Configuring beam heating

[jwreep]

The docs currently do not have a description of the parameters to configure a beam (that I can find), although pydrad does have the functionality to do so. (They just list the boolean to turn it on.)

Additionally, the template is slightly confusing:

pydrad/pydrad/configure/templates/heating.beam.cfg

Line 5 in dd41f6a

{{ b.time_start | units_filter('s') }} {{ b.flux | units_filter('erg cm^-2 s^-1') }} {{ b.cut_off | units_filter('keV') }} {{ b.index }}

If the beam is configured as time-independent, the first parameter beam.time_start is actually the duration of the beam (starting at time zero). I'd suggest this parameter needs to be renamed or this should be clarified.

[wtbarnes]

This is certainly confusing. The first time I went to use this, I was confused by the labeling of it as start time.

That being said, I think this is mostly a documentation issue as most users are not (or at least I hope not!) going to resort to reading the templates to figure out what is going on.

We could rename it something time_start_or_duration though that seems a bit clumsy. Maybe just a clarifying comment in addition to better docs would suffice?

I don't use this part of HYDRAD very often so I will leave it up to those who do to clarify the docs a bit more.

[jwreep]

We could probably be a bit more clever about this. Since it's looking for a python dictionary, allow it to be named either duration or time_start, depending on what the user defines. The length parameter at the top of the template dictates which should be used anyway.