Re: Paper Submitted via FTP

[Michael Koppelman <lolife@bitstream.net>]

Cool, I can easily make these changes.

Thanks!
Michael Koppelman

On Tuesday, June 25, 2002, at 01:41  PM, jg wrote:

> Michael Koppelman wrote:
>
>> The data file is here:
>>
>> http://www.lolife.com/gsc279-321/data.txt
>>
>
> Okay
>
> The convention is, and this is written down somewhere if I could
> remember where to look it up, fixed length records for astronomical data
> (when presented in ascii as opposed to fits, dunno about fits).
>
> You don't have to believe me, you can just go and look at all the data
> files for IBVS 5200 onwards at their website.  ASCII datafiles for
> anything astronomical anywhere (yes, there'll be exceptions, but not at
> data centres) are presented as fixed length records (no tab character
> either, spaces).
>
> I know people who know how to program and are used to programming
> languages that don't care about space delimited data aren't bothered
> about this, but this is the way it is.
>
> It's a cross platform reason as much as anything.  Also makes it easier
> on the eyeball during quick visual scans.  That is, so the human can
> read it too, not just the machines.
>
> Also for cross platform reasons the recommendation is supposed to be
> both LF and CR (ascii 10 and ascii 13) character codes at the end of
> lines so it'll work in dos, mac and unix environments easily enough.
>
> This latter doesn't bother me personally so much coz that one is easy to
> sort, but I believe that too is the convention.  I haven't checked the
> the IBVS datafiles to see if they follow that particular one rigidly or
> not.
>
> Finally, on the datafile, trailing zeroes to decimal precision looks
> nicer.  Don't know whether it is a rule or not, and decimal points
> should align, eg :-
>
> 2452431.77152 0.909  Koppelman
> 2452431.77190 -0.022  Terrell
> 2452431.77196 0.881  Koppelman
> 2452431.77239 0.863  Koppelman
> 2452431.77284 0.875  Koppelman
> 2452431.77328 0.968  Koppelman
> 2452431.77371 0.885  Koppelman
> 2452431.77400 0.014  Terrell
> 2452431.77416 0.8  Koppelman
> 2452431.77459 0.723  Koppelman
> 2452431.77504 0.615  Koppelman
> 2452431.77600 -0.014  Terrell
> 2452431.77800 0.048  Terrell
> 2452431.78010 0.029  Terrell
>
> doesn't look as nice as :-
>
> 2452431.77152  0.909  Koppelman
> 2452431.77190 -0.022  Terrell
> 2452431.77196  0.881  Koppelman
> 2452431.77239  0.863  Koppelman
> 2452431.77284  0.875  Koppelman
> 2452431.77328  0.968  Koppelman
> 2452431.77371  0.885  Koppelman
> 2452431.77400  0.014  Terrell
> 2452431.77416  0.800  Koppelman
> 2452431.77459  0.723  Koppelman
> 2452431.77504  0.615  Koppelman
> 2452431.77600 -0.014  Terrell
> 2452431.77800  0.048  Terrell
> 2452431.78010  0.029  Terrell
>
> and if you're following a columnar format the site names should rank eg
> :-
>
> 2452313.93483 11.684 10.954 TASS
> 2452313.93659 11.747 10.950 TASS
> 2452313.93836 11.671 10.961 TASS
> 2452313.94012 11.655 10.940 TASS
> 2452425.69252  0.881        Koppelman
> 2452425.69301  0.875        Koppelman
> 2452425.69351  0.874        Koppelman
> 2452425.69402  0.884        Koppelman
>
> ;)
>
> Cheers
>
> John G.
>