Charter for the VO Applications Interest Group

[Ivo Busko]

Hello,

As the developer of Specview, this topic interests
me directly. I agree with Sonali that VOTable objects
are a good way to standardize the passing of information
between VO plugins. However, there might be other kinds
of information that must be passed to/from plugins that
may not find into the table model and will require
further thought.

One example is the use of interactive devices, such as
the graphics cursor in Specview. In future science scenarios,
it could become necessary for an application (e.g. Aladin) 
to directly listen to cursor actions in the plugin. In the
current AVO demo we use a clunky file-based mecahnism to
move cursor actions from Specview into Aladin in a synchronous
manner. I can easily envisage scenarios in which an
asynchronous, user-driven sequence of actions would be
required to carry out the sought science.

Just food for thought.

Regards,

-Ivo

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 *  Ivo C. Busko, PhD                        e-mail: busko at stsci.edu *
 *  Senior Systems Software Engineer                                 *
 *  Science Software Branch                                          *
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 *  Space Telescope Science Institute             FAX: (410)338-4767 *
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