Hi Bill

iii.dat is kind of live, I'd assumed Guide was regenerating a new
iii.idx every time that's why I fathed about wondering on the iii.dat
file being at fault.

iii.dat updates whenever it updates, semiregularly. New objects
aren't added except after namelists, but corrections and errata as
they occur get reflected in iii.dat being updated on a regular basis.
It's possible that objects shown to be constant in the meantime get
changed too, as their coords are usually dropped from iii.dat, well,
that used to be the case.


Something similar occurs nowadays with the WDS, which is in a similar
situation, in that Guide has built in GO TO names features, but over
the years the online data file has evolved beyond that given on the
Guide CDs. Recently that too had a quasi-static update, WDS 2006.5,
similar to the quasi-static update of GCVS with namelists 77 and 78,
however, it too is updated in the online version with errata, and in
this case even new objects, whenever they occur. I mention it in case
the same fix as with the GCVS came to mind.

Probably by mid March at the latest iii.dat will not be the iii.dat
you see now, maybe not even next week.

Anyway, from reading the below none of that seems to matter now, as
you look to have updated datafiles covered with the iii.idx
regeneration patch.

Cheers

John

--- In guide-user@yahoogroups.com, Bill J Gray <pluto@...> wrote:
>
> Hi folks,
>
> Roger Pickard wrote:
>
> "...I deleted iii.idx but Guide re-generates it, so it made no
> difference at all."
>
> True. I made a series of errors here.
>
> First: yes, Guide looks for the index file 'iii.idx' and, if
> it doesn't find it, builds it from 'iii.dat'. Problem is, the
> version of Guide on the Web site doesn't do that correctly.
>
> So I fixed this and posted the corrected 'iii.idx' file, and
> all appeared to be well. Except that I didn't realize that the
> 'iii.dat' file provided on the Russian GCVS site changed a couple
> of weeks ago. (The main GCVS site still says "Version: Oct. 17
> 2006.")
>
> So I just got the new, 30 January 2007 file and created a
> revised index, which you can get at
>
> http://www.projectpluto.com/iii.idx
>
> (It's 8080 bytes.) That should get things going, though it
> leaves me with two things to fix.
>
> First, a format change was made in the new file. When you ask
> for 'more info', some of the comments from the GCVS will be mangled.
>
> Second, I think Guide should be able to handle changes in
'iii.dat'.
> If it tries using the 'iii.idx' file and it doesn't work, it should
> rebuild 'iii.idx' and try again.
>
> I ought to get these fixed shortly. In the meantime, use of the
> above 'iii.idx' file will at least enable you to 'go to' the new
> variable stars.
>
> -- Bill
>