Grids [Solved]

[ElChristou]

Actually the Celestia UI under osX (and I presume on other platforms) present the option to turn on/off the equatorial grid (called Celestial sphere) both via control panel and menu.
As now a galactic, ecliptic and horizontal grids have been implemented, what about including them to keep a certain coherence in the soft?
Now of course I know there is the QT UI in progress but as it's not for 1.6 (and perhaps not for 1.7), what if, meanwhile, we add a few checkboxes and menu items to the actual UIs? (should not represent too much work... or not?)

[Cham]

I agree. I already suggested this to Chris before (by email).

Actually, my suggestion is this : Use D, shift-D, ctrl-D and ctrl-shift-D for all four grids. And use ; for the nebulea instead of ^, which isn't working on many keyboards ( in Celestia, ^ isn't working on my French keyboard. I had similar problems on computers using Windows XP, at work).

The demo should be placed in the scripts menu anyway, and the D key (and its modifications combos) could be made available for the grids.

[t00fri]

How about my respective celx scripts? They work fine for me for now until a better GUI switching is implemented.

Fridger

[ElChristou]

How about my respective celx scripts? They work fine for me for now until a better GUI switching is implemented.

Of course they work fine, it's just that we all know that the unified UI is not for now and in the meantime many new users will download and discover Celestia without the grids which ARE already coded! (the scripts are not in the default package or yes?) I think it's not too hard to add the corresponding checkboxes and Menu items to add some new features to the soft right now...

[Cham]

My main argument about the grids is this : lets define a complete democracy of grids. All of them have their own right to be used in Celestia, not just the equatorial grid (in cosmology for example, we favor the galactic grid). So why is there a keyboard shortcut for the Equatorial grid and none for the others ?

In my opinion, we should have a keyboard shortcut for each grid (D, shift-D, etc). The user could even want to use several grids at once (I did used the equatorial, ecliptic and galactic grids at once, to build an addon recently, so activating several grids at the same time is usefull, even if it looks pretty messy on screen).

My suggestion is going a bit farther : Celestia should tell if a particular grid is activated, with proper color, in the bottom-right corner. And it should gives the coordinates of the selected object, in each of the activated coordinate system (grid) in the upper-left corner (maybe under a new "ultraverbose" mode that you could select using the "V" key).

Currently, it's really weird that a "serious" astronomy software gives the equatorial coordinates only. To me, this is a strong limitation and inconsistency of Celestia.

[t00fri]

I think only VERY few will be able to memorize Cham's proposed keys. Which is which? The obvious disadvantage of DEMOCRACY

The Qt4 GUI will be activated quite soon. There the grids are indeed democratically handled. So I doubt that until then much is going to happen about the individual GUI's for the various OS. We could easily add my switching scripts for now. But really, I don't care (anymore). It's up to Chris.

Fridger

[Cham]

I think only VERY few will be able to memorize Cham's proposed keys. Which is which? The obvious disadvantage of DEMOCRACY

It's better to have some options than nothing at all. Those who need to use the grids often will care, and WILL memorise the keys (I do). Those who don't need the grids very often will use the menu. And those who never use the grids wont care at all that the keyboard shortcuts exists ! So I don't see any problem here.

EDIT : And there's a way to help memorization of keys for the grids : from the "small" to the "large" : D for the Equatorial grid, shift-D for the Horizonthal grid, ctrl-D for the Ecliptic grid, and ctrl-shift-D for the "large" Galactic grid. This isn't hard at all, really.

[ElChristou]

...The Qt4 GUI will be activated quite soon...

If you say so...

[chris]

...The Qt4 GUI will be activated quite soon...

If you say so...

Fridger is correct. But, there will still be a gap of some months in between 1.6.0 and the subsequent Celestia release with the Qt GUI. It would be best if during that time, there was some way to activate the new grids from the GUI and via the keyboard. It's not that hard to add toggles to the GUI for the Mac and Windows; Pat and Christophe have maintained the Gtk and KDE versions of Celestia, but they haven't had too much time to contribute lately. It's may be that Fridger's scripts would be the best options on these platforms.

--Chris

[ElChristou]

...It would be best if during that time, there was some way to activate the new grids from the GUI and via the keyboard. It's not that hard to add toggles to the GUI for the Mac and Windows; Pat and Christophe have maintained the Gtk and KDE versions of Celestia, but they haven't had too much time to contribute lately. It's may be that Fridger's scripts would be the best options on these platforms...

Then if you are ok, I can see with DW for the osX version. What about shortcuts?

[ElChristou]

I was looking to the osX UI and a question pops to my mind: what is the interest of the option to turn off rings shadows and eclipse shadow? (eventually for dev it could be useful, but for the end user?)

[Cham]

I was looking to the osX UI and a question pops to my mind: what is the interest of the option to turn off rings shadows and eclipse shadow? (eventually for dev it could be useful, but for the end user?)

On the old computers where I'm working, it reduces a bit the pressure on the crappy video cards. These options are important for the old craps I'm working on

[ElChristou]

Yes...

[duds26]

I assume the ecliptic grid is a grid, plane where the planet's are circling in.
And the galactic grid the grid, plane where the stars in the galaxie are moving in.
Is this correct?

[selden]

Both grids are spheres on the sky, just like the Equatorial Grid which was the only grid included in older versions of Celestia. They are oriented to show the Ecliptic and Galactic coordinate systems.

For definitions of the different coordinate systems, see http://spiff.rit.edu/classes/phys301/le ... oords.html

[Vincent]

months in between 1.6.0 and the subsequent Celestia release with the Qt GUI. It would be best if during that time, there was some way to activate the new grids from the GUI and via the keyboard. It's not that hard to add toggles to the GUI for the Mac and Windows;

The Windows GUI already includes these grid toggles in 1.6 SVN: