Celestia UI redesign

[ElChristou]

...Stars with planets is cute, I think. Also the other two (closest and brightest) are useful. But there will certainly be more ... and then we'll soon run out of display space. Hence a good idea is needed here...

F.

Apart a search via criterions I don't see what can be more flexible... (closest and brightest are easily filtered via criterions)... Only with planets is a good pre filtered feature...

[chris]

...Stars with planets is cute, I think. Also the other two (closest and brightest) are useful. But there will certainly be more ... and then we'll soon run out of display space. Hence a good idea is needed here...

F.

Apart a search via criterions I don't see what can be more flexible... (closest and brightest are easily filtered via criterions)... Only with planets is a good pre filtered feature...

I just added a regex filter for spectral type that seems pretty useful. For example, to find all white dwarf stars, you just enter "D*" into a text box. Or "M*V" to find red dwarf stars, etc.

--Chris

[t00fri]

...Stars with planets is cute, I think. Also the other two (closest and brightest) are useful. But there will certainly be more ... and then we'll soon run out of display space. Hence a good idea is needed here...

F.

Apart a search via criterions I don't see what can be more flexible... (closest and brightest are easily filtered via criterions)... Only with planets is a good pre filtered feature...

I just added a regex filter for spectral type that seems pretty useful. For example, to find all white dwarf stars, you just enter "D*" into a text box. Or "M*V" to find red dwarf stars, etc.

--Chris

Unfortunately regex is not unique. Are these PERL regex or GNU regex just to name two?

F.

[chris]

...Stars with planets is cute, I think. Also the other two (closest and brightest) are useful. But there will certainly be more ... and then we'll soon run out of display space. Hence a good idea is needed here...

F.

Apart a search via criterions I don't see what can be more flexible... (closest and brightest are easily filtered via criterions)... Only with planets is a good pre filtered feature...

I just added a regex filter for spectral type that seems pretty useful. For example, to find all white dwarf stars, you just enter "D*" into a text box. Or "M*V" to find red dwarf stars, etc.

--Chris

Unfortunately regex is not unique. Are these PERL regex or GNU regex just to name two?

F.

check out the documentation for QRegExp and you'll see that there are three modes available (four if you count fixed string). I'm using "wildcard" right now because of it's simplicity. Perl regexes are of course more powerful, but are perhaps overkill for this task--not worth the added complexity for users. Easy enough to make it a user prefernce though p

[t00fri]

I would always vote for PERL regexes, of course. Doesn't cost much more and doesn't confuse those people whose dreams are in PERL

F.

[MKruer]

I don't want to end up with dialog box that looks like this--there are too many options that would never be used, and it mixes together several different types of settings in one place.

There's no need to be able to set shadows and atmospheres separately for different types of bodies. A single setting for atmospheres will satisfy everyone, and is less confusing. Similarly, there's never a need to render planets without asteroids or moons. Those options can all be removed.

The more commonly used options can go in a toolbar that's readily available, while the rarely used settings (cloud shadows, ring shadows, eclipse shadows) can go into the shadows section of a Render Preferences dialog box. I think this is better than mixing everything together in a single panel.

--Chris

OK, not a problem, just trying to give you some ideas.

-Matt-

[BobHegwood]

OK, not a problem, just trying to give you some ideas.

-Matt-

And someone oughtta say "Thank You" for doing that too. May not
be perfect, but it at least stimulated some serious thought
concerning the interface. So, it was a VALUABLE suggestion to my
mind.

Thanks for trying...

[cartrite]

Chris,
I like the new deep sky tab. Compact and neat. A solar system browser would be a good choice for another tab in my opinion. Like the internet browsers, maybe a box on the top tool bar that lets the user choose between tabs or new windows might be useful for moons. Just a thought.

Also, maybe another group of tabs just above these to choose between the celestial browser, eclipse browser, etc. As you probably already know, the kde version lists the 2 ui's under the navigation pop down. That wouldn't be a bad idea either. That would leave the space where the word celestial browser is displayed for other yet to be defined tabs.
cartrite

[ElChristou]

Chris, how is generated the actual UI? For now I found the Qt Design tool (for UI design) but I'm unable to find any compatible file in CVS...

[Vincent]

Chris, how is generated the actual UI? For now I found the Qt Design tool (for UI design) but I'm unable to find any compatible file in CVS...

Christophe,

You should have a look in the 'celestia\src\celestia\qt' folder

[ElChristou]

Chris, how is generated the actual UI? For now I found the Qt Design tool (for UI design) but I'm unable to find any compatible file in CVS...

Christophe,

You should have a look in the 'celestia\src\celestia\qt' folder

It's what I did, but no Qt Design compatible file... I suppose that's mean the actual UI is hard coded?

[ElChristou]

A few thoughts about the markers behavior in the browser.

When I first propose a check box to mark/unmark the selection or all the results was with the idea to have a real time marking depending on what one would click in the listing. In short, with the mark checkbox selected, by clicking and object, a marker would appear on it without other action. clicking again the object would deselect it and by the same the marker would disappear. Clicking several object would automatically mark them.

Now with such system the problem is to keep some markers for another search. For this I suppose we could have a "Keep" button (in the marker section) that would "freeze" the actual displayed markers. Then one would need a "Unmark all" button to clear all markers.


A typical sequence to show the "Keep" button behavior:

- I do a search for the closest G2V stars around the sun
- I check mark all
- I press "Keep" to freeze these markers
- I change the spectral filter to M6V (I want to see what is the closest) (as the mark all checkbox is checked, all have a marker)
- I uncheck "mark all"
- I check "mark selected", change the color or type of markers
- I select Wolf 359

At this point I have the closest G2V stars marked and only Wolf 359.

- I can "Keep" again (to "save the markers") or click on "Unmark all"...


What I find interesting here is the real time marking depending on one' selection...

What do you think?

[Vincent]

A typical sequence to show how the "Keep" button behavior:

- I do a search for the closest G2V stars around the sun
- I check mark all
- I press "Keep" to freeze these markers
- I change the spectral filter to M6V (I want to see what is the closest) (as the mark all checkbox is checked, all have a marker)
- I uncheck "mark all"
- I check "mark selected", change the color or type of markers
- I select Wolf 359

It would be even handier to automatically untick the "Mark all" check box as soon as the spectral filter is changed.

PS: I've been compiling Qt4.3.3 with VS 2005 for ~ 30 minutes... No problem so far...

[ElChristou]

It would be even handier to automatically untick the "Mark all" check box as soon as the spectral filter is changed...

This is a detail; what about the general idea? (real time marking) Did it make sense?

[Vincent]

This is a detail; what about the general idea? (real time marking) Did it make sense?

Discussing about a detail implies that I'm OK with the general idea.

[cartrite]

Chris, how is generated the actual UI? For now I found the Qt Design tool (for UI design) but I'm unable to find any compatible file in CVS...

I was wondering about this myself. Chris didn't inculde the ui files.

From what I remember from VS 6, after you created a gui, the c++ code was also generated in a separate file.

My linux version of qt3 designer can open cpp files but I don't think there is a way to generate a ui from the cpp file. Could be wrong though. I didn't see this in qt4. As far as I can tell, it can only open ui forms.

I downloaded this program called eclipse. I also downloaded qt-eclipse-integration-win32-1.0.1 from this link. http://trolltech.com/developer/download ... n-download
It seems to have the ability to generate cpp source code while creating the gui's. Correct me if I'm wrong but it looks like qt4 doesn't have this capability yet on it's own.

cartrite

[t00fri]

Chris,

your new DSO browser feature together with the already much improved star browser adds much to my longstanding wish, to be able to access our sky data base in a much more systematic manner!

This graphical way of arranging these different browsing tasks into tabs is very clear, logical and it economizes the available space.

One other feature that would be VERY useful in this context is an efficient general incremental search engine!

Another general matter refers to making the data base references (publications) and (PERL) scripts accessible via some reference feature from within the browser. This would add MUCH to the seriousness of our data base towards the (scientific) outside world... The browser could eventually summarize all the sources for our catalog data, their mods via PERL scripts AND the sources for all the textures...

F.

[chris]

Chris, how is generated the actual UI? For now I found the Qt Design tool (for UI design) but I'm unable to find any compatible file in CVS...

Christophe,

You should have a look in the 'celestia\src\celestia\qt' folder

It's what I did, but no Qt Design compatible file... I suppose that's mean the actual UI is hard coded?

Yes, the UI is hard coded, because I find that easier than using a UI design tool. But, my work should be considered a prototype: the UI is functional, but not beautiful, and I would welcome help in producing a better layout of the controls.

--Chris

[ElChristou]

...Yes, the UI is hard coded, because I find that easier than using a UI design tool. But, my work should be considered a prototype: the UI is functional, but not beautiful, and I would welcome help in producing a better layout of the controls...

If we can switch to the UI tool I'm sure more people could help; for example on osX I could help quite a bit DW to achieve the actual design because of Xcode Interface builder...

[ElChristou]

...One other feature that would be VERY useful in this context is an efficient general incremental search engine!...

What's your idea? (what do you mean by incremental?)