The Environment

You can change how starview presents data and ceratin system information using the Environemnt panel.  To get to it, click on the Environment menu item under the View menu.

This will display the environment window. From the first tab, the Data Formats, you can specify how coordinates will be displayed (units and formatting), change the prefect count, and specify the live update, which tells starview to reload each record from the database when it is displayed (a burdon on the network and only useful for debugging the archive system).

The prefect count is the number of 100 records that starview will attempt to retrieve initally. It is 100 by default, which allows the user to get a good sample of a large set of matching records without overburdening the network or database server. If you find you typically need more, increse this number. Note the database limits the number of retrieved records to 5000.

To get to the other environment tabs, click on the tab you wish to see/edit. The E-mail tab looks like this

Note the Netscape information only appear on UNIX platforms, as the Macintosh and Windows work with the web browser via the system.

These fields are

  1. Email address - your email address used to create mail messages to be sent to the Archive (for retrieval request and/or comments/problems with the program). It is only used by the mailer to allow us to respond to the messages.  Data requests will use the registered email address for all comunications.
  2. Mail Server (SMTP) - a machine running a mail server through which StarView can send mail. If this field is not filled out by default, please contact your administrator if you do not know what to put in this field
  3. Netscape binary - the full path to the binary file for netscape
  4. Netscape startup script - many instalations of netscape use a starutup script to set certain variables correctly. If one exists, specifiy it here, otherwise use the same entry as found in the Netscape binary field.
The Servers tab allows you to change what data Preview server to use and which DSS server to use. Currently only the STScI and ESO ECF have servers running.

Once you change an environemnt parameter, you can apply it (leaving the window up), say OK (which applys the chagnes and dismisses the window, restore defaults which sets all fields to their default values, and cancel, which rejects any changes you made and dismisses the window.