PP3 -- Celestial charts generation
Version 1.3.3 2004/08/13
http://pp3.sourceforge.net
(c) 2004 Torsten Bronger
<bronger@users.sourceforge.net>
See the file COPYING or the above
web address for licence information.
INSTALLATION
There is a binary distribution for the Linux (RPM) and one for the Windows
platform, and two source distributions, a full and a 'crippled' one. The
crippled version has no Milky Way and no nebulae data, and it doesn't contain
the CWEB source code making it more difficult to adjust the source to your
compiler's peculiarities.
Please note that PP3 produces nothing else but a LaTeX file. Thus you must
have LaTeX installed if you want to get the actual map. It is not necessary to
be able to use LaTeX though. If you want PP3 to produce an EPS or a PDF, dvips
and ps2pdf must be installed properly, too. (However mostly they are part of
the TeX distribution anyway.) See PP3's homepage for more information.
The only really critical point is that PP3 needs to find its data files (all
files with the .dat extension). By default,
* the Windows version looks for them in the current directory, and
* the Linux version looks for them in the directory /usr/local/share/pp3
If you don't like that, you can move them to another directory and set the
environment variable PP3DATA to that directory. It it also possible to
recompile PP3 with a different default data directory. For this, change the
beginning of the Makefile.
USAGE
See below for the documentation. But for a quick test, enter the examples/
directory and say
pp3 leo.pp3
The result should be a file leo.eps with the constellation of Lion.
If you want to see the Milky Way on your maps, you probably have to set the
main memory size of your TeX distribution to its maximal value. This is
very implementation specific. With teTeX (Linux) you have to find the file
texmf.cnf and set main_memory.latex to 7500000. Then call "fmtutil --byfmt
latex".
With fpTeX/TeXLive (Windows) it's the same, however MikTeX (Windows too) is
different: Look for a directory called "localtexmf". Then create the file
"localtexmf\miktex\config\miktex.ini" and write "mem_max=7500000" in it.
Alternatively (albeit not cleanly), look for an existing file called
miktex.ini and change the line with "mem_max" to the above.
DOCUMENTATION
The documentation of PP3 can be found at http://pp3.sourceforge.net/manual/.
Another important source of information are the example input scripts in
examples/.
On PP3's project web page you can download a concise reference card.
The source code of PP§ is written in CWEB und thus well documented.
DATABASES
PP3's standard distribution bases on the following original data compilations:
stars BSC Hoffleit & Warren(1)
nebulae NGC/IC Wolfgang Steinicke(2)
boundaries Cat. of Constell. Boundary Data Davenhall & Leggett(3)
Milky Way Sky Panorama View Axel Mellinger(4)
(1) Being part of the Carte Du Ciel distribution
(2) http://www.ngcic.com/steinicke/default.htm
(3) ftp://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr/cats/VI/49
(4) http://home.arcor-online.de/axel.mellinger/