> The ORACDR part of AGII is interesting. You might want to note that it is
> a generic pipleine rather than tied to a particular telescope. You should
> also mention that it can handle data from UKIRT, JCMT, GEMINI and AAT. In
> response to Nic's comments at the bottom, he does not seem to understand
> that ORACDR is run by users in England not just at the telescope. Also he

You've been in America too long Tim.  (-:  We do have ORAC-DR users in
Scotland and Wales, and perhaps in Northern Ireland too.

> is not distinguishing generic pipelines from pipelines linked to data
> products. I'm a bit annoyed that VDFS is deemed to be a separate pipeline

This is a point want to correct in the E-SO bid where it says the recipe
is unique.  True, but this may give the impression that Nic appears to
have.  It is a generic pipeline (rather than a "package" in Section
2.1).

The statement about recipes unique to the instrument also doesn't
emphasize the generic recipes and code reuse.  Thereby we're making use
of PPARC's earlier investment.  The ISAAC recipes are largely the same
as those for UFTI or UIST.  There are some differences, additional steps
to cope with the particular instrument's signature, and so on, but much
of the recipe code is the same.  So we don't have to start from scratch
each time.  Once we get together some generic optical spectroscopy
reduction recipes, we should be able to apply them to many instruments.

Instrument-specific `pipelines' and packages do tend to reproduce
applications which already exist.  So we can be more efficient, just
writing those new features or applications needed for some new
instrument or observing mode.

In the current wording I might continue the "unique" sentence something
like "within a generic framework maximising code reuse and PPARC's
previous investment in software infrastructure."

> since the WFCAM version of it uses ORAC-DR (it's written by Cambridge) but
> it seems lilke they are writing their own pipeline anyway.

Why am I not surprised?  Besides NIH, have they cited technical reasons
where ORAC-DR is inadequate?  I get infuriated by this lack of
co-operation for the common good.  We've never had a review of *UK*
astronomical computing.  It's always Starlink, ignoring the
observatories, university instrument builders, and data centres let
alone what students and postdocs produce.

> A reference to Brad's ADASS paper on using ORACDR with different
> telescopes might also be appropriate.
>
>  http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-bib_query?bibcode=2003adass..12..237C&db_key=AST&high=3ecd802e2126547

'Twas on my list too.

The list of instruments is incomplete in the E-SO bid.  It might help to
emphasize the different areas covered already (e.g near- and
mid-infrared imaging, specroscopy, polarimetry; millimetre-wave imaging;
optical imaging) to reinforce the point that it's not tied to a specific
observatory or type of data.  It is a *flexible* pipeline.

Malcolm