Based on the success of the electronic procedure adopted for the ING telescopes in semester 97A, PATT have decided to continue with electonic submission to the ING telescopes for the next semester (97B) to include proposals submitted to the AAT.
Please see the AAO section of this Letter for details of how to submit AAT proposals.
As before, the proposal should be submitted as the input file (patt2_template.dat) to the FORMLOAD program. One additional POSTSCRIPT file of diagrams/figures accompanying each proposal will also be accepted. The proposal should be e-mailed to the following address::
ING: ingpatt@ast.cam.ac.uk
Proposals for semester 97B should arrive no later than 0000 UT on April 1 at the above addresses. In order to expedite the processing of the proposals, applicants should comply with the following procedures.
1) The latest version of the FORMLOAD input file should be used (last revision January 96). Copies of the template file (and explanatory notes,etc) can be obtained by anonymous ftp from:
ftp.ast.cam.ac.uk
Login as anonymous and give your email address as password, then:
cd pub/lpinfo/formload
get formload.tar.gz
then leave ftp and gunzip the file (gunzip formload.tar) and rearchive the tar file (including the source file):
tar -xvf formload.tar
tar -xvf formload_source.tar
2) Applicants should edit the input file to include their replies to each of the sections (following the ! symbol on each line) but should not otherwise alter the format of the input file. Any personal TeX macros and/or definitions used should be placed immediately before the line /font/crmin7 at the end of the file.
3) Before submitting the final .DAT file, applicants should ensure that it successfully passes through the most recent version of the FORMLOAD program, and generates output that can be processed fully by LaTeX. Applications which can not be processed on receipt will have to be re-submitted by the applicant.Last semester, over 50% of applications were submitted with some form of error.
4) Associated figures/diagrams may be submitted as a separate postscript file. Only one associated postscript file per proposal will be accepted, although the file may contain several figures/diagrams, provided it does not exceed the exiting one-page limit for figures/diagrams. Applicants should attempt to keep the postscript file as small as possible (ie < 1Mb), to allow ease of handling by the e-mail system (including that of the referee to whom it is sent!). If larger files are essential for the supporting case, they should be left in an accessible location in the applicant's account and the ftp address or URL provided in the scientific case of the proposal.
5) The proposal text file and the postscript file should be e-mailed separately to the addresses listed above. Applicants are requested NOT to submit the files as attachments in email, as incompatibilities betwen attachements in different mailers caused a number of problems last semester. A brief desciption of the each file sent should be included in the Subject line of the email,e.g:
J.Smith WHT proposal 1 (text)
J.Smith WHT proposal 1 (figures)
A reply to the email sender of the proposal will be sent within 48 hours informing them whether the proposal was processed successfully or not, together with a reference number.
A working group has been set up to investigate at the development of electronic submission for all PATT telescopes. We hope that the experience gained from the forthcoming round will provide useful input to this working group. As such, we would would welcome any comments/suggestions on any aspect of this process.