Creating TDFs, etc.
Bill J Gray Sep 2, 2004
Hi folks,
Sorry for the delay... all is indeed well here. I should be somewhat
more "present" on this list now!
Regarding creating TDFs and evading the extension woes caused by
Notepad and some similar programs: I usually create TDFs by first
finding another TDF and copying it. There are a variety of small TDFs,
and if you copy one of them to (say) "new.tdf" or whatever, and edit
it, you can evade the extension problem. (If you open the already
existing "new.tdf" with Notepad or Wordpad, these programs will not
insist on renaming it to "new.txt" or "new.tdf.txt".)
The other advantage of this is that much of the basic framework for
the TDF will be present. You'll change the data describing where
various parameters (RA hours, dec arcseconds, size, etc.) are found,
and will come up with new "comment" and "remark" data. But this is
somewhat easier than building a TDF from scratch.
I can second Arild's comment about not using Word for editing text
files, and appreciate his recommendations for alternatives. (I mostly
use a DOS-based editor I wrote myself, long ago, at a time when I
couldn't find certain features I felt were necessary in a text editor.
It works well for me, having been written specifically for my needs,
but I'd not recommend it to anyone else.)
-- Bill