Problem with the OAL files exported from SkySafari?

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Wim De Meester

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Jan 11, 2018, 8:56:05 AM1/11/18
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Hi all,

One of our users recently bought skysafari 6 and tried the OAL export. He is unable to read the file in DeepskyLog. I’m also not able to import the file in Observation Manager. Can someone check if there is a problem with the attached file?

ObservingLogsOAL.xml

Wim De Meester

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Jan 12, 2018, 7:54:46 AM1/12/18
to openastr...@googlegroups.com, Phyllis Lang
Thank you, that is indeed one of the problems, but there are a few more… I have let the SkySafari developers know already some of the problems. Let’s hope they can fix the problems soon, so that we will be able to import <OAL> files from skySafari.

Cheers,

Wim

On 11 Jan 2018, at 16:56, Phyllis Lang <phy...@knightware.biz> wrote:

Wim,

It looks like the <imagers> element is incorrect from SkySafari. There may be more, but that's flagged in my validator.

- Phyllis

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Phyllis K. Lang
Knightware, LLC
Author, SQM Reader Pro & Deep-Sky Planner
S&T 2014 Hot Product, Astronomy 2013 Star Product
e-mail: phy...@knightware.biz
web: http://knightware.biz

On 1/11/2018 8:56 AM, Wim De Meester wrote:
Hi all,

One of our users recently bought skysafari 6 and tried the OAL export. He is unable to read the file in DeepskyLog. I’m also not able to import the file in Observation Manager. Can someone check if there is a problem with the attached file?

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Cheers,

Wim

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Thomas Pfleger

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Jan 17, 2018, 2:13:34 PM1/17/18
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Hi,
after some investigation I was able to spot the problems and finally could import a slightly modified file. So, what is it?

  1. The namespace of the document and the schema do not match. Yes, it's true that we moved from the Google group to github, but the spec does not require a namespace URL to be resovable. It just has to be unique.
  2. There is an encoding problem and a character that breaks my import, at least into Eye&Telescope.
  3. The <imager> element for the CCD camera is not valid.
Fixes:

  1. In the observations document, the namespace declaration to be used in element <oal:observations>  is
    http://groups.google.com/group/openastronomylog not https://github.com/openastronomylog/openastronomylog
  2. I removed the character after "Observing with Agapios Elia and his Celestron C9.25" in line 110 and saved the file as UTF-8 without byte order marker (BOM)
  3. An <imager> element gives its concrete type, but the concrete type is not the element name.
    Note the order of the pixelsX, pixelsY, pixelsXSize und pixelsYSize. They do not group by X and Y.  
    The <binning> element is mandatory, albeit it has a default value of 1. So it must be present but may be empty.
With this modifications the file can be imported. See the attachment, please.

Kind regards
Tom
ObservingLogsOAL.xml

Wim De Meester

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Jan 17, 2018, 2:29:26 PM1/17/18
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Hi all,

ObservationManager still gives an error… I see

Exception in thread "ProcessDialog: Calculation thread" ERR  Wed Jan 17 20:26:40 CET 2018 java.lang.StringIndexOutOfBoundsException: String index out of range: -1
ERR  Wed Jan 17 20:26:40 CET 2018 at java.lang.String.substring(String.java:1967)
ERR  Wed Jan 17 20:26:40 CET 2018 at de.lehmannet.om.util.DateConverter.createTimezone(DateConverter.java:331)

DeepskyLog also cannot import the file yet, because we don’t use oal:observationTargetType yet. I’m fixing this these days, so hopefully we can also import the files from SkySafari.

Cheers,

Wim
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<ObservingLogsOAL.xml>

Phyllis

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Jan 17, 2018, 3:36:52 PM1/17/18
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Hi Tom,

I hope you are doing well!

1. I have some emails from April 2015 stating that the schema namespace (xmlns:oal) and location (xsi:schemaLocation) were changed to ="https://github.com/openastronomylog/openastronomylog" when the Google Code site was closed. I made that change to Deep-Sky Planner at that time.
2. Nice catch on the encoding error. My XML validator caught the encoding error, but I didn't know where it was.
3. I've reported this to Simulation Curriculum.

- Phyllis

Wim De Meester

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Jan 22, 2018, 3:20:43 PM1/22/18
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Hi all,

Can someone tell me which namespace is expected? If I use the oal21.xsd file from github, I can only validate files with the https://github.com/openastronomylog/openastronomylog namespace. The old oal21.xsd file from google code could validate the files with the google namespace. What should we use now? 

I’m going over the import and export of OAL files in DeepskyLog now, and I would like to know the definitive answer…

Cheers,

Thomas Pfleger

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Jan 22, 2018, 6:08:00 PM1/22/18
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Hi all,

I did not notice until now that the namespace was changed when moving from Google Code to Github. In my opinion, the namespace can only be changed if the version of the schema is also changed.
For now, I will stick with version 2.1 and the "old" namespace --> http://groups.google.com/group/openastronomylog
Sadly my schedule is tight and I have hardly any time to work on E&T, so it might take way too long for the next update to catch up with an absolutely unneccessary change of the namespace. 
If anyone insists in using the new "github" namespace, this must not happen in schema version 2.1.
With a new version and namespace, a transformation could save compatibility but, once again, I see no added value in changing the namespace, only the disadvantage that things get more complex and error prone.
So please keep the "old" namespace.
A namespace URI does not have to be resolvable, it must only be unique.
Kind regards,
Tom

Am Montag, 22. Januar 2018 21:20:43 UTC+1 schrieb Wim De Meester:
Hi all,

Can someone tell me which namespace is expected? If I use the oal21.xsd file from github, I can only validate files with the https://github.com/openastronomylog/openastronomylog namespace. The old oal21.xsd file from google code could validate the files with the google namespace. What should we use now? 

I’m going over the import and export of OAL files in DeepskyLog now, and I would like to know the definitive answer…

Cheers,

On 17 Jan 2018, at 21:36, Phyllis <unsp...@knightware.biz> wrote:

Hi Tom,

I hope you are doing well!

1. I have some emails from April 2015 stating that the schema namespace (xmlns:oal) and location (xsi:schemaLocation) were changed to ="https://github.com/openastronomylog/openastronomylog" when the Google Code site was closed. I made that change to Deep-Sky Planner at that time.
2. Nice catch on the encoding error. My XML validator caught the encoding error, but I didn't know where it was.
3. I've reported this to Simulation Curriculum.

- Phyllis

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Phyllis

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Jan 22, 2018, 7:41:52 PM1/22/18
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Hi,

I think the cat is out of the bag on this namespace issue. It looks like DeepSkyLog, Deep-Sky Planner & SkySafari have public releases out that refer to https://github.com/openastronomylog/openastronomylog and the schemaVersion is 2.1. I don't know what ObservationManager is using, but I suspect it refers to Github / v2.1 also.

I don't mind changing my software, but it seems like the majority of supporting products are using Github / v2.1. We need to hear from Dirk as I believe he is maintaining the Github repository.

Cheers,
- Phyllis

Wim De Meester

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Jan 23, 2018, 3:58:25 AM1/23/18
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DeepskyLog still uses the old google code namespace, but I’m in the process of checking and changing the openastronomylog code, so I can use whatever we decide.

Cheers,

Phyllis

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Jan 23, 2018, 6:47:07 AM1/23/18
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Wim,

After thinking about this for a while, I have a little confusion. The namespace I see in the schema definition prior to 2015 is google groups (not code) like:

Can you confirm what you are using?

- Phyllis

Wim De Meester

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Jan 23, 2018, 7:12:05 AM1/23/18
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At this moment, DeepskyLog is using the groups.google.com/group/openastronomylog namespace.

Cheers,

Phyllis

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Jan 23, 2018, 7:28:48 AM1/23/18
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Wim,

Thanks for confirming that.

I think I agree with Tom then, but I'd like for Dirk to contribute. He may have had another reason to change the namespace.

My thinking is that the namespace does not refer to the storage location of the schema itself. Since groups.google.com is still a URL associated with OAL, I think it is OK to use it. I had never considered the need to change the schema version number either (oops!) The parser I use in my product doesn't validate the schemaLocation, so the change didn't affect me, other than at test time when I do validate documents.

So my recommendation is that we revert the namespace as shown below and update the repository.
Once the repository is updated (or we here from a community member that this is not a good change), I'll update Deep-Sky Planner to use the groups.google.com namespace.

Please let us know how you proceed, and thanks!
- Phyllis
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