Jim Varney wrote a few weeks ago: [I'm catching up with old mail, can you tell ? ;-] >For those of you who submit flash period timings in PPAS format, I have >written a small utility program called PPAS Input for Windows. The purpose >of it is to make it fast and easy to convert observations into the standard >PPAS format. It's 16 bit, for Windows 3.1 and up. >You'll find PPASINP.ZIP at >http://www.quiknet.com/~jvarney I just installed it without a problem here. I was a bit skeptical at first when I heard about the program, because our (outdated?) SatFlash software (ftp://ftp.physics.ox.ac.uk/pub/sat/bwgs/) pretends to facilitate entry of flash period measurements in the PPAS-format as well. But I'm a convert now. Jim has written a great little program that definitely will be *my* choice for entering future observations (and I'm one of the co-authors of SatFlash :-) So, I would suggest that anyone interested in flash period measurements pick up this program of Jim's. If Jim agrees, We'll keep a copy at the ftp-site in Oxford too? >All comments, bug reports, etc. are welcome. Haven't tested it thoroughly (yet), but a few suggestions: 1. Capitalize the initials if they've been entered in lower-case (either in the SETUP section or directly into the main entering window) 2. Check for nonsense input, e.g. make sure 'hours' are always 0<h<24, minutes (in the date-entry) and seconds always between 0 and 60, flash periods never negative (which happens if you leave 'end-period' blank) SatFlash does this nonsense checking and it helps when you're entering large amounts of data. Bjoern suggested: >And (I was thinking of this for a program for DRAP input) input fields >for (several) time signal times and their stopwatch recording, so the >End Of Observation fields can be computed directly from readings ? Any chance you could adapt it for DRA? Thanks and cheers, Bart ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bart De Pontieu -- Max-Planck-Institute for extraterrestrial Physics, Garching bdp@mpe-garching.mpg.de -- http://www.rzg.mpg.de/~bdp/satintro.html Join us at Eurosom 2, Oct 19/20 1996 -- http://www.rzg.mpg.de/~bdp/eurosom.html BWGS-coordinator -- Flash editor -- SeeSat-L administrator -- would-be-observer "Life is like a jigsaw. You get the straight bits, but there's something" "missing in the middle." -- XTC, "All Of A Sudden (It's Too Late)" -------------------------------------------------------------------------------