Moving to Version 6 of the PIPT

Before you start

Once you have launched version 6 of the PIPT for the first time, you won’t be able to open your proposals again in version 5 of the PIPT. So if you are working on proposals when switching from version 5 to 6, you may first want to save them, just in case. You can do so by using the menu item File | Export as Zip file.

Also make sure you read the section on breaking changes.

Download

You can download the latest (beta) version from the software page.

Breaking changes

Previous versions of the PIPT allowed you to re-use the same configuration by linking it. For example, you could use the same instrument setup in multiple observations. Changing the instrument setup in one observation then would change it in all the other observations as well. This has been discontinued. When you open a proposal with such linked configurations in version 6, the links will be replaced with ordinary copies. Hence making a change in, say, an instrument setup will only affect the observation containing the setup; all other observations will remain unaffected.

As in previous versions, proposals are submitted for one semester only, namely for the one selected on the General Information tab, as shown here.

This continues to be the case for version 6 of the PIPT. however, unlike before, selecting a setup from another semester will not change the submission semester any longer. If you want to change this semester, you now explicitly have to do by changing it yourself on the General Proposal Information tab.

Improvements

For large proposals the speed of actions like validating your proposal now is significantly faster. For all proposals, the issue of nodes in the navigation tree being somewhat unresponsive has been resolved.

The checkboxes for adding blocks to pools are fully responsive now

The layout of the navigation tree has changed. Whereas formerly, semesters were at the top level, with proposals underneath, version 6 has flipped this order:

Found a bug? Need a feature?

If you have found a bug or have a feature request, please let us know by sending an email to salthelp@salt.ac.za. Thanks!

Change log

v6.0-beta1 (10 April 2025)

Initial beta release

v6.0-beta2 (10 April 2025)

Include 1×1 in the binnings allowed with the slit mask IFU

v6.0-beta3 (16 April 2025)

Fix issues with converting, importing and displaying multisemester proposals

Fix a bug which prevented the observing times window to open for blocks

Fix a bug which caused a target form not opening after the block using the target had been deleted

v6.0-beta4 (16 April 2025)

Fix the calculation of done block visits

v6.0-beta5 (16 April 2025)

Fix a bug which made checking the feasibility of blocks impossible