gbtnews
28 November 2000

Hints for Using the GBT Proposal Submission Tool

The GBT Early Science proposal deadline is Dec 1.  We will accept
proposals received before the end of the day on Friday (midnight EST). 
All proposals are to be submitted using the Proposal Submission Tool
(PST).  Based on early feedback we can provide some hints and
clarifications for those who have not yet submitted their proposals. 

LIMITATIONS

The PST's built-in editor is a simple ASCII editor and not a word
processor with features such as spell checking, equation building, etc. 
For this reason we encourage users to generate postscript files of any
scientific and or technical justification if it includes equations or
symbols that cannot be conveniently generated in ASCII.  These files can
then be attached to the proposal by using the attachment feature on the
Scientific Justification tab of the program. Although the program lists
a limited number of types of attachments acceptable, any type of file
can be attached (the program does nothing but copy these attached files
to the NRAO proposal area when the proposal is submitted).  If you
attach a file, we prefer that it be in Postscript or pdf format, but we
will accept native Word or WordPerfect files if that is necessary. 
Please note that we would like the abstract to be entered as ASCII text
in the tool (see below).

At the moment there is a bug in the PST which under some circumstances
causes the Summary to fail if there is no scheduling constraint
specified (scheduling constraints are optional). As a work-around, do
the following:

.   Select the Observations tab page on the NRAO GBT pages.
.   Click on Constraints under Program Information on the left hand side
.   Click on the Create button in the Edit Constraints area on the 
       bottom right hand side

You should now be able to go to the Summary page and have it format
correctly. 

REQUIRED INFORMATION

The following information should be entered directly into the tool
and not as an attachment:

.  Proposal Title
.  Abstract
.  List of Investigators
.  Hardware Required
.  Amount of Observing time requested
.  List of sources to observe (with positions)
     (Note if # of sources is > 12 just list LST range required
     in the text of the technical justication section)
.  Special requirements (impossible observing dates, ...).

As mentioned above, if the scientific and or technical justification
includes equations it is probably simpler (but not essential) to
generate these justifications in a form that handles equations and
attach the files to the proposal.  Note that the program can also
import ASCII files into the Abstract, Scientific, and Technical
Justifications.


DOCUMENTATION AND HELP

Program help is available within the program itself.   This program
help is also available on line at

    www.nrao.edu/GBT/proposals/tool.html.  

A cookbook (available only on-line) on how to use the program is
available at

    www.nrao.edu/GBT/proposals/PST/cookbook.html.  

The GBT Early Science Proposals home page is

    www.nrao.edu/GBT/proposals/index.shtml.

If there are questions on the use of the PST these can be directed to
Richard Prestage (rprestag@nrao.edu) or Carl Bignell
(cbignell@nrao.edu). 

If there are any problems in the installation of the program or errors
in running the PST please send an email to Richard Prestage with
specific information (error messages, the last few steps the user
executed just before the error, the operating system and any other
information that you may deem useful). 

						Carl Bignell
						Richard Prestage
						Phil Jewell
						28 November 2000