SKIF files managementSKIF means SKylendar Interchange File. It's a data file format, based on the XML/Unicode technology, which allows the user to save and load files containing several datasets.
Click on the Open icon and a classical file dialog box will appear. Select a .skif file, and if everything fine, a dataset edition dialog box will be displayed whenever a dataset has been extracted from the skif file. Thus, you can check or modify the given info.
SKIF files are also accepted as arguments on the command line.
However, if the .skif file contains an unknow chart type, an unknown country or place, a validation dialog box will appear. Select either another type of chart, create or edit the unjnown country and click the button. Then the dataset edition doalog box will follow, with the edited chart type and country.
Don't forget to edit the provided place if not found in your database !
The reverse process is possible when you click on the Save icon. A question dialog box will appear, which will give you the choice between either to save the selected dataset, or to save all the present datasets, except Now.
An utility, named skif.pl is provided with the distribution. It's a perl script which converts any .kst
(kastrolog/astrolog), AAF (Astrologische Austausch-Format), .mtx (Maitreya data file) and .zbs (Zet8 data file) into .skif files. This utility can also convert any .skif file into AAF file.
skif.pl uses the skif.pm perl module.
Synopsis: skif.pl [--help] [--version] [--db=database] [--user=username] [--host=hostname] [--port=port] [--pw=password] [--out=file] [--plcnt] [file...]
Normally, you don't have to invoke skif.pl anymore: Open will offer the possibility to directly import those files.
The AAF/97 astrology file format has been popular for several years, especially in Germany. For more info about the AAF format, see http://astrologix.de/aaf. Unfortunately, the documentation is only in german.
The SKIF 1.1 format supports the AAF A-B-C data groups, even if no official validation has been
performed so far. The country management of this format is quite different from the skif system.
AAF uses an up to 3 letters code, whereas skif utilizes the full name of the country. Thus,
skif manages a country name/code equivalence file named .skif.db,
located in your home directory. If this file is not present, or invoked with --dbcode, skif will
ask you for a db name, username and host name, and will create .skif.db
for you.