VStar 2.16.10 release candidate: testing requested

Affiliation
Astronomical Society of South Australia (ASSAU)
Tue, 12/08/2015 - 20:31

Hi all

First, apologies for the length of time it's taken me to get to another release.

Given the number of changes I've made since August, I'd appreciate some testing before a formal release.

So, please find here:

2.16.10-RC1 (release candidate 1) archives for Windows, Mac, and Linux (any OS with bash and Java actually) and plug-ins archive:

The change log entry currently looks like this:

Date: December 8 2015

Version: 2.16.10-RC1

Tag: DEV-AAVSO-08Dec2015

Key Changes:

- Fixed bug in which raw mode polynomial fits gave errors; introduced after 

  adding phase plot mode polynomial fit feature in 2.16.9

- Removed need for authentication or giving special treatment to member plug-ins 

  from plugin-manager; note that member-only plug-ins still require authentication 

  at run-time.

- Disabled extrema finder functionaliy until a reliable approach is implemented.

- Ticket #400: Made all "New Star from File..." menu items plug-in based

  and changed AAVSO upload obs src to show line-based progress

- Ticket #161: Permit URL instead of file as data source for AAVSO download 

  format; this followed without effort after #400 was completed.

- Ticket #487: Warn if file will be overwritten in save operations

- Ticket #488: Request confirmation for star group deletion

- Ticket #499: Authentication failure leaves discrepant hidden but unreported 

- Ticket #505: BSM Epoch Photometry source field: handling source field in such 

  a way that it will work whether or not the field is present. Updates for BSM 

  2015 data release.

- Ticket #436: Plug-in Manager: install from local: added local directory

  selection button in preferences pane and internal changes to allow http

  and file streams.

- Ticket #430: Observation list: Save: Allow phase phase plot list to be saved

  Also, model, mean, residuals lists can also now be saved in phase plot mode.

  Scripting API modified to allow mean, model, residuals to be saved; light 

  curve vs phase plot mode must be explicitly requested before calling these 

  now, a change in behaviour! 

- Ticket #506: Synthetic obs list in phase mode should always use standard phase.

I'd like to request general testing with particular attention paid to the items in bold.

If you ran across the polynomial fit bug, please confirm that this has been fixed for your context.

If you want to update plug-ins, you can now have the plug-in manager look in a local directory rather than going to the remote plug-in repository. The plug-ins zip file included at the URL above can be uncompressed and the directory containing the resulting vstar_plugins and vstar_plugin_libs directories can be pointed to via plug-in preferences.

Please post bugs, comments, or questions to this topic or to me via my contact page. 

David

Affiliation
Astronomical Society of South Australia (ASSAU)
Problems with initial uploads

Hi all

There were problems with the initially uploaded archives including the links themselves above (which have been fixed).

Please download them again if you had already obtained them.

Thanks to Sara for spotting the problems.

It was a late-at-night-and-too-hurried kind of phenomenon I think.

David

Affiliation
Astronomical Society of South Australia (ASSAU)
Feedback

Hi all

A couple of questions:

  • Has anyone tried to load plug-ins from the unzipped plug-ins archive by pointing at the local directory via Preferences -> Plug-in Settings, as mentioned above?
    • At least one person has reported problems with this. That was on a Windows computer and I suspect it's a path-format related problem.
  • Any other comments/questions, particular relating to the polynomial bug fix but just in general re: new features?

Thanks.

David

Affiliation
Astronomical Society of South Australia (ASSAU)
2.16.10-RC2

Happy new year all

A second release candidate is available:

The changes from RC1 are:

  • BSM source ID to name mapping (name shows in observation list/details); should not need to update plugin.
  • Fixed local directory URL in plugin manager settings for Windows, as per previously noted bug; thanks to Robert, Sara, John for pointing this out and finding a fix.
  • Added DCDFT scripting API functions with an update to the manual example.

David

Affiliation
Astronomical Society of South Australia (ASSAU)
Scripting example with DCDFT

Hi all

 

If anyone would like to try an example script that loads two datasets from AID, performs a period search, creates a phase plot from the top hit then saves it as a PNG, then save the following JavaScript code (from the manual example) as say, example.js, then run with Tools -> Run Script..., changing the root variable in the first line to some location on your computer's file system:

 

root = "/Users/david/tmp/"
objs = ["eta Aql", "bet Lyr"]

startJD = 2455821.5
endJD = 2456552.5
epoch = (startJD + endJD)/2

for (i=0;i<objs.length;i++) {

obj = objs[i]
vstar.loadFromAID(obj, startJD, endJD)

periods = vstar.dcdftPeriod("Visual", 1.0, 20.0, 0.001)

if (vstar.getError() == null) {
vstar.phasePlot(periods[0], epoch)
vstar.phasePlotMode()

path = root + obj.replace(" ", "_") + "phase_plot.png"

vstar.saveLightCurve(path, 600, 400)
}
}

 

If you have any trouble with it, let me know.

 

David

 

Affiliation
Astronomical Society of South Australia (ASSAU)
OS specific paths

Note that the root path in the example above ("/Users/david/tmp/") is a Mac OS X path.

Under Linux, “/home/david/tmp/” would be more appropriate.

For Windows, backslashes are used in paths and for use in this context, these must be “escaped” with an additional backslash, e.g. “C:\\Users\\david\\tmp\\” instead of the usual “C:\Users\david\tmp\”

David