TopSky feature request - 'Sector'-style Areas

[Jonathan Fong (1308253)]

This isn't the most pressing feature request, but I thought I'd ask anyway to see if it might be easy to implement, or if it's already planned for a future version perhaps.

I'm trying to add this new area to the Iceland sector file:

Which looks like this:

Essentially, it's a 'partial circle'.

Reading the developer documentation, there's currently no way to add this specific shape as an area in TopSkyAreas.txt (apart from manually tracing the shape using lots of straight lines and coordinates). However, looking at the documentation, there does seem to be code to draw such a shape, in the MSAW function:

Unfortunately of course for my purposes, it doesn't work for drawing areas in TopSkyAreas.txt. My question is, would it be possible to implement the code for drawing a 'Sector' into the area code, in such a way that I could draw this area above (and other areas like it)? Of course, this isn't a super pressing feature request, just something that would be nice to have if it's easy to implement.

Edited August 30, 2021 by Jonathan Fong

[Juha Holopainen]

The MSAW code doesn't actually draw the shape other than when viewing the data file contents via the plugin status menu for development purposes, but the drawing is only an approximation due to the map projection so it can't be used for areas. Also, the area code has to both draw the area accurately and calculate inside-area and within-lateral-buffer results, and for those calculations shapes other than full circles and polygons would need a lot of additional code.

Theoretically it would of course be possible to introduce data file commands that expand arc segments into a sequence of coordinates, but as there are tools online to do that for you already (for example https://fsmine.dhis.org/euroscope/design/drawer.cgi), I don't think it would be worth the trouble.

[Jonas Kuster (1158939)]

Another example to give you such drawings even easier is https://webtools.kusternet.ch/geo/coordinatesimporter.

763400N 0681800W/2.63/297>177
763400N 0681800W