Backward compatibility

Many RPS2 users rely on starting with a previous proposal to write their new proposal. This users include those in the following categories:

• Instrument scientists who write calibration proposals that change very little from year to year.
• GTOs who have long term monitoring programs.
• GOs whose observation is very similar to one already made.

We need to give the above users the ability to convert an old RPS2 file into the new APT format. By doing so, they do not have to start from scratch, simply because we changed our format. Once they have imported the old file, they will have all the power of APT to modify the proposal easily.

The Preprocessor (which parses RPS2 files) will be modified to output an XML file. This is analogous to what we did when we transitioned from RPSS to RPS2 file formats. We created a tool called ProCon (proposal converter), which allowed us to create a draft RPS2 proposal from an old RPSS proposal. It has not been decided if the APT will call the Preprocessor when importing an RPS2 file, or if the converter will be a stand alone tool.

Having this import capability also provides us with some risk mitigation. If the APT is generally capable, but has a few problems with certain rare syntax, then we can use the RPS2 "back door" to add that syntax manually.