Cham wrote:Well then, the problem is to avoid the ones you have indicated in a previous message, and that I've indicated too :
In a given binary, how can we select the barycenter itself from the command line, if it has the same HIP name as one of the components, as stored in Celestia's internal number ? This is also causing some selection problems with scripts.
Right now I think the fact that for binaries without proper name one cannot dial the barycenter is simply a bug. If I find time or if Chris L. finds some time, this should be an easy matter to clear up.
If the barycenter can't have an HIP number in front of its name (in the STC file), is it a good solution to simply remove the HIP number in front of the star names, since Celestia can identify the stars from their declared names anyay ?
Well the multitude of possibilities to writing a name is a real problem here. A (HIP) number is a much cleaner way of identification. With PERL I can simply chop off anything but the numerals and then I know what the object is, INDEPENDENT of syntactical issues! You see, my PERL scripts already do quite sophisticated things:
First of all, I read in the entire stars.txt file of Celestia and merge it with the actual correction file, revised.stc. After some consistency tests, I use the RA, DEC and distance values from the main Celestia star database for the coordinates of the binary's barycenter, in order not to encounter some slightly different values in the display! This is just one of various actions. Without using the HIP numbers this would be virtually impossible...
From my extended tests it seems the overall situation is not all that bad. But we do need to do some adaptations in the code to become conform with the "standards". I don't think the effort would be very high. But it's clearly more than just writing posts with proverbs...
Bye Fridger
