XMM-Newton Science Analysis System


sas (gui-1.53.1) [xmmsas_20230412_1735-21.0.0]

Use with FTOOLS

It is possible to run many FTOOLS from within the GUI, although they are naturally not as well integrated as native SAS tasks.

The SAS package ftools provides parameter files and GUI layout files for a few common FTOOLS, so that they can be run from the SAS GUI. See the documentation of that package for further details.

The following limitations should be noted:

• The user can only respond to prompts from a task by typing in the terminal window from which the GUI was started. However, FTOOLS should not normally generate prompts since the GUI provides values for all parameters.

• The GUI enforces the types of parameters. For example, it is not possible to enter a string for a numeric parameter. Consequently, some numeric parameters are handled as strings in the SAS ftools package, to allow the value INDEF to be entered. This prevents the GUI checking the syntax or range of these parameters.

• FTOOLSwill mis-interpret the command line produce by the GUI if a string parameter is empty. The parameter files in the SAS ftools package use a " " (space) or "?" as the default to avoid this problem.