The idea...

is really simple - XEphem has 'out' fifo for controling telescopes. Why not use that same fifo for something else for example to get more info on selected object?

Here is my small contribution to that idea...

GCVS database parser

These are 2 small perl scripts to search, parse and print data from gcvs2 (general catalog of variable stars) ascii database file. It uses perl Tk for GUI. Just point at a star from gcvs2.edb in a SkyView, select Set_telescope and gcvs info window will pop-up. You can even write your own comments and observations for that star. There are almost 30.000 variable stars in the database.

If you are interested, please download the folowing:
gcvs4tool v0.1
GCVS catalog

If you have any questions or comments email me at dsvilko@jagor.srce.hr.