Celestia on a Mac My students need to use their own ssc creation

[Higgs]

Hello all. I have used Celestia as a final project in my Planetary Astronomy High School class for over ten years now. More and more of my students are bringing their Macs in to do the project. Sadly, I don't speak Mac at all.

Having created their wonderful ssc files in the proper plain text formats (they all look great on my PC), their challenge then is to see their creations on their own machines. In fulfillment of their assignment they will then create a video tour of their invented planetary system.

Would any kind soul give me a step-by-step method put the ssc in the proper place on their machines. Although I am quite fluent in PC, begin with the assumption that all I know for sure is that a Mac has a screen and a keyboard. (What are all of those silly icons?)

I and my poor students thank you in advance.

[Cham]

Celestia has exactly the same folder structure on a Mac as on a PC ! You just need to locate the ressources folder inside the application itself (i.e. in the app's "internal").

Good luck.

[selden]

To be slightly more explicit, my understanding is that the Mac Celestia extras folder has this location:

/Users/<<YOUR_USER_NAME_HERE>>/Library/Application Support/CelestiaResources/extras

[Cham]

The CelestiaResources folder could be placed inside the Application Support folder, but it's really an annoying choice.

By default, it is located inside the application itself. The best option, is to extract it from the app, and place it freely outside the app, in the same folder as the app itself. That way, it's very easy to find and to manage the extras.

[selden]

Cham,

Unfortunately, the phrase "inside the application itself" doesn't mean anything to me. Those words say to me that you're putting a folder inside a binary executable, so that can't be what you mean.

Can you provide the explicit directory paths that are involved?

[Cham]

Selden,

in OS X, all apps are "packets", i.e a special kind of folder (with an app icon) containing all sorts of app ressources inside (data, codes, icon files, binary, ...). The CelestiaRessources folder is part of these "guts" inside the app. OS X is a flavor of full UNIX. Any app is unified with its ressources (data, etc...) inside a "bundle" (i.e a packet), which is just a normal folder with some privileges stamped on it.

To open an app "packet", you can't double-click on it (obviously, that would launch the app!). You simply select the app and control-click it to show the item menu. There's an option in that menu to open the "packet" (i.e the app as a folder). Then you're in! Really, this is a standard thing in the OS X world.

[selden]

Cham,

You're describing it as it looks like when you're using the GUI.

I meant to ask what it looks like when you're using a console command (bash) window. In particular what directory do you specify when using the "cd" command? What does a subsequent command "ls -l" show?

[Cham]

Selden,

it's the same in the GUI as in a console. In the UNIX console, you type cd Cel* (in the directory which contains the Celestia app) and you're in! If you type ls -l, then you'll see the internal of the app (shown as a folder, with probably the .app file extension). In OS X, we rarely use the console, because the GUI does almost exactly the same thing. It's usually much faster to use the GUI.

EDIT : In the console (if you really insist in using that dinosaur), type cd Celestia.app. Then ls -l will give something like this :

drwxr-xr-x 6 Cham Cham 204 15 avr 2013 Contents

The "Contents" is just a folder inside the Celestia app. Change dir (cd Con*), then you'll get all the internal ressources of the app, including the CelestiaRessources folder. It's really easy. Much much easier in the GUI.

EDIT 2 : Here's what I get inside my Contents folder (I already removed my CelestiaRessources from this place, a long time ago) :

drwxr-xr-x 4 Cham Cham 136 15 avr 2013 Frameworks
-rw-r--r-- 1 Cham Cham 2083 15 avr 2013 Info.plist
drwxr-xr-x 3 Cham Cham 102 15 avr 2013 MacOS
drwxr-xr-x 35 Cham Cham 1190 15 avr 2013 Resources

Then going inside the Ressources directory (all the languages crap) :

drwxr-xr-x 11 Cham Cham 374 15 avr 2013 English.lproj
drwxr-xr-x 4 Cham Cham 136 15 avr 2013 ar.lproj
drwxr-xr-x 4 Cham Cham 136 15 avr 2013 be.lproj
drwxr-xr-x 4 Cham Cham 136 15 avr 2013 bg.lproj
-rw-r--r-- 1 Cham Cham 746 15 avr 2013 caution.tiff
-rw-r--r-- 1 Cham Cham 46099 15 avr 2013 celestia.icns
drwxr-xr-x 4 Cham Cham 136 15 avr 2013 de.lproj
-rw-r--r-- 1 Cham Cham 4308 15 avr 2013 defaults.plist
drwxr-xr-x 4 Cham Cham 136 15 avr 2013 el.lproj
drwxr-xr-x 10 Cham Cham 340 15 avr 2013 es.lproj
drwxr-xr-x 11 Cham Cham 374 15 avr 2013 fr.lproj
drwxr-xr-x 4 Cham Cham 136 15 avr 2013 gl.lproj
drwxr-xr-x 4 Cham Cham 136 15 avr 2013 hu.lproj
drwxr-xr-x 4 Cham Cham 136 15 avr 2013 it.lproj
drwxr-xr-x 11 Cham Cham 374 15 avr 2013 ja.lproj
drwxr-xr-x 4 Cham Cham 136 15 avr 2013 ko.lproj
drwxr-xr-x 4 Cham Cham 136 15 avr 2013 lt.lproj
drwxr-xr-x 4 Cham Cham 136 15 avr 2013 lv.lproj
drwxr-xr-x 4 Cham Cham 136 15 avr 2013 nl.lproj
drwxr-xr-x 4 Cham Cham 136 15 avr 2013 no.lproj
drwxr-xr-x 4 Cham Cham 136 15 avr 2013 pl.lproj
drwxr-xr-x 4 Cham Cham 136 15 avr 2013 pt.lproj
drwxr-xr-x 4 Cham Cham 136 15 avr 2013 pt_BR.lproj
drwxr-xr-x 4 Cham Cham 136 15 avr 2013 ro.lproj
drwxr-xr-x 4 Cham Cham 136 15 avr 2013 ru.lproj
drwxr-xr-x 4 Cham Cham 136 15 avr 2013 sk.lproj
-rw-r--r--@ 1 Cham Cham 480285 1 oct 2006 splash.png
drwxr-xr-x 4 Cham Cham 136 15 avr 2013 sv.lproj
drwxr-xr-x 4 Cham Cham 136 15 avr 2013 tr.lproj
drwxr-xr-x 4 Cham Cham 136 15 avr 2013 uk.lproj
-rwxr-xr-x 1 Cham Cham 226 15 avr 2013 vp_patch.sh
drwxr-xr-x 11 Cham Cham 374 15 avr 2013 zh_CN.lproj
drwxr-xr-x 4 Cham Cham 136 15 avr 2013 zh_TW.lproj

[Higgs]

Thanks to all for your feedback. The semester of Planetary Astronomy has just ended for this year and I had at least a few of my Mac users successfully place their ssc files in the correct folder. Some had problems with permissions. That's a whole other issue!

Still looking for a resolution of finding some replacement for the wonderful app 'System Maker' in a cross-platform solution, however.
That would make the creation of a planetary system and the corresponding ssc file a breeze for my tech challenged students.