C.1 Acknowledgements

TOPCAT was initially (2003-2005) developed under the UK Starlink project (1980-2005, R.I.P.). Since then it has been supported mainly by the UK's governmentally funded research council STFC and its forerunner PPARC, but it has also been funded by a number of VO-related projects and received interim or targetted support from various other organisations. Specifically:

• Starlink, funded by PPARC
• PPARC, the UK's Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council, grant PP/D002486/1
• STFC, the UK's Science and Technology Facilities Council, grants ST/H008470/1, ST/I00176X/1, ST/J001414/1 ST/L002388/1, ST/M000907/1, ST/R000700/1, ST/S001980/1, ST/V000454/1, ST/X002969/1 and ST/Y002032/1
• AstroGrid, the UK's VO project, funded by STFC/PPARC
• GAVO, the German Astrophysical Virtual Observatory, BMBF Bewilligungsnummer 05A08VHA
• ESA, the European Space Agency
• VOTech, an EU FP6 virtual observatory project
• AIDA, an EU FP7 virtual observatory project
• GENIUS, an EU FP7 project related to the Gaia mission
• Europlanet-2024 RI, an EU Horizon 2020 planetary science virtual observatory project, grant agreement No 871149

Nearly all of this work has been done in the Astrophysics Group of the School of Physics at the University of Bristol, but the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Cambridge and ARI at the University of Heidelberg have also been involved at some time.

Apart from the excellent Java 2 Standard Edition itself, the following external libraries provide parts of TOPCAT's functionality:

• JEL (Konstantin Metlov, GNU) for algebraic expression evaluation
• cds-healpix-java (F-X Pineau, CDS) for HEALPix manipulation
• Skyview in a Jar (NASA) for sky axis drawing
• JLaTeXMath (Scilab) for LaTeX typesetting in plots
• iText for PDF output
• JFreeSVG for SVG output
• EPSGraphics2D (Jibble) for encapsulated postscript output
• VOLLT ADQL Library (Grégory Mantelet, CDS) for ADQL parsing
• MOC (CDS) Multi-Order Coverage HEALPix maps for footprint manipulation
• Snakeyaml for YAML parsing in ECSV input handler
• Ucidy (Grégory Mantelet, CDS) for UCD parsing
• Unity (Norman Gray, Glasgow) for VOUnits parsing
• JSON-java (Douglas Crockford, org.json) for JSON de/serialization
• JIDE Common Layer (Jidesoft) for double-ended slider controls
• PDS4-JParser (NASA), a few low-level classes used for PDS4 datatype parsing
• IVOARegistry (NVO) for ADQL/X->S translations in registry searches
• HTM (Sloan Digital Sky Survey) for HTM-based celestial sphere row matching (now deprecated within TOPCAT)
• Ptplot (Ptolemy) for some 2D axis plotting
• IVOA FITS Package (Sloan Digital Sky Survey) for simple (non-SoG) display of FITS images

Contributed code from the following people is gratefully acknowledged:

• Thomas Boch (CDS), for the VizieR load dialogue.
• Gerard Lemson (MPE, Garching) for the GAVO load dialogue.
• Marco Molinaro (INAF-OATS) for the BaSTI load dialogue.

Other contributions to the software are gratefully acknowledged:

• The TOPCAT logo in use since version 4 was kindly drawn by Phil Hall.
• Initial inspiration for some of TOPCAT's features was taken from the pre-existing tools Mirage (Bell labs) and VOPlot (VO-India).
• The MacOS DMG file since v4.9 is built using Install4j.
• The sources for colour maps used in plotting are listed in Appendix A.4.7.
• Some icons were created by or adapted from Smashicons from www.flaticons.com.

TOPCAT has benefitted from, and is largely shaped by, advice, comments and feedback from very many users, testers and developers. Some of the notable contributers are these:

• Alasdair Allan (Starlink, Exeter)
• Mark Allen (CDS)
• Heinz Andernach (Guanajuato)
• Mark Bentley (ESA)
• Gabriel Bihain (MPG)
• Mark Birkinshaw (Bristol)
• Thomas Boch (CDS)
• Laurent Bourges (JMMC)
• Danny Boxhoorn (Kapteyn, Groningen)
• Malcolm Bremer (Bristol)
• Patrick Broos (Penn State)
• Johannes Buchner (MPE)
• Baptiste Cecconi (LESIA)
• Igor Chilingarian (CfA)
• Tamara Civera (CEFCA)
• Malcolm Currie (Starlink, RAL)
• Clive Davenhall (Royal Observatory Edinburgh)
• Luke Davies (Bristol)
• Christoph Deil (MPI Heidelberg)
• Markus Demleitner (ARI Heidelberg)
• Sebastien Derriere (CDS)
• Emilio Donoso (ICATE)
• Peter Draper (Starlink, Durham)
• Heinz-Bernd Eggenstein (AEI, Hannover)
• Stéphane Erard (Observatoire de Paris)
• Jeremy Faden (Cottage Systems)
• Pierre Fernique (CDS)
• Shashikiran Ganesh (PRL, India)
• Fedrico Garcia (RUG)
• Vincent Génot (IRAP)
• Robin Geyer (TU-Dresden)
• David Giaretta (Starlink, RAL)
• Bertrand Goldman (MPIA)
• Eduardo Gonzalez-Solares (IoA)
• Norman Gray (Starlink, Glasgow)
• Claire Greenwell (Durham)
• Phil Hall (Son of Ken)
• Haggis Harris (Bath)
• Evanthia Hatziminaoglou (ESO)
• Greg Hennessy (USNO)
• Avon Huxor (Bristol/ARI)
• Jonathan Irwin (Cambridge)
• Tim Jenness (JACH)
• JJ Kavelaars (NRC)
• Grant Kennedy (IoA)
• Sergei Klioner (Dresden)
• Christian Knigge (Southampton)
• Marina Kounkel (WWU)
• Gerard Lemson (MPE Garching)
• Jochen Liske (Hamburg)
• Mark Mahabir (Leicester)
• Brian Major (CADC)
• Bob Mann (Royal Observatory Edinburgh)
• Grégory Mantelet (CDS)
• Jean-Baptiste Marquette (Bordeaux)
• Ben Maughan (Bristol)
• Richard McMahon (IoA)
• Guillaume Mella (JMMC)
• Konstantin Metlov (Donetsk)
• Daniel Michalik (Lund)
• David Mills (Bristol)
• Alexey Mints (AIP)
• Douglas Morgan (Bristol)
• Rhys Morris (Bristol)
• August Muench (AAS)
• Simon Murphy (ANU)
• John Murrell
• Ada Nebot (CDS)
• François Ochsenbein (CDS)
• Clive Page (Leicester)
• Olivia Panzenböck (TU-Wien)
• Menelaus Perdikeas (ESAC)
• François-Xavier Pineau (CDS)
• Roy Platon (RAL)
• James Price (Bristol)
• Paul Price (Princeton)
• Mike Read (ROE)
• Anita Richards (Jodrell Bank)
• Kristin Riebe (AIP)
• Aaron Robotham (Bristol)
• Yannick Roehlly (OAMP)
• Robert Ryans (QUB)
• Henrik Rydberg (Gothenburg drinking water laboratory)
• Juan Carlos Segovia (ESAC)
• Petr Škoda (AIAS, CZ)
• Benjamin Steltner (MPG)
• Ole Streicher (AIP)
• Rachel Taylor (Cotham)
• Mattia Vaccari (Cape Town)
• Juande Sandander Vela (IAA-CSIC)
• Mike Watson (Leicester)
• Ming Yang (Athens)
• Ivan Zolotukhin (SAI MSU)
• Jonathan Zwart (Columbia)

If you use this software in published work, the following citation would be appreciated:

2005ASPC..347...29T: M. B. Taylor, "TOPCAT & STIL: Starlink Table/VOTable Processing Software", in Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems XIV, eds. P Shopbell et al., ASP Conf. Ser. 347, p. 29 (2005)