Exporting a project to a local project can be done at any point duringthe development of a project - there is no requirement that theproject should pass validation. Therefore, exporting to a local fileis suitable for sharing with collaborators: you may simply email thisfile around.
To export your project to a local disk file select
File
Save
. If the project is new, a dialog box will bedisplayed in which you can select the directory and the name of a fileto save to. If it had previously been imported from your local filesystem (see below) then the original version will beoverwritten. Selecting
File
Save As
will displaythe dialog box and give you the option to create a new file on disk.
The project will be saved as an ALMA OT Project file with extension .aot , comprising XML files for each entity within the project:the ObsProject, ObsProposal and any associated SBs. Be aware that the .aot file is actually a .zip file, and therefore thestandard unzip command must be used to give access to the XMLfiles of the saved project. Regarding manual changes to the XML, giventhe complicated structure of the saved code this is STRONGLY discouraged and definitely NOT supported .
When exporting a project to an .aot file on disk, externaldocuments like PDF files that you have attached to your project willbe exported too, and will be contained inside the resulting .aot file. This way, a co-worker that you send the .aot file to willhave all attached documents available when they import the .aot file.
You can also import an existing ALMA OT project file. In the menu bar,select
File
Open Project
from Disk...
. You will get a file dialog with which you can locate theproject input file and click on
Open Project
. Before theretrieved project is loaded into the OT, the user will be asked if thecurrent project in the OT can be overwritten. The menu
File
Open Project
Using Project Finder...
gives a dialog that can be used to find and select ALMA OT files inyour local file system, based on a number of selection criteria.