Motivation

In the field of optical Fabry-Perot astronomy, many observers reduce their data with a little-known package called ZODIAC (Shopbell 1996). Originally written by George Miyashiro of the University of Hawaii , it is an excellent interactive environment for the manipulation of 0-, 1-, 2-, and 3-d data structures. It also has a relatively simple programming interface. As such, it is well-suited to the small community of Fabry-Perot astronomers, who have extended ZODIAC with special-purpose routines for reducing and analyzing large 3-d data sets. The simplistic nature of ZODIAC, while a strength in terms of usability and extensibility, places limits upon one's data analysis, particularly in the areas of line and image graphics, networking, and image information handling. This has motivated the development of a Fabry-Perot package in IRAF (Bland-Hawthorn, Shopbell, & Cecil 1992 ). IRAF can provide the astronomer with a number of basic features not found in ZODIAC, such as a built-in graphics, as well as a large set of familiar tasks for 1-d and 2-d data analysis. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate a few important differences between ZODIAC and IRAF , as have been encountered during development of the IRAF Fabry-Perot package. We have found that while IRAF is a superior platform from a user standpoint, there are a number of useful ZODIAC features which could be valuable in the IRAF environment.