The list of all the remote catalogues which are currently accessible is defined in a so-called configuration file. This file is not usually a file on your local computer (though in some cases it can be; see below), but rather it is located on a remote machine. The remote catalogues which you can access are not necessarily on the same remote machine as the configuration file, though sometimes they will be. catremote accesses the configuration file via the Hyper-Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) developed for the World Wide Web. You specify the configuration file to be used by setting the Unix shell environment variable CATREM_CONFIG to the URL (Uniform Resource Locator) for the file. This process is exactly analogous to specifying the URL of a Web page when using a Web browser. The default configuration file used by CURSA is:
To specify a given configuration file you simply set environment variable CATREM_CONFIG to the required URL prior to running catremote or xcatview. For example, to specify a copy of the original ESO configuration file type:
CURSA Catalogue and Table Manipulation Applications