“…but professional astronomers are perfectly happy with personalised batch files processing chains akin to a DOS .bat file. Its us Windows users who have gone soft :)” Their not the only ones. I am an inherently lazy astronomer.
I have automated the capture of my echelle spectra to the point where I can just input a set of targets in a .dat file and it will work through them while I do other things. By the time I have IRAF bent to my will all I should need to do is load the data files and set of the script and out should pop the radial velocity measurements.
Some way to go though yet as I have only finished the wavelength calibration for the first 10 orders with 20 to go,
Regards Andrew