### gax-1.0 README file

    gax-1.0

                      You have discovered the Gax,
                        a user-friendly tool
                          to search, sort, and report
                            galaxy information

    Greetings,

    First a word about why I wrote this program.  I am mainly interested
    in observing galaxies, as of this writing I have a 15" Tectron Dob,
    and was wanting something to tell me what might be visible on a given
    night and to be able to filter the data on other criteria.

    At first I tried some "commercial" software like Deep Sky Planner,
    Hypersky, and even NED online but they weren't very flexible.  I also
    wanted something free that would run on Linux.  So I wrote my own.

    The user interface uses the standard Unix philosophy, lots of command
    line switches to control program behavior.  This resulted in the main
    search program, Gax, have quite a few switches and it may be daunting
    at first site.  Never fear though, the manual page has examples that
    let you see some of the possibilities.  Also, typing 'gax' gives a
    short command synopsis.

    If you are using bash then the history feature makes it very easy to
    try a search, see the results, and then modify the search parameters.
    Also, piping the output to other utilities is a big plus of GUI-based
    programs.

    The other feature found lacking in the commercial programs was that
    their output format was determined by the developer, who apparently has
    different likes and dislikes than me.  Gax was designed so that you can
    specify what the output format looks like to a great extent.  I'm
    sure that it won't please everyone but I figured that I would put
    this program out and see what kind of feedback, if any, I received.

    A major goal was for Gax to be fast.  Gax has been used on a Toshiba
    T4400C laptop with a i486DX2/25Mhz CPU, 20MB RAM and 200MB disk
    (100MB for Linux) and Gax is fast even on it.

    Obviously, the larger the database you have to search the longer it
    is going to take.  Gax has the ability to look through a large database,
    select certain objects according to your criteria, and create a new
    database file with only those objects.  By creating these subsets, even
    faster searches are possible.

    The ASCII input file that is used to create the Gax database file
    contains catalog names from the following catalogs:

        NGC, IC, Messier, UGC, MCG, ESO, CGCG, Arp, Markarian, VV, PGC

    I got the data from the NASA National Space Sciences Data Center in the
    Paturel Galaxy Catalog.

    When Gax is compiled, a macro defined in the Makefile specifies which
    catalog names to keep in the database file.  By compiling Gax with
    fewer catalog names the database file size is further reduced.  Out of
    the box, Gax will maintain names for NGC, IC, and Messier galaxies.

    Gax is not done.  Some of the documented features related to time are
    not yet implemented.  These are noted on the manual page.  At some point
    I may get around to it unless someone beats me to it.

    I hope that you find this program useful.  If so, or you don't like it,
    let me know.  Comments, Criticisms and Code (C3) welcomed.

               The heavens declare the glory of God.
                 The glory of God is Jesus the Messiah.
                   Look up and see Him.
                     One day you will.

    --
    mark anderson
    manders1@csc.com
    May 8, 1998