Celestia Forums

Hi folks:

I am trying to update my educational activities to accommodate Celestia 1.5.0 final. I use over 350 cel:urls in the Activities, which I copy from Celestia by positioning the object I am interested in in space and time, then pressing the [Ctrl + ins] keys. This copies the cel:url to the clipboard.

I can then paste that cel:url into an MS Word document as a hyperlink. Folks clicking on that hyperlink when reading the MS Word document can then go directly to that object in Celestia.

I have just discovered to my dismay that some Celestia hyperlinks are longer than 256 characters. The ones in question are typically spacecraft that have been positioned orbiting above another planet. They can reach 275 to 280 characters in length (see example below).

This is a disaster for my attempts to update my Activities, because MS Word appears to have a limit of accepting no more than 256 characters for its hyperlinks. I am using MS Word 2002 which comes with Microsoft Office XP. Because of the restriction, I cannot paste that hyperlink into the Activitiy document, due to its length. I don't know if MS Word 2003 or 2007 has such a restriction.

1. Does anyone know of a way around this? I doubt that I can change Microsoft's rules for its hyperlinks, so is there a way to shorten a Celestia cel:url to under 256 characters without changing its capability to bring you to that spot in space and time?

2. Would someone please test this 279 character hyperlink in MS Word 2003 or 2007? Try to paste it into a document as a hyperlink and see if it takes. If it does not paste, you will hear a short beep/error sound. (Don't worry if it goes to an empty spot in space when you click on it. You may not have the Celestia 1 spacecraft add-on that it pertains to). Just see if it will paste into MS Word.

cel://SyncOrbit/Sol:Earth:Celestia 1/2008-02-05T17:33:17.88566?x=/kTQOvH067/0/////////w&y=eDXAGtOrm////////////w&z=CkCx4R30liD1/////////w&ow=-0.597052&ox=0.571202&oy=-0.346670&oz=-0.443934&select=Sol:Earth:Celestia 1&fov=34.988129&ts=1.000000&ltd=0&p=0&rf=2416535&lm=0&ver=2

ANY HELP would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance

Frank

Use OpenOffice.org, the link is pasted in there correctly.
(And OpenOffice.org is free)

http://www.openoffice.org

But the hyperlink in the text writer of OOo won't open which is probably the fault of my computer.
(Has poblems with file extensions not done correctly and stuff)
(Will check another day on my laptop that hasn't a number of particular problems)
Could you check if this works on your win XP?

Could you pare down the size by eliminating useless digits? In other words, I imagine time doesn't need to be to the hundred-thousandths of a second.



Some rounding here and there could eliminate more...

fsgregs wrote:

cel://SyncOrbit/Sol:Earth:Celestia 1/2008-02-05T17:33:17.88566?x=/kTQOvH067/0/////////w&y=eDXAGtOrm////////////w&z=CkCx4R30liD1/////////w&ow=-0.597052&ox=0.571202&oy=-0.346670&oz=-0.443934&select=Sol:Earth:Celestia 1&fov=34.988129&ts=1.000000&ltd=0&p=0&rf=2416535&lm=0&ver=2

Frank,
you can shorten the url only by deleting '&ver=2' (unused for now).
But I fear that this will not help you very much.

duds26 wrote:Use OpenOffice.org, the link is pasted in there correctly.

Duds, I suggest to send your OOo document with the link to Frank, so he can check out whether your document will work with MS Word.

Adirondack

I don't have MSWORD so I couldn't test that software. However, I can paste the entire cel url into notepad. I can also paste into Open Office.org Writer but it doesn't work celestia. I tried to save as a MSWORD document, I can open it with Open Office but not wordpad or notepad. Not sure what MSWORD would do with it.

I can use Mozilla's composer and create an html page with the word "link1" linking to the cel url. This starts Celestia and goes to earth orbit. Looks like that will work. Mozilla is free. http://www.mozilla.org/products/mozilla1.x/ This is not Firefox.
cartrite

Dude:

Thanks for the suggestion for using OpenOffice. That is good to know. I would like to continue using MS Word because almost every school in the world already has it on their school servers and computers, and they do not typically use OpenOffice. I want to avoid requiring its use with my educational work, if I can do so.

Buggs:

Thanks for the tip. I tried removing some of the zeros in the time entry, but it was not enough to drop from 279 characters to 256 characters.

Here is a similar cel:url from Celestia 1.4.1 (same approximate position, time, etc.)

cel://Follow/Sol:Earth:Celestia 1/2008-02-05T17:34:27.11381?x=Bt+aOZQueW2yDA&y=pjaEDm6X4P///////////w&z=mjMPaEmmbjb1/////////w&ow=0.609160&ox=-0.592252&oy=0.280497&oz=0.446636&select=Sol:Earth:Celestia 1&fov=36.000000&ts=1.000000&ltd=0&rf=2547607&lm=0

This one is 252 characters long. Thus, it fits in MS Word. I don't understand cel:urls, but Chris explained in another post that 1.5.0 positions objects in our solar system a different way. Apparently, that requires a lot more characters in the cel:url from 1.5.0. It seems the 1.5.0 cel has three sets of /////////// entries. That would do it.

I will try to cut the name of the spacecraft from Celestia 1 to just C1, and cut out some of the time zeros, and see what happens.

I welcome any other recommendations.

Frank

I see that you don't want to use Open Office but it does work. I saved your first cel url (279 characters) in Open Office as a word doc and was able to open with MS Word Viewer and start Celestia and go to the same Earth orbit as the html page created with Mozilla's Composer.
cartrite

Good news. I shortened the name of the spacecraft from Celestia 1 to just C1. Apparently, that was enough to drop the cel:url to under 256 characters. I also shortened the time entry to just 1.0. It worked!

Adirondack:

I also took your advice and cut out the last part of the cel "&ver=2". That also worked and gave me 6 more spaces.

SOOOOOO We've solved the problem. Hopefully, add-on designers who encounter this problem when trying to paste into MS Word can make these changes to a cel:url and be able to do it!!!

In summary:

If your cel:url is longer than 256 characters and won't fit into MS Word, you can:

1. Shorten the name of the object you are targeting
2. Reduce the significant figures for time to 1.0 or 10.0 or 100.0, etc.
3. Remove "&ver=2" from the end of the cel:url, if it is there.

Thanks everyone.

Frank

Frank,

Thanks for reporting this, however I don't think (and I bet that you'd agree) that editing celURL's by hand, or renaming spacecraft, in order to work around the limitations of MS-WORD is a satisfactory long-term solution.

There's also no way that addon creators can guarantee that all celURL's will come in under the 256char limit in future.

As a long term solution I recommend that you convert your educational activities into web-pages. I'm not aware of any problems with long celURLs in HTML.
(I've been meaning to suggest this to you for a while, even before the issue with the celURL's came up)

Probably the fastest way to get started on this in your situation is to use the "Save as Webpage" option in WORD. (NOTE: I don't recommend this as the best way to create webpages, but is the quickest way to convert WORD docs to HTML.)

You'll also need to do further customization in HTML once the initial conversion is done.

CC

fsgregs wrote::Adirondack:

I also took your advice and cut out the last part of the cel "&ver=2". That also worked and gave me 6 more spaces.

Frank,

take into account that '&ver=2' is useless with Celestia 1.5.0 and keep
in mind that '&ver=2' may be is usefull in later versions.

But some good news:
I did copy your cel:url in a document with Writer (OOo) and did convert
this document to .doc-format (Word 97/2000/XP). Though the hyperlink
in Writer doesn't start Celestia, MS Word do start Celestia and brings
you to the right position with the document made and converted with
OOo-Writer!

So you simply can edit your documents with Writer and your students
can use MS Word to go to the positions you want.

Sounds good, ey?

Adirondack

I think this is the time rate. If so, it is possible that this can also be shortened:

Adirondack wrote:

fsgregs wrote::Adirondack:

I also took your advice and cut out the last part of the cel "&ver=2". That also worked and gave me 6 more spaces.

Frank,

take into account that '&ver=2' is useless with Celestia 1.5.0 and keep
in mind that '&ver=2' may be is usefull in later versions.

But some good news:
I did copy your cel:url in a document with Writer (OOo) and did convert
this document to .doc-format (Word 97/2000/XP). Though the hyperlink
in Writer doesn't start Celestia, MS Word do start Celestia and brings
you to the right position with the document made and converted with
OOo-Writer!

So you simply can edit your documents with Writer and your students
can use MS Word to go to the positions you want.

Sounds good, ey?

Adirondack

cartrite wrote:I see that you don't want to use Open Office but it does work. I saved your first cel url (279 characters) in Open Office as a word doc and was able to open with MS Word Viewer and start Celestia and go to the same Earth orbit as the html page created with Mozilla's Composer.

Don't know if I'm saying nonsenses, but I did as follows:
I took your url

cel://SyncOrbit/Sol:Earth:Celestia 1/2008-02-05T17:33:17.88566?x=/kTQOvH067/0/////////w&y=eDXAGtOrm////////////w&z=CkCx4R30liD1/////////w&ow=-0.597052&ox=0.571202&oy=-0.346670&oz=-0.443934&select=Sol:Earth:Celestia 1&fov=34.988129&ts=1.000000&ltd=0&p=0&rf=2416535&lm=0&ver=2

copied it in Notepad, selected all the text, right clicked "insert link" then "Hyperlink" and filled the Hyperlink space with the same url.
Now it worked, linking to Celestia.
I copied it to WinWord, and with Ctrl+click it works flawlessly.
My little cent.
Bye

Andrea

You guys are the best. I installed OpenOffice, inserted my 279 character cel:url into a Writer document as a hyperlink as you suggested, then simply copied and pasted that hyperlink directly to my MS Word activity document. It worked ... WOW! I can use Open Office Writer to edit my hyperlinks so that they will fit into an MS Word document. THANKS!!!!!

Andrea:

I tried pasting the cel:url into both MS Notepad and MS Wordpad. I then selected the text, right-clicked, and did NOT find a menu choice to insert a hyperlink, or convert that text to a hyperlink. Nor did any taskbar menu item at the top of either Notepad or Wordpad give me that option.

I think you are now running Windows Vista on your computer. Perhaps Vista's new Notepad and Wordpad text editors offer hyperlink conversion capabilities, but it does not look like Windows XP does so.

If I've done something wrong, let me know.


Chuft-Captain:

As a long term solution I recommend that you convert your educational activities into web-pages.

I am interested in doing that in the future. In my experience, however, web page software has not been as user friendly as MS Word. Perhaps that has changed, but whenever I have tried to convert MS Word documents to HTML, I have had trouble with misaligned pictures, funny borders, etc. Is there any open source software that makes a trouble-free conversion from a .doc document to HTML? Will any Microsoft products that come with Windows do it now?

The 2nd problem I have is with embedded Windows shortcuts. As I have explained in other threads, I embed a hyperlink to a Windows shortcut file inside my MS Word documents. Clicking on that link activates a shortcut file that includes a command line to launch Celestia using a specific set of add-ons. It was my understanding that hyperlinks inside HTML pages will NOT activate a Windows shortcut file on your computer. Is that correct, or can you click on a link inside a "web page" and launch a Windows shortcut file? Please let me know. If it is possible, I will begin to explore making an HTML version of the Activities available for everyone to use.

Thanks to everyone for your wonderful help!!! You really solved my problem!!!

Frank

fsgregs wrote::Andrea:
I tried pasting the cel:url into both MS Notepad .....If I've done something wrong, let me know. Frank

Sorry Frank, my mistake, I don't use MS Notepad, but NotePro 3.67, that gives all the stuff I told about, under Win XP Pro.
A stupid error, beg your pardon.
Bye

Andrea

This might be a stupid question but has anybody tried to open a document in OpenOffice.org Writer and ctrl + click on the hyperlink to see if Celestia starts and goes to the right position and time?

(The reason I use OOo is because it's free: 0$, usable for all purposes, open source.)

And the formats being used (.odt, others) are documented. This is NOT the case with .doc and the other formats from Microsoft.
While Microsofts formats who are only correctly accessible
(even OOo writer makes a lot mistakes in reading .doc ) with MS Office.
.odt are accessible with a whole range of office products.
(StarOffice, OpenOffice.org, KOffice, Google Docs, others)

Even the new documented OOXML is not documented, because the actual formats will be a subset of that standard so NOT the stuff that Microsoft is trying to get ISOxxxxxxx 't.

Actually want to see everything going from .doc to .odt because of this documentation issue. And advice everybody (as much as possible , because even in OOo there are a lot of features missing that are already in MS Office 2000) to use the ODF(.odt, .ott, others) format.

I have tested OpenOffice Writer hyperlinks using a left-click and Ctrl + left click. Although the cursor changes to a hand, clicking on the link will NOT take effect in Celestia.

Frank

duds26 wrote:This might be a stupid question but has anybody tried to open a document in OOo Writer and ctrl + click on the hyperlink to see if celestia starts and goes to the right position and time?

You will also find the answer in one of my previous posts:
http://shatters.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=99894#99894

Adirondack