
I'm not done going through and figuring out which we already have OPRs
for. But I thought I would share the compiled list I made of all the
feedback we got this time around for the VTT. If you know if an OPR
for one of these off hand please feel free to let me know. We have so
many OPRs that it can be hard to see if there is one on a topic
already.

- Karla


-----------------------------------------------------------------------
This is a combination of feedback from the following VTT users:

Bill Sparks (BS) 
Brian Espey (BE)
Bruce Balick (BB)
Christy Tremonti (CT)
Doug Richstone (DR) 
Ed Nelan (EN) 
Harold Ebling (HE) 
Harry Ferguson (HF)
Ivan King (IK) 
Jason Pinkney (JP)
John Biretta (JB) 
Kailash Sahu (KS)
Linda Dressel (LD) 
Mary Beth Kaiser (MBK) 
Neil Clifford (NC) 
Pat Knezek (PK) 
Sashi Kanbur (SK) 
Seppo Laine (SL) 
Stephen Smartt (SS)
Steve Lubow (STL) 
Sylvia Baggett (SB) 
Tom Brown (TB) 

Installation Problems
---------------------

* Problem with installation script (don't know how resolved). (SK)


Bugs
----

* Printing problems:

   * Why are the postscript files so large? It printed, but it took
   about 20 minutes. (EN) Couldn't print the file. (SL)

   * Printing does not work for me. (HF, CT) Christy's explanation: I
   hit print (under the file menu) in order to print my image (an
   uploaded FOC fits images with a STIS 52x0.2" slit on top).  This
   brings up a dialogue box asking if you want to print to a ps file
   or to a printer.  Either option blanks the main screen, and brings
   up a status bar that says "printing" -- but this stays at 0% no
   matter how long you wait and you can't get control of the program
   in any way at this point, so you have to manually kill it and start
   over.  I tried this many times, on a couple of different machines,
   so I think this isn't jsut a fluke. The weird thing is that I seem
   to remember vtt printing just fine when I used it on Monday
   night. (Harry's problem looked the same and I saw nothing obvious
   in his ~/.SEAPreferences/sea_log.txt to explain the hang.)

* The zoom short cut keys do not work. (SL) (Existing OPR 41782)

* If you start VTT, and then immediately type in an RA on the bottom
of the tool (before loading an image), you get "Invalid Coordinates"
when you try to move to the Dec field to enter a Dec.  The error box
goes away when you click "ok" but is immediately replaced by another
error box, and the tool gets stuck in this infinite loop.  You have to
ALT-CTRL-DEL on the PC and then end the task manually to get out of
this. (TB)

* She demonstrated a problem with the "What's This" button that I can
not reproduce. Nothing you did would make the cursor change back from
the question mark.  (She uses open windows if that is any clue.) (LD)

* She was not able to load a DSS image from the archive because the
archive jukebox was busy. But the busy message was disguised and it
appeared that the VTT could not load the image (as opposed to get the
image). (LD) (Existing OPR 42230)

* SIAF file used to generate apertures is out of date. (BE) (OPR 43322
filed)

* Can't get work remotely when using "ssh".  A window labeled Target
Tuner comes up, but it stays blank grey.  (Using a Sparc 4 to
redisplay from an Ultra 10.)  I had her try again with "telnet" and
"setenv DISPLAY" and it worked. (CT)

* Trouble downloading DSS images with the VTT.  Turned out to be a
change in the scripts the archive supports. (CT, HF) (OPR 43285 filed)

* I'm having problems with the color palettes.  None of them are black
and white.  This will probably go away when I close SAOimage and
Netscape.  How do you guys deal with the color table conflicts?  (JP)

* "Save Screen Snapshot" feature under "TargetSelect" creates a file
with the correct name but it was an empty file. (JP) (Existing OPR
41611)

* The radial plot ignores the pixel at the center of the image
sometimes.  I found a star with 15,000 counts above background and did
a fit.  The plot y axis stopped at 10,000 counts and the peak pixel
wasn't shown. (BB)


Performance Issues and Hangs
----------------------------

* Response was very slow when overlaying images or using mosaiced
WFPC2 images. (JB - has Ultra 10 with 1 gig of memory and 1.7 gig of
virtual memory. He uses the desk top windowing system.)

* The slider in color controls is so slow as to be nearly useless.
(JB - has Ultra 10 with 1 gig of memory and 1.7 gig of virtual memory
and uses the desk top windowing system, SL - has Ultra 10 and was
using the desk top windowing system, HF - has an Ultra 1 with 512M of
memory with Open Look Virtual Window Manager.)

* Closing a large (WFPC) image and then attempting to load another
large image (even the same one) can lead to "error loading image"
message.  His guess was that it was a memory problem (dispite how much
memory he has). Maybe it isn't releasing the space in memory that the
previous image was in? Even if you get lucky and the image does manage
to load, it takes for ever to work with because everything you do
causes the screen to refresh (like moving the cursor up to the menu
bar and clicking on a menu). The refreshes took a long time and were
blocky (possibly because it was using virtual memory). (JB - has Ultra
10 with 1 gig of memory and 1.7 gig of virtual memory. He uses the
desk top windowing system.)

* When he attempts to reorient an observation it was very herky-jerky.
(JB - has Ultra 10 with 1 gig of memory and 1.7 gig of virtual
memory. He uses the desk top windowing system.)

* He said (but could not reproduce on demand) that sometimes you have to
ask for an image to be opened twice before it would actually open. (SL
- he has an Ultra 10 and was using the desk top windowing system.)

* VTT hung twice requiring us to kill the process.  Both times we were
only attempting to read help. VTT frequently hangs. For example if he
leaves a session open on a desktop, work on another desktop for a few
hours, then come back to the VTT desktop it doesn't seem to revive
itself.  (HF - has an Ultra 1 with 512M of memory with Open Look
Virtual Window Manager).

* The VTT is very sluggish. Often it is so slow it is unusable.
Anything that causes the screen to refresh takes several seconds. (HF
- has an Ultra 1 with 512M of memory with Open Look Virtual Window
Manager)

* Several times VTT has hung up when loading an image. It gets to 99%,
and then just sits there. (HF- has an Ultra 1 with 512M of memory with
Open Look Virtual Window Manager)

* While he was demostrating things for us the VTT hung and had to be
killed once. He was attempting to load a new DSS image. (KS - has
Ultra 10)

* If I try to type in the orientation dialog box it just beeps at me. (CT)

* Sometimes the pulldown menus (e.g. help) freeze.  You get a "beep"
and can't do anything with that menu, even though the rest of the VTT
is still working. (TB - I was using it on a PC with Windows 98.  The
VTT was enlarged but not maximized to fill the whole screen.)

* Once there are multiple images displayed, if you zoom the program
goes off into la la land.  (Actually so slow as to be useless.) (CT)

* I put in "NGC104" and got its coordinates.  I then asked VTT to Load
Selected, from HST Phase 2 DSS.  It said "Loading FITS image from
archive.stsci.edu..." and went into a permanent hang.  The only thing
I could do was to kill VTT and give up. (IK)

* After opening and closing the target select window several times, I
notice that not all of the grey background appears in its window.  In
particular a white blank region encroaches on the window display,
hiding many important buttons and titles from around the
perimeter. This also happens in the Image Chooser and other windows as
well.  Eventually I have to restart the program. (BB)

* Unable to get large "drizzled" image to overlay on DSS image
which covered greater area. (BB)


Usability Issues (things that people couldn't find or were confusing)
---------------------------------------------------------------------

* Didn't know about the help search capability. (JB, EN, KS)

* With WFPC2 don't display the WFALL box around the useful chips. (JB, HE)

* It would be helpful if it was clear that the "orientation" in the VTT
was the U3 orientation that could be input into the proposal. (SL, BS)

* "Color controls" was a confusing name, how about "Image display
controls"? (JB)

* He didn't know about the catalog "info" option, but when we showed
it to him, clicking for info caused another step of zoom to occur. He
couldn't figure out how to get out of zoom mode. (EN) The info button
is gone and that is a good thing.  But leaving it on implicitly causes
some problems right now.  If I have catalogs on and try to mark a
catalog object for exclusion, the system gives me info about the
object and so I can't mark it.  This can be fixed by having the system
give the info capability a lower "priority". So another capability
gets done in preference to info. (STL)

* He couldn't figure out how to drag an aperture. (EN) Couldn't figure
out how to change a target position at all. (KS)

* He found it difficult to learn how to type in a new orient. Since he
was typing in a small tweak to the orient, he couldn't tell whether or
not the change had gone into effect yet. He was looking for an apply
button. (EN, BB)

* He coundn't figure out how to orient an aperture by the corner. (BB)

* "Print to file" should make it clear that you must specify a path
and the default should not be directory the user is likely to not have
access to. (SL)

* He didn't understand what was meant by "Phase 2 DSS". (HF)

* He did not understand how to put an observation on the display. (HF)

* Killing VTT when it gets in this non-responsive state is
interesting.  Just killing processes named VTT or vtt doesn't
work. You have to kill the java process. (HF)

* Couldn't find the GSSS plate ID. (HF)

* Couldn't find centroid. (DR)

* Couldn't find instantaneous coordinates. (DR)

* Non-dss images help told him all about coordinate systems, but
doesn't say how to actually load the image when it is ready. (BS)

* The references to the journal articles in object details does not
seem to bring up the right references, when you click on "search the
ADS for abstracts". I don't know what algoritm is being used to bring
up the list in the VTT help window. The object details window already
lists appropriate references.  Why not just display links to them?
Also the window with the list of links to references uses the ADS. But
the VTT help window cannot properly display the text of the
articles. Should we disable the "search the ADS for abstracts"
capability until this works better? (STL)

* Couldn't figure out how to add a second observation (KS)

* Couldn't figure out how to see the guidestar catalog (KS)

* She didn't realize that you could start again with a new image
without starting a new VTT session. (CT)

* She thought the "Target Tuner [1.0X]" which you see at the top
was the version number of the program and thought that she was getting
an older version of the program. (CT)

* Changes in preferences should be written out at the time so they are
not lost if you don't leave cleanly. (JP) I'm guessing that this was
his problem.

* Couldn't figure out how to use include/exclude. (JP)

* The Orientation Details popup has a choice "Specify orientation
angle", but the help pages call it "Specify exact orientation
angle". (JP)

* In the Orienation Details popup, what does "100% of orientations are
acceptable" mean? (JP)

* Couldn't find an interrupt button to stop runaway processes. (The
word "tasks" didn't mean much to him.) (BB)

* Can't tell if the VTT will come up (a message should appear that says
"VTT loading.  Please wait a minute.") (BB)

* Clicking in either of the manual ORIENT setting numerical boxes at
the bottom should automatically push the "specify orientation angle"
button. (BB)

* The scroll bar in the "select an image file" box doesn't move. (BB)

* The size of the window was so small that the names of the pull down
windows tried to overlap one another.  Some of the dialog boxes
(select target) have to be "pulled open" by the user in order to
reveal all of the buttons that exist.  Orientation Detail Box opens so
small that you can't see much of what's in it. (I believe he was
redisplaying from a unix box to his linux box.) (BB)


Requested Enhancements
----------------------

* Pos Targs display support needs to be added. (JB, EN) My proposal
has several POS-TARGs and I was trying to see whether one could give a
POS-TARG just as in the phase-II proposal. (KS)

* Need a tool to measure separations:

   * Maybe you could ask for the relative POS TARG after laying down
   two apertures. (JB) 

   * You should be able to set pos targs and then save them to the
   RPS2 file. (BB)

   * At the very least a way to read off the current V2/V3
   coordinates. (He knows the V2/V3 positions of the FGS fiducial
   points.) It would also be useful to see the X/Y system of the FGS. (EN)

   * Would like a way to measure the separation between the aperture and
   some other point in the image. Or the separation between two points in
   the image. (To be really fancy, it would be cool if the VTT would have
   a way to convert that to kpc or Mpc given a target distance in Mpc). (HF)

   * The toolkit also needs a dynamic ruler to measure the separation
   of two objects.  Photoshop does this nicely with the line tool + the
   "info box" which tells you the length of the line that you're
   drawing. (BB)


* Need a tool to indicate where you are on the detector:

   * It would be helpful to have POS TARG axes displayed on the
   cartoon of the STIS slit. Stuff like charge transfer errors will depend 
   on whether the target is at large or small Y coordinate.  (JB)

   * Need to know where the top of the STIS image is so you can orient
   the STIS MAMA such that the dark "glow" (upper left-hand quadrant
   of the STIS detector) doesn't fall on an important part of the
   image. (TB)

* Need better stretch options to pull out faint features. (JB) Log
scaling should also be available. (HF, MBK, JP, BB) Harry likes the
image "cut-level" controls in the ESO skycat program. There you get to
see a histogram of image intensities. You adjust the slider bars to
see where you are cutting, and then push the "set" button to have it
apply to the image. Bruce thinks the IRAF task "display" is a good
model for the sort of flexibility needed for image display: you can
optionally specify and minimum and maximum brightness to load, and you
can request a logarithmic display of the resulting image.

* The aperture should always be plotted even if it falls off the edge
of the image. (JB, PK, JP, BB)

* You should be able to "Cut and paste" text from another window into
the VTT. (JB, SL, HF)

* Should be able to save aperture information so that it can be
redisplayed on a different image of the same target or even a
different part of the sky. (JB, CT) It would be useful if the task could
ultimately be run in a batch-type mode. E.g., one sets up a first
observation (which would set aperture, orient, etc. and produce
image+overlay) then asking it to do the same for an entire list of
targets. Someone with a large set of targets could start the job then
come back later & page through the generated images+overlays, deciding
which were fine as-is and which ones might require additional
fine-tuning. (SB)

* Wants linux version. (NC, CT, BB)

* Should fill in Coordinate_Source in RPS2 file. (HE, JP)

* Should be able to create custom observation labels so that you can
label with something meaningful like target name or visit number. (JB,
JP)

* It would be useful to have suggested overlap between chips when
mosaicing. (JB, HE)

* When mosaicing with WFPC2 you should be able to highlight the border
of the useful region or be able to go into a mode that greys out the
imaged area and you could find the holes. (JB)

* Patterns display support needs to be added. (JB)

* You should be able to close a single image when multiple images are
being layered. (JB)

* Would be nice to have help search capability take multi word
searches. (JB)

* FGS needs to be fully implemented. This includes being able to
put a target in the FGS and representing the OCS in the corner of
each Pickle. (EN) (Existing OPR 41487)

* Add a N/E indicator, but it has to be able to be placed. (EN)

* You should be able to plot a new target position with the symbol and
name of your choosing. This information is stored in a file which can
be reread in. (EN)

* Apertures should be plotted realistically with things like the
fiducial bar showing. (SL)

* You should have a preference for the size you would like the VTT to
open so you don't have to resize the window everytime. (SL)

* The little arrow at the center of the STIS slits should be able to
be turned off. (SL)

* When printing an image the image should fill the page (instead of
being in the corner). (SL)

* Add a preference for the default "save to" directory to make it be
the directory you started the program in. (HF)

* The VTT should be able to read in all valid FITS files (All HST data
and even AIPS). (HF)

* Copy SkyCat's little window which shows the full image with a little
square for the current view. (HF) (Existing OPR 41394)

* It would be nice to have a way to use inclusion or exclusion to set
roll based on positions of the apertures of the instruments that might
be observing in parallel. (HF)

* He doesn't like that the full set of apertures window stays up (and
you have to close it after you choose an aperture. (HF)

* It would be helpful to be able to force north to point up. (BS)

* There is no option to change use a different equinox. (BS)

* He uses XI-OFF and ETA-OFF, it would be nice to have the same target
specification options as in the proposal. (BS)

* Have VTT read in an RPS2 file. (HE)

* Should not list the Plate-ID in the RPS2 file if it is from DSS2. (HE)

* It would be really useful to specifiy a search of the archive that
would pull the coords and orientation of all images within a certain
FOV, and then print them on the DSS image in the VTT.  (SS)

* She thinks it is important to report the aperture's "position angle"
on the sky. (LD) It would help to present the sky position angle of
the aperture (east from north) for J2000 for users of other telescopes
as the aperture is rotated. (BB) The toolkit also needs a dynamic
ruler to measure the position angle of two objects.  Photoshop does
this nicely with the line tool + the "info box" which tells you the
orientation of the line that you're drawing. (BB)

* The centroiding area should be graphically represented by a circle. (JP)
(Existing OPR 41440)

* VTT should have the ability to measure the PA's of major axes from
elliptical isophotes. (JP)

* You should be able to increase the size of the catalog labels. (JP)

* I'd like to use the arrow keys to "nudge" the aperture delicately
into position. (Like in Photoshop) (BB)

* Those tiny little numbers in the lower right corner of the main
window need labels. (BB)

* HST specific values like "POS TARG" and "ORIENT" should appear at
the bottom with RA and DEC if HST apertures are being used. (BB)

* Maybe use Photoshop model for tool buttons. When you hold the
button down there are options for how it should behave (zoom in or
out). (BB)

* Include more buttons to rotate the field 90deg CW, 90deg CCW, and
180 deg so that you can quickly see the effect of these changes. (BB)

* The "close all images" item in the "target select" pulldown menu
should be made a button. (BB)

* Should have undo feature. (BB)

* Print the RA/DEC of the fit inside the box where its easy to find,
not just on the window border. (BB)

* Should be able to to a radial profile without a centroid fit and the
click to make the fit. (BB)