Marks for user-provided star lists

Registered by gzotti

Develop a user-extendable plugin "UserLists" with e.g. a "bullet list" icon and configuration dialog where you
can select which of several user-installed star lists (from USERDATA/modules/UserLists/*.lst) to load, and in which color to draw the
star indicators. It could be used by historians who want to see e.g. accuracy of astrolabe star lists, or which stars were used by Ptolemy, or such. There should be at least two kinds of object list formats:

(1) Simple 3-column format, everything after 2nd entry is "Name" and should be displayed, but this 3rd entry is optional.
HIPindex Mag-from-cat-or--100 Name-from-catalog

This can be used like (and replace) the Navstar plugin data and other simple user lists where
the HIP indices are clear and the collection of stars is relevant, not their catalog coordinates.

(2)
Some header lines containing e.g.

Epoch: 1430
Format: RA Dec | ecl_long ecl_lat <maybe allow some format variants like HH:MM.SS vs HH.dddd>
header_end
IDX HIP (RA_epoch|ecl_long_epoch) (Dec_epoch|ecl_lat_epoch) Mag-from-catalog "shortName" "rest-of-line-is-name"

IDX is the number in the respective catalog, HIP corresponding Hipparcos number. HIP may be -1 if not identified.

Circle mark size should reflect magnitude from the given catalog (format2 or format1 with mag given) or HIP data
(format1 with col2=-100).

It should be reasonably simple to create such lists also for non-programming users.

On reading in, coordinates must be converted to RA_DEC_J2000 and then handled as usual.

This (2) would be a useful format for visualizing historical data. The markers would not necessarily encircle Stellarium stars, but just the catalog positions. Historical lists/catalogs have about 10..1025 stars, so no big optimization is necessary. When zooming in, label should identify IDX+shortName. Clicking on an object should print information from the catalog:
IDX+shortName+(modern name from Stellarium star name catalog if HIP given)+rest-of-name-from-catalog

On the config dialog:
It should show a file list with selectable color patch (show this catalog in that color)and further tickable flags:
a flag "connect": If active, the object position should be connected to the HIP object with a line.

So the config dialog should have a list with columns:
show? | color | draw-link-to-HIP? | filename
[tick] | colorpatch | [tick] | filename
....

The data filenames may have an ending like .lst and will then automatically fill the config table if found in USERDATA/modules/UserLists/*.lst. The Navstars would be a demo candidate for format (1).

Blueprint information

Status:
Not started
Approver:
None
Priority:
Medium
Drafter:
gzotti
Direction:
Needs approval
Assignee:
Alexander Wolf
Definition:
Drafting
Series goal:
Accepted for 1.x
Implementation:
Unknown
Milestone target:
None

Related branches

Sprints

Whiteboard

Specification of the custom catalog (one record per one line). Each custom catalog should contains 2 part - HEADER with descriptive info (filled as comments with predefined keywords) and BODY with data and stored as plain text data within ZIP archive.

HEADER:
# Name: Name of the catalog
# Description: Short description of the catalog
# Prefix: Prefix for object designation (can be empty)
# Epoch: J2000.0 (or B1950.5, etc.)
# Type: Type of catalog (e.g. stars, dso, etc.) - this field should be used for definition type of "markers" - show objects like stars, like markers, etc.
# Version: 1.0 - version of the catalog
# Colums: Number of columns in the catalog
# <Column ID>: <Column description> - this data should be filled for each column (should we introduced predefined names of column ID?)

(?)

Work Items

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