Note also that all fields can have leading and trailing white space White space is meant in the sense of C and POSIX locales, so these are: space, form-feed, newline, carriage return, horizontal tab and vertical tab. Note that you can use an asterisk `*' in all fields of a chunk if the correct field value is unknown. Every chunk begins in the leftmost column of a new line with a number sign and a chunk ID (for example #A93) followed by a colon `:' and one or more chunk data fields which are separated by commata. A record begins with an #A93 chunk followed by an any number of subsequent non-#A93 chunks. A new XML-version of AAF is in work (never completed).Īn AAF database is a text file containing a sequential stream of records which are made up of one or more chunks. The AAF specification has been greatly reworked since then, especially by Martin Garms and Tobias Ferber. The development of the exchange format for astrological data: AAF began in 1992, initiated by Martin Garms, and Bernd Happel and is meanwhile supported by several european astrology programs.

1.2.4 The #ZNAM chunk: The time zone abbreviationĮxtract of the orginal documentation Introduction.

1.2.3 The #SRC, #VIA and #COM chunks: Annotations.

1.2.2 The #B93 chunk: Machine readable chart-info data.

1.2.1 The #A93 chunk: Human readable chart-info data.

1 Extract of the orginal documentation.

For all other purposes, only the basic birth data need to be stored, while planetary positions are computes ad hoc, when required.

Storage of planetary positions is now only relevant for easier text-based searches. Now (2016) it is extremely cheap, a chart can be computed in a millisecond or less. Large software packages like Kepler, Sirius or Solar Fire do not support it.Īstrodienst supports it since 18 April 2016 as an export format for the data a user has stored in his profile on ĪAF was developed at a time when computation of charts was still 'expensive' in terms of computer time. It has been little used in the English speaking world. If a user buys new software, AAF enables him/her to move his/her old data from the old to the new system.ĪAF has widely spread in the German speaking area, and most German language astrology programs support it, at least partly. If a software supports also AAF for export and import of data, an easy exchange between software programs becomes possible. Most astrology software uses its own format for data storage, defined by the developer or software company. AAF stands for Astrologisches Austauschformat - a standard created by Martin Garms since 1993, for storing astrological data (birth data, locations, planetary positions, notes) in text files, intended for exchange between different computer software and systems.

Kepler 7.0 astrology software