Hello Paul,
My response may be a bit weird/long winded as it is to do with what may be a common user system. I am associated with Keele Uni Obsy, (38 yrs and sliding by) and its 24in reflector. The CCD camera (its had several) has been used for BVRI photometry (varaible stars/exoplanets) as well as simple imaging. In the future we may have spectrograph(s), polarising filters, "StarAnalyser" grating filters, and probably even more outlandish things.
A straight text input would be most flexible, but would lead to chaos as different observers adopted different standards. So I would ask for a huge range of choices, but tightly constrained at the same time so as to have a consistent naming scheme. "Any name you want so long as elements are in this order consistently".
So I guess I am in favour of the most complete gui, but handled in strict order, perhaps grouped by function, maybe highlighted by colour (pink is basic important, light green a bit less, light blue is esoteric), so that the most common wants are at the top (time, filter, exposure, dark/flat object, etc), and less common ones like wavelength range, grating/angle, slit width, polarisation, etc., are grouped below, and can be defaulted to 'off'.
I am not yet into extensive Kstars/Ekos mangling, but will be as I assemble an OnStep fork to handle the 24in and its peculiar setup.
Best Regards, James Albinson

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