Having separate Allsky Variables and All Variables tabs in the Variable Manager confuses a lot of people, resulting in extra support. I suggest:
Merge the tabs. The single tab would have these columns:
Variable Name
Description (empty if the variable is not defined; variables that are settings could use the Name field in options.json)
Format (for variables that are settings we could add this field to options.json to use as the default)
Type (empty if the variable is not defined; variables that are settings can use the Type field from options.json)
Value (from current All Variables tab)
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All variables provided by (at least the core) Allsky should start with AS_. Currently the variables in the All Variables tab start with AS_ but not the variables in the Allsky Variables tab. I'm not sure if ${DATE} in Allsky Variables is the same as AS_DATE in All Variables?
Have multiple tabs containing different types of variables, e.g., Object (sun, moon, satellites, ...), Settings (from settings.json), Actuals (actual values like exposure time), Other.
All settings.json entries should be variables using the format: AS_S_setting_name, e.g., AS_S_takedaytimeimages, where "S_" stands for "Setting". saveImage.sh would need to export these.
ALLSKY* variables we think may be useful to users can have "AS" prepended to their name, e.g., "ALLSKY_VERSION" would be "AS_ALLSKY_VERSION". Assuming user modules have access to the variables, saveImage.sh could export:
ALLSKY_CONFIG ( ? )
ALLSKY_DEBUG_LEVEL (so user scripts can write debug statements)
ALLSKY_EXTRA (so user scripts know where to write "extra" data to)
Having separate
Allsky Variables
andAll Variables
tabs in the Variable Manager confuses a lot of people, resulting in extra support. I suggest:AS_
. Currently the variables in theAll Variables
tab start withAS_
but not the variables in theAllsky Variables
tab. I'm not sure if${DATE}
in Allsky Variables is the same asAS_DATE
in All Variables?settings.json
entries should be variables using the format: AS_S_setting_name, e.g.,AS_S_takedaytimeimages
, where "S_" stands for "Setting". saveImage.sh would need to export these.