TAP1.0 Comments

[Mark Taylor]

On Fri, 17 Jul 2009, Markus Demleitner wrote:

> > There are really many cases where getting as a result more than
> > one table is useful and brings a lot more efficiency: the example
> [Non-normative: I've already had users come to me complaining they
> "couldn't read" a VOTable they got back from NED -- and sure enough,
> it was such a multi-table beast, and I had to admit that using
> generic tools like topcat, such tables aren't very attractive.  So, I

I am happy to admit that for TOPCAT at least this is basically a 
long-standing defect of the application.  I hope to rectify it in the 
forseeable future, so that pointing TOPCAT at a multi-table file 
(e.g. multi-TABLE VOTable or multi-extension FITS file) will 
load all the tables rather than just the first one, which is what
it does now.

This comment may be slightly relevant to the discussion at hand, 
but I am not here weighing in on either side of it.

Mark

-- 
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/