Appendix A Known problems
The following issues are known to the maintainer of PP3. If you
find another one, please report it on
PP3's project page.
- Unknown stars in constellation line data files (the default is the file
lines.dat) result in an error message, which is good, but the
error message may include another – probably valid – star name, which
is bad. Fortunately the actually wrong star and the printed star are
within the same constellation line, the printed star coming first.
- The usage of semicolons in PP3 input scripts is not
consistent. For example, a `
reposition' needs one, but a
`set_label_text' not.
- If you print a large portion of the sky, e.g. a hemisphere, and a
pole-near region of the Milky Way (e.g. Southern Cross) is at
the very rim of the map, the Milky Way dots are printed a little bit too
coarsely, leaving tiny gaps between the dots.
- The declination circles have slight kinks at 0h rectascension.
Except for the \pm 80^\circ circles they are mostly invisible
though.
- Ecliptic and grid don't take part in PP3's penalty scheme yet.
- Large nebulae are drawn as ellipses representing their approximative
shape in the sky. However, the algorithm doing that is mathematically
flawed and doesn't work for polar-near regions. Fortunately this only
affects the Small Magellanic Cloud, the actual shape of which is, by a
curious coincidence, rendered very well by that algorithm.