First bash at SAMPified TOPCAT

[Mark Taylor]

Hi chaps,

I have added some SAMP functionality to TOPCAT.  You can find a pre-release
version at

    ftp://andromeda.star.bris.ac.uk/pub/star/topcat/pre/

I've documented the MTypes that I've used on the IVOA wiki at

    http://www.ivoa.net/cgi-bin/twiki/bin/view/IVOA/SampMTypes

clearly these are up for debate, but they are mostly taken from Mike's
slides at Trieste, and are intended to correspond pretty closely
to PLASTIC messages.

The topcat version above can run in either SAMP or PLASTIC mode (not both).
Use the -samp or -plastic flag when starting TOPCAT 
(e.g. java -jar topcat-full.jar -samp) to select - otherwise, if one or
other hub is running when TOPCAT starts up it will configure to run
using the appropriate protocol.

Not all TOPCAT's PLASTIC abilities have yet been replicated with SAMP:
basically the activation actions have not, but sending and receiving
tables and subsets works.  Most, though not all, of the documentation 
in Section 8 of the user manual applies to both cases
(http://www.starlink.ac.uk/topcat/sun253/interop.html).

I've tested this (not exhaustively) only with the JSAMP hub so far.
(http://deployer.astrogrid.org/software/jsamp/index.html).

I will provide a more polished version of this in due course, but I 
thought it was worth publicising at this stage for people to play 
with if they want.  Any comments welcome.  I look forward to having
other applications I can play with soon!

Mark

PS I may be away for some or all of next week.

-- 
Mark Taylor   Astronomical Programmer   Physics, Bristol University, UK
m.b.taylor at bris.ac.uk +44-117-928-8776 http://www.star.bris.ac.uk/~mbt/