Version 3

Elizabeth Duxbury
Danika Jensen

Oct. 14, 1994

National Aeronautics and
Space Administration


Jet Propulsion Laboratory
California Institute of Technology
Pasadena, California 91109

D-4186 Rev B

Copyright © 1994, California Institute of Technology. All rights reserved. U.S. Government sponsorship under NASA Contract NAS7-1270 is acknowledged.


PREFACE TO VERSION THREE

VICAR is an evolving software system constantly being updated with contributions from general users and flight projects. This makes it difficult to keep a document such as this VICAR User's Guide up-to-date. Part of the purpose in putting this latest version online is to enable revisions in VICAR to be more quickly reflected in this Guide.

Several significant changes have been made in this version of the Guide. An attempt has been made to keep the current format as similar as possible to past versions of the Guide, but for the online version, some changes have been made to take advantage of the cross-referencing capabilities of the NCSA Mosaic format. It is hoped that most of these changes will be transparent to anyone reading a hardcopy version. An attempt has been made once again to make the Index more useful in quickly finding critical information.

There have also been significant changes to VICAR since Version 3 was published. Perhaps most important are those changes due to the conversion of VICAR to enable it to run on UNIX systems. (These changes are detailed in Section 3.1.1 for the benefit of the experienced VMS-VICAR user.) The content of the VICAR applications libraries has changed with the addition of many new procs and the deletion of several obsolete or redundant ones. Finally, the Menu mode and the New User's Tutorial are undergoing significant changes, and have not yet been implemented for UNIX VICAR.

This version of the VICAR User's Guide applies to:

	VICAR Version 12.1
		using TAE Version 5B/16B
		under UNIX Version SunOS 4.1.3 or Solaris 2.3
	or	under VMS Version 5.4-2

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This Guide would not have been completed if not for the assistance of many members of the Image Processing Laboratory. The authors extend special thanks to Ray Bambery, Nevin Bryant, Bob Deen, Sandy Dumarr, Greg Earle, Tom Greer, Dave Hodges, Steve Hwan, Sue LaVoie, Alan Mazer, Helen Mortensen, Steve Pohorsky, Niles Ritter, Allan Runkle, Cesar Vasquez, Lisa Wainio, Mitch White, and Gary Yagi for their assistance.


CONTENTS

1   Introduction
    1.1   Document Purpose
    1.2   Document Organization
    1.3   Conventions, Acronyms and Terms
	1.3.1   Conventions
	1.3.2   Acronyms and Terms
2   VICAR  Documentation and References
3   Overview of VICAR
    3.1   Background
	3.1.1	VICAR Changes Under UNIX
    3.2   Applications of VICAR
    3.3   System Acquisition
4   BASIC VICAR Concepts
    4.1   Entering/Exiting VICAR
    4.2   Getting Started
    4.3   VICAR Datasets
	4.3.1   Dataset Names
	    4.3.1.1   Temporary Datasets
	4.3.2   Dataset Structure
	4.3.3   Pixel Data Formats
    4.4   VICAR  Labels
	4.4.1   VICAR Label Structure
    4.5   Procs
5   The VICAR Environment
    5.1   VICAR Libraries
    5.2   Processing Modes
	5.2.1   Interactive or Synchronous Processing Mode
	    5.2.1.1   VICAR DCL Mode - VMS Systems
	    5.2.1.2   VICAR USH Mode - UNIX Systems
	5.2.2   Asynchronous Processing
	    5.2.2.1   Asynchronous Processing - VMS Systems
	    5.2.2.2   "Background" Processing - UNIX Systems
	5.2.3   Batch Processing Mode
	    5.2.3.1   Batch Processing - VMS Systems
	    5.2.3.2   Batch Processing - UNIX Systems
    5.3   VICAR Use of Subprocesses
    5.4   Session Customizing Procedures
	5.4.1   Logon Procedures
	5.4.2   Logoff Procedures
    5.5   Aborting a VICAR Command
6   VICAR User Aids
    6.1   VICAR Help
	6.1.1   HELP Command
    6.2   VICAR TUTOR Mode
	6.2.1   General TUTOR Information
	6.2.2   TUTOR-SCREEN Mode
	6.2.3   TUTOR-NOSCREEN Mode
    6.3   VICAR MENU Mode
	6.3.1   General Menu Information
	6.3.2   The MENUTREE
	6.3.3   Creating a Menu
    6.4   Syntax Checking
    6.5   Message Interpretation
	6.5.1   General Message Information
	6.5.2   HELP-MESSAGE
	6.5.3   "?"
7   The VICAR Image Processing Executive
    7.1   Introduction to the TAE Command Language (TCL)
	7.1.1   TCL Command Line Rules
	    7.1.1.1   Abbreviations
	    7.1.1.2   Line Continuation
	    7.1.1.3   Labels
	    7.1.1.4   Special Characters
	    7.1.1.5   Special VT100 Terminal Keys
	    7.1.1.6   Command Line Editor
	7.1.2   Variables
	    7.1.2.1   Local Variables
	    7.1.2.2   Global Variables
	    7.1.2.3   Assignment
	    7.1.2.4   Intrinsic Variables
	    7.1.2.5   Substitution and  Dereferencing
	7.1.3   Expressions
	7.1.4   Built-In Functions
	7.1.5   Error Handling
    7.2   VICAR Command Line Structure
	7.2.1   Command Line Syntax
	    7.2.1.1   Commands and Proc Names
	    7.2.1.2   Subcommands
	    7.2.1.3   Command Qualifiers
	    7.2.1.4   Parameter List
	    7.2.1.5   Comments
	7.2.2   Parameters
	7.2.3   Parameter Value Specification
	    7.2.3.1   Parameter_name=value Format
	    7.2.3.2   Keyword Format
	    7.2.3.3   Positional Format
	    7.2.3.4   Parameter Qualifiers
	7.2.4   Missing or Invalid Parameter Values
	7.2.5   Dynamic Parameters
    7.3   Proc Definition Files (PDFs)
	7.3.1   Procedure Definition Files (PDFs)
	7.3.2   Process Definition Files (PDFs)
	7.3.3   Executing a PDF
	7.3.4   HELP Files
	7.3.5   Global PDFs
	7.3.6   Compiled PDFs
    7.4   Script Files
    7.5   Tape Handling
    7.6   Session Logging
    7.7   Sample Interactive Session
8   Non-Standard Items
    8.1   Proprietary Software
    8.2   Facility-specific Hardware
    8.3   VICAR I/O Formats
	8.3.1   Input/Output of VICAR Datasets
	8.3.2   Output of Non-VICAR Datasets
	8.3.3   Input of Non-VICAR Datasets
9   Advanced VICAR Concepts
    9.1   Dataset Structure
    9.2   VICAR Label Structure
10  Appendix
    10.1   VICAR Proc Function Definitions
    10.2   Classification of VICAR Procs by Function
    10.3   Standard VICAR Procs and their Functions
    10.4   VICAR Intrinsic Commands
    10.5   VICAR Command Qualifiers
    10.6   VICAR Intrinsic Global Variables
    10.7   MENU Mode User Operations
    10.8   TUTOR Mode User Operations
    10.9   TUTOR Mode Line Editing Keys
    10.10  Command Line Editing Keys
    10.11  Examples of Proc Definition Files (PDFs)
    10.12  Examples of VICAR Labels
    10.13  VICAR Message Explanations
    10.14  The VICAR New User's Tutorial
	10.14.1   New User Tutorial Listing
11  Index

Version 3 of the VICAR User's Guide is an update of previous versions, and the authors relied heavily on those earlier versions for its content. The authors of Version 2 of the Guide are Susan LaVoie, Doug Alexander, Charles Avis, Helen Mortensen, Carol Stanley, and Lisa Wainio. The writing and HTML formatting of Version 3 were done by Elizabeth.D.Duxbury@jpl.nasa.gov and Danika.Jensen@jpl.nasa.gov. Last modified May 21, 1996.