ctools

While writing the paper I recognised that we really should clean up the various output formats of the cscripts. I think it would be good to support FITS files as much as we can. Upper limits can certainly also be handled using the model XML file. Maybe the general discussion about IACT data formats can also help to better understand what we need. Michael summarized the status of the actual output file formats below.

Here a list of the cscripts and their output formats:

• csspec: FITS table
• cslightcrv: FITS table
• csfindobs: ASCII file (compatible with what is used with current IACTs)
• csiactobs: XML file
• csresmap: FITS sky map
• cstsmapmerge: FITS sky map
• cspull: CSV ascii table
• cssens: CSV ascii table
• cstsdist: CSV ascii table

And here a list of the ctools:

• ctbin: FITS sky map
• ctbkgcube: FITS sky map and model XML file
• ctexpcube: FITS sky map
• ctpsfcube: FITS sky map
• ctcubemask: FITS sky map
• ctselect: FITS files
• ctskymap: FITS sky map
• ctlike: model XML file
• cttsmap: FITS sky map
• ctmodel: FITS sky map
• ctulimit: None
• cterror: Model XML file (without asymmetric errors #1700).
• ctbutterfly: CSV ascii table

Highlighted in bold face are those tools that don’t support FITS or XML output. Note that if we changed this format, we need to adapt the example plotting scripts as well.