec” and “rad” for the definition of a region of interest
• Keep “usepnt” flag if pointing should be used for RoI centre
• Keep “ebinalg”, “emin”, “emax”, “enumbins”, “ebinfile” as the standard set of parameters for energy binning definition.
• Keep “nxpix”, “nypix”, “binsz”, “coordsys”, “xref”, “yref”, “axisrot”, and “proj” as the standard set of parameters for spatial binning definition.
• Keep “tmin” and “tmax” as the standard set of parameters for time interval definition; note that these parameters should probably be changed to strings to allow also specifying times in UTC (now supported by GammaLib)
• Keep “chatter”, “clobber”, “debug”, “mode” and “logfile” as standard parameters for every ctool
• Keep “caldb” and “irf” for IRF response definition; note that this may evolve once we get a better understanding of how to handle the instrument response
• Introduce “expcube” and “psfcube” for Cube response definition (needed for stacked analysis); I still don’t know how to automatically recognize the response type that should be used.
• Keep “edisp” flag to signal usage of energy dispersion
• Keep “deadc” for deadtime correction
• Keep “stat” and “refit” for specifying the statistics and allowing for refit.
• Keep “seed” for the seed value in simulations
• Keep “amax” and “anumbins” for the angular binning definition in the psfcube tool
• Keep “expr” for the ctselect expression