[APBeta] Plan Creation Wizard

[Paul Rodman]

Folks,

Your views greatly appreciated.

One feature of AP V2 that's past it's use-by data is the Plan Creation  
Wizard, because:

a. It's not really a "wizard" as such.
b. It's very restrictive (i.e. you have to supply a lot of irritating  
detail, and either get back too few, or two many hits.
c. It's very slow.

Since it's the kind of feature that new users would use, it needs to  
be a lot better.

Making the interface better, more "wizard-like", and less cluttered, I  
can manage. Problem (c) is the main one. What I'm struggling with is  
the actually algorithms.

I can take three approaches (the first of which is the currently-used  
one):

1. Search all (or selected) catalogues for objects that satisfy  
carefully (sic) crafted rules (e.g. any galaxies that are brighter  
than mag A, and bigger than B).

2. Have a separate database of objects that are indexed by expertise  
level, object type, etc. Possibly pointing to the actual catalogue  
entries. The database would be created beforehand by running a special  
app on the entire catalogue set.

3. Create a database of objects manually, based on astronomy  
literature, S&T articles, NSOG data, user input, etc. This database  
could be updated on-line as new information becomes available.

and possibly

4. Your suggestion here.

All of the above (apart from 4) have advantages and disadvantages:

1. Advantage: a. I don't have to update any databases or otherwise  
keep things up-to-date.
    Advantage: b. There's pretty much every object you could wish for  
in the existing catalogues. Adding extra catalogues only improves  
things.
    Advantage: c. Incentive to register and get more catalogues.

    Disadvantage: a. The searching can take a long time (although  
there are various things I can do to alleviate the problem).
    Disadvantage: b. False positives, false negatives can occur, if  
there are bogus catalogue entries (e.g. galaxies with Mag=0).  
Duplicates.

2. Advantage: a. Fast lookup.
    Advantage: b. Very little maintenance required by me.
    Advantage: c. Same as c above.

    Disadvantage: a. If catalogues get changed or added, the database  
will need refreshing. This could be done on-line, possibly when in the  
Cat Manager.
    Disadvantage: b. See disadvantage b above.
    Disadvantage: c. The database could be quite big.

3. Advantage: a. High quality object choices.
    Advantage: b. Very fast lookups.

    Disadvantage: a. LOTS of work required by me (I could start by  
sucking all user-contributed plan objects, I guess).
    Disadvantage: b. A limited selection of objects, unless  
Disadvantage (a) isn't a problem.
    Disadvantage: c. A less objective selection of objects. Some good/ 
popular ones might be missed.

What are your views, O Valued Testers?

Paul R.