=head1 NAME
Astro::App::Satpass2::TUTORIAL - Tutorial on the use of Astro::App::Satpass2
=head1 INTRODUCTION
This package was created to provide a flexible way to predict satellite
positions, passes, and visibility. Unfortunately, with flexibility comes
complexity, more often than not. This document's purpose is to get you
up and running, and walk you through some of the things the package can
do.
The simplest way to access C<Astro::App::Satpass2> functionality is
through the F<satpass2> script, and that what this tutorial does.
To get any real use out of this package, you need satellite orbital
data. The best source is L<http://www.space-track.org/>, but this
requires registration, so this tutorial will assume you are not
registered and use data from other sources. Most other sources are
redistributions of Space Track data, and will not be as up-to-date, but
are generally good enough for non-critical computations.
=head1 SETUP
The first thing that needs to be done, of course, is to install
C<Astro::App::Satpass2> itself. The recommended way to do this is
normally to use one of the F<CPAN> tools. With F<cpan>, the installation
would be simply
$ cpan
... front matter ...
cpan> install Astro::App::Satpass2
... cpan downloads, tests, and installs this package
and all dependencies ...
cpan> exit
You could equally well use CPANPLUS (F<cpanp>) or cpanminus (F<cpanm>);
the choice is yours. If you are using Active State's F<ActivePerl>, you
should use their F<ppi> tool to install distribution
F<Astro-App-Satpass2>.
There are several Perl modules that this package considers optional, but
which will be used if they are available. Unless stated otherwise, the
examples in this tutorial assume that optional module
L<Astro::SpaceTrack|Astro::SpaceTrack> is installed, so that you can
download satellite orbital data directly into C<Astro::App::Satpass2>.
The author also recommends optional module L<Date::Manip|Date::Manip>,
but since the latest version of this module only installs under Perl
5.10 and above, this tutorial will not assume it is installed. When it
is not, C<Astro::App::Satpass2> uses a home-grown ISO-8601-ish date
parser. All dates specified in the examples will be compatible with both
date parsers.
It does not matter whether you install optional modules before or after
installing C<Astro::App::Satpass2>; it will use them if it finds them.
=head1 CONFIGURATION
There are several possibilities for configuring C<Astro::App::Satpass2>.
This tutorial will cover the following:
=head2 Configuring from a F<satpass> initialization file
If you already have configured the initialization file for the
F<satpass> script packaged in the C<Astro-satpass> distribution,
C<Astro::App::Satpass2> will read this script, making allowances for at
least some of the incompatibilities between the two tools.
Since the intent is to remove the F<satpass> compatibility when
F<satpass> is retired, you may at some time wish to convert your
F<satpass> initialization file to a C<Astro::App::Satpass2>
initialization file. To do this from inside the F<satpass2> script,
simply issue the command
satpass2> save -changes
The name and location of the saved file depend on your operating system,
but will be reported when you issue this command. Once the file is
saved, you can display its location using
satpass2> initfile
The configuration file's location is actually determined using
C<< File::HomeDir->my_dist_config( 'Astro-App-Satpass2' ) >>. See the
L<File::HomeDir|File::HomeDir> documentation for details.
Subsequent runs of the F<satpass2> script will initialize from the new
file. This form of the C<save> command just saves changes from the
default configuration. If you wish to save all configuration, omit the
C<-changes> option.
Be aware that C<save> only saves the configuration of the
C<Astro::App::Satpass2> object and its related helper objects. If your
initialization file does other things, like download data and make
predictions, these will not be written to the new file, and you must add
them back by hand.
=head2 Configuring manually
Before you do any predictions, C<Astro::App::Satpass2> needs to know
where you are. The embedded L<Astro::SpaceTrack|Astro::SpaceTrack>
object will also need some configuration so it knows how to fetch data
from its various sources.
Specifically, you need your latitude, longitude (from Greenwich
England), and height above sea level. The height is least critical, and
any reasonable guess will probably work.
Latitude and longitude can be specified in either decimal degrees (e.g.
40.5) or degrees, minutes and seconds (e.g. 40d30m0s). B<South> latitude
and B<West> longitude are negative.
Height is assumed to be in meters, but you can be specify it in feet by
appending 'ft'. For example, '10' specifies 10 meters, as does '10m',
but '10ft' specifies 10 feet.
Because it would be painful to specify your position every time you use
it, C<Astro::App::Satpass2> allows a configuration file. The example
that follows will end by creating a configuration file and storing the
configuration in it.
And here, finally, is the example. We make the egregious assumption that
the President of the United States uses this software, so we use the
executive mansion as our location.
$ satpass2
... front matter displayed ...
satpass2>
satpass2> # This is a comment, as is any line beginning
satpass2> # with a hash mark ('#'). Comments and blank
satpass2> # lines are ignored.
satpass2>
satpass2> # Enter the name of our location. This is for
satpass2> # information only, and will be displayed by
satpass2> # the location command. Command arguments that
satpass2> # contain spaces need to be quoted.
satpass2> set location '1600 Pennsylvania Ave, Washington DC'
satpass2>
satpass2> # Set our latitude and longitude.
satpass2> set latitude 38d53m55.5s longitude -77d2m15.7s
satpass2>
satpass2> # Set our height above sea level.
satpass2> set height 54.72ft
satpass2>
satpass2> # Some of our data sources will try to fetch
satpass2> # their data from Space Track when we ask for
satpass2> # it. We are assuming no Space Track username,
satpass2> # so we tell them to just give us what they have.
satpass2> spacetrack set direct 1
satpass2>
satpass2> # Some data sources come either with or without the
satpass2> # actual name of the spacecraft. We want the name
satpass2> # if it is available.
satpass2> spacetrack set with_name 1
satpass2>
satpass2> # Save our configuration. All we really need to
satpass2> # save are the changes from the default.
satpass2> save -changes
satpass2>
satpass2> # We can now exit. When we restart, we will get
satpass2> # the configuration we just set up.
satpass2> exit
=head2 Geocoding the address
Looking up a latitude and longitude can be a bit of a pain. If you live
in the United States, C<Astro::App::Satpass2> can geocode your address,
and then query the U. S. Geological Survey for your height above sea
level.
This requires two more optional modules:
L<Geo::Coder::Geocoder::US|Geo::Coder::Geocoder::US> and
L<Geo::WebService::Elevation::USGS|Geo::WebService::Elevation::USGS>.
With these installed, the address entry in the previous example becomes
satpass2> geocode '1600 Pennsylvania Ave, Washington DC'
When you issue this command, the geocoded location is displayed,
formatted as C<set> commands:
set location '1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington DC 20502'
set latitude 38.898748
set longitude -77.037684
set height 17.38
=head1 PREDICTING PASSES
The main use of this package is probably predicting when satellites are
going to pass over the observer.
=head2 Visible Passes
This is the functionality that tells you when you can go out and see a
satellite, assuming clear skies and a satellite large enough to be
visible. Visible passes require three things to happen:
* The satellite must be above the horizon (of course!),
* The Sun must be shining on the satellite (they do not have lights),
and
* The Sun must not be shining where you are (otherwise the sky is too
bright to see the satellite).
The example is for the International Space Station, and we will
use NASA's predictions of its orbit over the next week as a starting
point.
$ satpass
... front matter ...
satpass2>
satpass2> # Tell the Astro::SpaceTrack object to fetch us
satpass2> # all the predicted orbital elements from NASA's
satpass2> # Human Space Flight web site. We include the
satpass2> # effective date, since the data may include
satpass2> # planned changes in orbit.
satpass2> spacetrack spaceflight -all -effective
satpass2>
satpass2> # Make the default pass prediction, which is for
satpass2> # seven days starting today at noon.
satpass2> pass
You may want to print this information and stick it on your
refrigerator. C<Astro::App::Satpass2> has something a bit like Unix
output redirection to get your information into a file:
satpass2> pass >pass.txt
After which you open F<pass.txt> in some simple editor and print it. A
word-processing editor will probably not work satisfactorily unless you
set the entire document to a mono-space font.
You may want a prediction for some specific date. The following example
does a prediction for the night of April 1 2011 (specifically, for one
day starting at noon on that day) and saves the output in
F<april_fool.txt>.
satpass2> pass '2011/4/1 12:00:00' +1 >april_fool.txt
Note that the date is quoted because of the space between the date and
the time. If you had L<Date::Manip|Date::Manip> installed, you could
specify the date more flexibly, as (say) C<'1-Apr-2011 noon'>.
=head2 Different Viewing Conditions
C<Astro::App::Satpass2> assumes a few things about viewing conditions
where you are. These may or may not be true. If they are not, you can
change them.
The settings discussed below are part of your configuration, and can be
saved using
satpass2> save -changes
as discussed above. If you have already saved your configuration you
will be asked whether you want to overwrite the old configuration. Any
answer beginning with 'y' (case-insensitive) will be considered true.
Any other answer will be considered false.
=head3 The horizon
C<Astro::App::Satpass2> assumes that you do not have a very good
horizon, and that you can not see a satellite until it is at least 20
degrees above the horizon, and therefore does not report passes that do
not get at least 20 degrees above the horizon. If you are at the beach
you may be able to see to within 5 degrees of the horizon. You can
configure C<Astro::App::Satpass2> to report passes more than 5 degrees
above the horizon by
satpass2> set horizon 5
If you are on the top of a mountain, you may even be able to see a bit
over the normal horizon. If you can see 2 degrees over the horizon,
satpass2> set horizon -2
=head3 Twilight
C<Astro::App::Satpass2> does not predict visible passes that occur
during the day, and it defines day as any time after the start of
morning twilight and before the end of evening twilight. These in turn
are defined as the point when the upper limb of the Sun passes above or
below a given distance below the horizon.
By default, C<Astro::App::Satpass2> uses civil twilight to decide
whether it is day or night. This is defined as the point at which the
upper limb of the Sun is 6 degrees below the horizon. For a dimmer
satellite, you may want to use nautical twilight (9 degrees below the
horizon) or astronomical twilight (12 degrees below the horizon). You
can change to nautical twilight using
satpass2> set twilight nautical
and similarly for astronomical. Or, you can define your own twilight by
entering it in degrees, remembering that degrees below the horizon are
negative. If you are looking for the International Space Station, you
may be able to spot it with the Sun only 3 degrees below the horizon:
satpass2> set twilight -3
=head2 All Passes
If you are interested in communicating with the satellite rather than
looking at it, all you care about is whether the satellite is above the
horizon, not whether it is day or night or whether the satellite is
illuminated by the Sun. In this case you want to
satpass2> set visible 0
which turns off the latter two checks and reports any pass of the
satellite over your location, visible or not. To go back to predicting
just visible passes,
satpass2> set visible 1
=head1 IRIDIUM FLARES
I know of no scientific value to these, but they are fun to watch. The
Iridium constellation is 66 satellites (plus spares) used for satellite
telephone service. The original-design Iridium satellites are triangular
prisms, with one main mission antenna leaning out from each face of the
prism. The main mission antennae are about the size of a door, flat, and
shiny, and because the satellites are maintained in a precise
orientation in orbit, it can be predicted when one of these antennae
will reflect the Sun to a given position. A bright flare can be brighter
than Venus at its brightest, and under good conditions is visible during
the day.
=head2 Predicting Flares
Predicting flares is a bit like predicting satellite passes - you
download the orbital data and predict the flare from the data.
$ satpass2
... front matter ...
satpass2>
satpass2> # Download the data on Iridium satellites.
satpass2> spacetrack celestrak iridium
satpass2>
satpass2> # Predict flares for the next seven days,
satpass2> # starting today at noon.
satpass2> flare
This will take a while, because it has to cover all 66 in-service
Iridium satellites, 24 hours per day. And this does not include spares,
which are usually kept under control, just to prove that they work. If
you want them as well,
satpass2> flare -spare
If you want a copy of all this to stick on your refrigerator door,
capture it to a file in the same way you captured the pass data:
satpass2> flare >flare.txt
If you want to append it to the F<pass.txt> file created for satellite
passes,
satpass2> flare >>pass.txt
just as you would under Unix.
But maybe you are not interested in daylight flares. If not,
satpass2> flare -noday
If you are also not interested in flares at 4:00 AM,
satpass2> flare -noam -noday
or equivalently,
satpass2> flare -pm
The C<-am>, C<-day>, and C<-pm> options select which flares are
reported, by time. The C<-am> option selects flares from midnight until
the start of morning twilight; C<-day> selects flares from the start of
morning twilight to the end of evening twilight, and C<-pm> selects
flares from the end of evening twilight until midnight.
The options can be negated by prefixing C<no> to the option name (e.g.
C<-noday>). If you specify no options, they are all considered to be
asserted. If you specify no asserted options, all unspecified options
are considered to be asserted. Otherwise, only explicitly-asserted
options are considered to be asserted.
If you do not want flares for a particular part of the day, calculations
for that part of the day are not done. This can speed the prediction
process.
=head2 Different Flare Visibility
Flare brightness is measured in magnitude, a system used by astronomers
to measure the brightness of stars. This system goes back a couple
thousand years, and originally classified the brightest stars as first
magnitude, the less-bright stars as second magnitude, and so on. The
system has been formalized to a logarithmic scale in which a brightness
difference of five magnitudes represents a light intensity difference of
a factor of 100. Brighter stars may have negative magnitudes (Sirius is
about -1.4).
Obviously a flare that would be fairly bright at night might be
completely invisible during the day, so day and night have separate
settings to control the minimum reportable brightness.
C<Astro::App::Satpass2> uses the C<flare_mag_day> setting to determine
the dimmest reportable flare during the day; this defaults to C<-6>. The
dimmest reportable flare at night is determined by the
C<flare_mag_night> setting, which defaults to C<0>.
In order to duplicate (fairly closely) the Iridium flares reported by
L<http://www.heavens-above.com/>, you will want to tweak
C<Astro::App::Satpass2>'s settings a bit:
satpass2> set twilight -1.8 flare_mag_night -1
seems to come fairly close.
=head1 OTHER CUSTOMIZATIONS
There are other customizations of the output that you may want.
=head2 Location
If you want to display your location, just issue the
satpass2> location
command. The output of this can be directed to a file, just as the
output of any other command. For a nice list of passes and flares for
your refrigerator door, you can do something like this:
satpass2> location >this_week.txt
satpass2> spacetrack spaceflight -all -effective
satpass2> pass >>this_week.txt
satpass2> spacetrack celestrak iridium
satpass2> flare -pm >>this_week.txt
satpass2> exit
=head2 Date and Time Format
By default, date and time are displayed in an ISO-8601-ish format. If
you want something friendlier, you can specify a C<strftime (3)> format
independently for the date and the time. These settings can be saved to
your initialization file just like any other setting.
The date and time format settings belong to the formatter object, which
is a separate subsystem all to itself. So:
satpass2>
satpass2> # Display the date as weekday day-month-year
satpass2> formatter date_format '%a %d-%b-%Y'
satpass2>
satpass2> # Display the time as 1-12 AM or PM
satpass2> formatter time_format '%I:%M:%S %p'
satpass2>
satpass2> # Save the configuration, overwriting any previous one
satpass2> save -changes -overwrite
=head1 INTERMEDIATE TOPICS
This section covers things that are beyond just getting the application
up and running.
=head2 Time Zones
By default, times are reported in your local zone. Summer time/daylight
saving time is accounted for (unless the underlying Perl is broken),
even when predictions cross the boundary between standard and summer
time. But you may want some other zone. There are two cases here,
depending on what optional modules you have installed.
Without any optional modules, the only supported zone other than your
default local zone is GMT. You can get GMT output by
satpass2> formatter gmt 1
The default ISO-8601-ish time parser does not have a corresponding
setting, but does allow you to append a C<'Z'> to the time to specify
GMT.
The default formatter object also has a C<tz> setting, but this is
unsupported because it relies on the C<TZ> environment variable, and the
author has no control over whether your OS' POSIX code supports this.
You can try it with something like
satpass2> formatter tz MST7MDT
(for Mountain time). If it works, fine. If not, you can make it work by
installing L<DateTime|DateTime> and
L<DateTime::TimeZone|DateTime::TimeZone>. Doing this also gives you the
Olson database zone names (e.g. C<America/New_York>) if you prefer
these.
Similarly, if you install the optional L<Date::Manip|Date::Manip>
module, you can set a default input zone other than your own by
something like
satpass2> time_parser tz MST7MDT
The C<time_parser> and C<formatter> time zones are set separately not
only so that you can make them different, but because the author can not
guarantee that the underlying modules will accept the same settings.
=head2 Command Macros
A command macro is simply a named set of C<Astro::App::Satpass2>
commands, somewhat like a C<bash> shell function. A command macro is
executed by giving its name, so in essence command macros are ways of
creating new commands.
The definition of a macro is simply the list of commands it issues. Each
command is a single argument, and therefore probably needs to be quoted.
When the command to be issued itself contains quotes, you either use a
different style (single versus double quotes) or you escape the quote
mark with a back slash (C<'\'>). A simple macro definition would be
something like
satpass2> macro defined hi 'echo "Hello world!"'
When a command macro is executed it can be passed arguments. The details
of how these work will be deferred for the sake of getting on with the
tutorial, but a case of interest is the fact that C<"$@"> (the quotes
being part of the syntax) expands to all the arguments passed to the
macro.
=head2 Multiple Locations
What this topic actually describes is a way to have multiple locations
on tap, so that if you are going to be at point 'A' from Monday through
Wednesday, and point 'B' Thursday and Friday you can easily switch
between them.
The first thing our hypothetical user needs is a command macro to set
the location to his or her home location. The definition comes from our
first example:
satpass2> macro define home \
> "set location '1600 Pennsylvania Ave, Washington DC'" \
> "set latitude 38d53m55.5s longitude -77d2m15.7s" \
> "set height 54.72ft"
satpass2>
Normally, this would all have to go on the same line, but
C<Astro::App::Satpass2> recognizes an end-of-line back slash as a
continuation mark, so all four lines above are parsed as though they are
the same line. C<Astro::App::Satpass2> changes the prompt for a
continuation line, just to keep you on your toes.
Now we need another place to visit -- say, the residence of the Prime
Minister of Canada:
satpass2> macro define sussex_drive \
> "set location '24 Sussex Drive, Ottawa, ON'" \
> "set latitude 45.444348 longitude -75.693934" \
> "set height 50m"
satpass2>
Now, to switch locations to the Prime Minister's residence, just say
satpass2> sussex_drive
satpass2>
satpass2> # and to confirm it,
satpass2> location
Location: 24 Sussex Drive, Ottawa, ON
Latitude 45.4443, longitude -75.6939, height 50 m
satpass2>
And to return home, just say
satpass2> home
Of course, these are really only useful if they are in your
initialization file. And they can be, with the usual incantation:
satpass2> save -changes -overwrite
=head2 Temporary Settings
As you recall from the section on L<IRIDIUM FLARES|/IRIDIUM FLARES>, if
you are trying to imitate the results from Heavens Above you have to
tweak the default settings a bit. These settings stay tweaked until you
put them back to their original values. If you always want the tweaks
when you do Iridium flare predictions, you can put them into a command
macro along with the flare prediction. Values of settings can be
localized to a macro (among other things), so that the old values are
restored when the macro exits. The example could be defined as a command
macro like this:
satpass2> macro define iridium_flare \
> 'localize twilight flare_mag_night' \
> 'set twilight -1.8 flare_mag_night -1' \
> 'flare "$@"'
satpass2>
Note the use of single quotes rather than double quotes to enclose the
C<flare> command. In double quotes, or outside quotes altogether, the
C<$> is magical, and introduces something to be interpolated into the
command. Exactly what is interpolated depends on what follows the C<$>.
The C<$@> is replaced by the arguments of the command macro (or
whatever), but we do not want this to happen until the command macro is
expanded. Enclosing the C<$@> in double quotes ensures that macro
arguments containing spaces remain single arguments; without the double
quotes they would become multiple arguments.
So if you say
satpass2> iridium_flare -noam 'today 12:00' +3
The C<twilight> and C<flare_mag_night> settings will be changed, the
flare prediction will be run, and the old C<twilight> and
C<flare_mag_night> settings will be restored. Because the macro
arguments get passed to the C<flare> command, the prediction will be for
the three days starting at noon today, and will exclude flares occurring
between midnight and the beginning of morning twilight.
Note that B<only> attributes of the C<Astro::App::Satpass2> object
(those set with a C<set> command) can be localized; attributes of helper
objects can not be. But you B<can> localize the entire helper object.
For example, for a temporary change to the
L<Astro::SpaceTrack|Astro::SpaceTrack> object,
satpass2> localize spacetrack
inside the appropriate scope. Yes, you can localize outside a command
macro (or any other localization scope, such as inside a C<source> file
or a C<begin>-C<end> block), but it does no good to do so, because the
old value is not restored until you exit, and what good is that?
=head2 Reporting Position
By default, anything that reports a satellite position does it in
elevation, azimuth and range. You may want some other units, such as
right ascension and declination.
Deciding what to display is the job of the C<formatter> helper object.
Normally this is an
L<Astro::App::Satpass2::Format::Template|Astro::App::Satpass2::Format::Template>,
and for the full story you should see the documentation to that class.
But there are a number of prepackaged coordinate sets:
az_rng --------- azimuth (with bearing) and range
azel ----------- elevation and azimuth (with bearing)
azel_rng ------- elevation, azimuth (with bearing) and range
equatorial ----- right ascension and declination
equatorial_rng - right ascension, declination and range
By default, you get C<azel_rng>, but you can get any of the others via
the L<local_coord()|Astro::App::Satpass2::Format/local_coord>
method of the formatter object. For example, if you want right
ascension, declination and range, just
satpass2> formatter local_coord equatorial_rng
=head2 User-defined Position Coordinates
L<Astro::App::Satpass2::Format::Template|Astro::App::Satpass2::Format::Template>
defines these local coordinates in terms of L<Template-Toolkit|Template>
templates, so you can add definitions, or change the existing
definitions, in the same way that you would change one of the reporting
templates, using that formatter's
L<template()|Astro::App::Satpass2::Format::Template/template> method.
For example, to make C<azel> report azimuth first,
satpass2> formatter template azel <<'EOD'
> [% data.azimuth( bearing = 2 ) %]
> [%= data.elevation %]
> EOD
See the
L<Astro::App::Satpass2::FormatValue|Astro::App::Satpass2::FormatValue>
documentation for what format effectors are available. Inside the
template, the C<data> object will contain the data you want to format.
=head1 ADVANCED TOPICS
=head2 Code Macros
In addition to L<Command Macros|/Command Macros>, a macro can be defined
using Perl code. This allows one to add new functionality to
C<Astro::App::Satpass2>, over and above that provided by interactive
methods.
Code macros are currently unsupported, though it might be better to call
them experimental. The real situation is that I have been looking for
ways to plug bits of code into the system, and handling them like macros
seemed to be the best way. So I knocked something together along those
lines, and played with it. Further experience may show that the
interface or the implementation was ill-chosen, or even that there is
something deeply flawed about the whole idea. The bottom line is that if
you want this to become supported, you should tell me what you like or
do not like about it.
In order to implement code macros, a number of previously-private
methods of L<Astro::App::Satpass2|Astro::App::Satpass2> have been
exposed. The names of these begin with a double underscore (C<__>), and
these are documented as unsupported. These will not go away even if code
macros do, but their calling sequences may change. On the other hand, if
code macros become fully supported, these will too.
A code macro is simply a Perl subroutine which is called by
C<Astro::App::Satpass2> more or less as though it were an interactive
method. In the following discussion, some words are used with particular
meanings:
=over
=item must
means that the code macro will not work unless this is done;
=item should
means that the code macro will work without doing this, but you might
not like the results;
=item may
means that the code macro will work without doing this, but you might
want the functionality described.
=back
Now, Perl subroutines do not live in a vacuum. They in fact live in Perl
modules; that is, F<.pm> files defining a C<package> whose name reflects
the path name of the file. A module that defines a code macro can be
installed like a normal Perl module, but can also live in the F<lib/>
directory in the user's C<Astro::App::Satpass2> configuration directory
(which is the default for C<< $satpass2->macro( load => ... ) >>), or
anywhere if you specify the location via the C<lib> option (e.g.
C<< $satpass2->macro( load => { lib => something }, ... >>).
In addition to the things that go into making a Perl module, a module
that provides code macros:
=over
=item must be a subclass of C<Astro::App::Satpass2>;
=item must import C<__arguments()> from C<Astro::App::Satpass2::Utils>.
=back
In order to work as a code macro, a subroutine:
=over
=item must have the C<Verb()> attribute
Subroutine attributes are declared after the name (and signature if any)
and a colon.
The contents of the parentheses that follow the attribute name will be
split on white space and used as L<Getopt::Long|Getopt::Long> option
specifications should these be needed to process the subroutine's
arguments.
=item may have the C<Configure()> attribute
If this attribute is present, the contents of the parentheses will be
used to configure the L<Getopt::Long|Getopt::Long> object prior to
processing the subroutine's arguments.
=item must call C<__arguments()> to unpack C<@_>
This subroutine is imported from
L<Astro::App::Satpass2::Utils|Astro::App::Satpass2::Utils>. See this
documentation for details of its use.
=item should report warnings and exceptions properly
In order to have warnings and exceptions be handled consistently with
the rest of C<Astro::App::Satpass2>, C<< $self->whinge() >> should be
called instead of C<warn> or C<Carp::carp()>, C<< $self->wail() >>
should be called instead of C<die> or C<Carp::croak() >>, and
C<< $self->weep() >> instead of C<Carp::confess() >>.
=item must return human-readable results
This almost goes without saying, since it is the string returned by the
subroutine which will be displayed.
=back
You should be aware that the first argument to your code macro
subroutine is the C<Astro::App::Satpass2> object that called it. This is
B<not> reblessed into the package that contains the code macro, so it is
not an invocant in the usual sense. This has several implications,
including:
=over
=item * You can not call other code in your module as methods;
This is a direct result of the "invocant" not being blessed into the
name space of your module.
=item * Your code macro can not be called as a method;
This is because nothing has been done to make it appear in the
invocant's name space.
=item * Your code can not recurse, even indirectly via a command macro.
This is because all macros become undefined within the scope of their
own execution, so that a macro of any sort that redefines an interactive
method has access to the original method.
=back
If you want to call your code macro from inside Perl code, you must call
it as
$satpass2->dispatch( your_code_macro => ... );
and capture any output that is returned. Note that you can still specify
options either command-line style or as a hash reference in the second
argument to C<dispatch()>.
You should be cautious about calling C<dispatch()> inside your code
macro, except perhaps as C<< return $self->dispatch( ... ) >>. If you
call it internally, you probably need to be sure you concatenate the
output of your calls, and return that.
A number of methods of L<Astro::App::Satpass2|Astro::App::Satpass2> may
be useful in your code macro, and in fact were exposed for the use of
code macros. These include:
=over
=item L<__choose()|Astro::App::Satpass2/__choose>
This can be used to obtain bodies from the observing list or the sky,
optionally filtered. See especially the C<bodies> and C<sky> options.
=item L<__format_data()|Astro::App::Satpass2/__format_data>
This can be used to pass the raw data generated by your code macro to a
C<Template-Toolkit> template. It returns the resultant text.
=item L<__parse_angle()|Astro::App::Satpass2/__parse_angle>
This can be used to parse angle arguments. The return is (usually) the
angle in degrees.
=item L<__parse_distance()|Astro::App::Satpass2/__parse_distance>
This can be used to parse distance arguments. The return is the distance
in kilometers.
=item L<__parse_time()|Astro::App::Satpass2/__parse_time>
This can be used to parse time arguments. The return is a Perl time.
=back
=head1 AUTHOR
Thomas R. Wyant, III F<wyant at cpan dot org>
=head1 COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE
Copyright (C) 2011-2013 by Thomas R. Wyant, III
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the same terms as Perl 5.10.0. For more details, see the full text
of the licenses in the directory LICENSES.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
without any warranty; without even the implied warranty of
merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
=cut
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