Celestia Forums

Hi all,

there is an update of the UNICE earth-locations raw file, 2003-2, that leads to a factor 2 more earth locations with coordinates than what I have made available some time ago! The total number of entries now is 40000 (!), and with lat-long coordinates, there are

before: 5536 locations
now: 11262 locations!!!

However, so far, I have refrained from making the Perl-script extracted new locations available, since people keep complaining that the locations tend to overlap badly

Of course this could be avoided by modifying the Size/Importance parameters adequately. Unfortunately, there is no size info available in the UNICE raw data.
Clearly, with 11262 entries one cannot modify these parameters by hand! An algorithm is urgently needed...

Right now, I am experimenting with the following idea: the raw data specify for each location various number codes:



that may occur simulatneously, of course. With my Perl script I may derive an 'importance' estimate by counting the number of simultaneous function codes in the respective code string! The more there are, the more important the place.

Moreover, now I should need a proper international font, since the places are preferably written with all national special 'accents' etc. I could castrate the names to boring english;-), but the national mode would be more fancy.


What do you think. Implementing something like this is again trivial with Perl.


Bye Fridger

Howdy Fridger,

If I understand correctly, the number "codes" would become Sizes in the actual location files?

If yes ... then you might want to leave some values between each code for future additions. For example, use 10's or 100's instead of 1's. There are a LOT of possible things (smaller and larger) that folks might want to create location files for, and it would be a good idea to leave room for these things to be added at a later date. Then, there would be no need to modify your file or any other files. For example, I listed a few in http://ennui.shatters.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2969.

If no, then what would the number codes become?

-Don G.

Don:
I think Fridger's plan is to use the Importance code rather than the Size code, though Fridger will please correct me if I'm misrepresenting him. My reason for intruding at this point is to say I feel strongly that we should try our best to keep Size as a measure of the actual physical size of a feature - its diameter or longest dimension, measured in kilometres. This is useful since it means the labels tend to light up round about the time the feature becomes visible during an approach to the planet/moon. Importance can be used for objects with effectively zero size (such as landing sites), unknown sizes (such as Fridger's situation) or which have an importance to us that outweighs their size (I imagine most people would feel that cities and observatories fall into this category).
Otherwise there's really no reason to have both a Size and an Importance category.

Fridger:
I agree proper international font support would be very useful in Celestia - the IAU location files for the planets and moons are rich in accents, too, and it made me weep to have to strip them out. A couple of moons and many asteroids would also benefit from having their accented characters displayed properly, and of course users from most places in the world which don't use an English keyboard would find it helpful, too.

Grant

granthutchison wrote:Don:
I think Fridger's plan is to use the Importance code rather than the Size code, though Fridger will please correct me if I'm misrepresenting him. My reason for intruding at this point is to say I feel strongly that we should try our best to keep Size as a measure of the actual physical size of a feature - its diameter or longest dimension, measured in kilometres. This is useful since it means the labels tend to light up round about the time the feature becomes visible during an approach to the planet/moon. Importance can be used for objects with effectively zero size (such as landing sites), unknown sizes (such as Fridger's situation) or which have an importance to us that outweighs their size (I imagine most people would feel that cities and observatories fall into this category).
Otherwise there's really no reason to have both a Size and an Importance category.

...

Grant

Grant, Don,

Grant correctly emphasized what was/is the essence of my strategy: 'importance' NOT 'size' filtering for the UN-2003-2 location data!

The basic idea was to use coincidences of certain 'function attributes' that were given in the raw data to arrive at some pseudo-objective estimate for the 'importance' of a given earth-location.

Please read also my two developer mails concerning my further plans and achievements so far.

After some further fine-tuning tonight, I shall make the files available on my TexFoundry site for testing.

I would really appreciate additional comments and suggestions about further perfectionating the 'importance hierarchy' given of course the infos available. Even complex logical cross-correlations among different kinds of data would easily be possible with Perl...

The url where you find the raw data and a good manual explaining the various entries is:
http://www.unece.org/etrades/download/downindex.htm

Bye Fridger

Thank you both for the additional explanation.

I'm a day past due for some sleep so right now I don't even want to fathom a guess as to what other information could be included. What you've already done is more than we have right now Fridger <big smile>.

Have fun with perl! Since you're good at it, maybe you would like to help Christophe with the server-side development of the Celestia Add-On Manager / Repository code (see http://ennui.shatters.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3808)? He already has a couple of pages up and running for testing.

-Don G.

don wrote:Thank you both for the additional explanation.

...
Have fun with perl! Since you're good at it, maybe you would like to help Christophe with the server-side development of the Celestia Add-On Manager / Repository code (see http://ennui.shatters.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3808)? He already has a couple of pages up and running for testing.

-Don G.

Actually, I am not interested in spending any time into Add-on download managers as a matter of principle;-).

Such toys are far too 'luxurious' for my taste, their only reason of existence is to make people download without

thinking for one minute...,

how to install and use the result;-). Thinking can never hurt, however!...

There are so many challenging and time-consuming tasks to further increase the performance of Celestia instead...

Bye Fridger

I would like the special characters in planet names and star names as well...

t00fri wrote:Actually, I am not interested in spending any time into Add-on download managers as a matter of principle;-).

Actually, all of the initial work will be to develop the server-side, web site Repository, which is merely a central location for all Add-Ons, which will definately help everyone -- users and content creators alike <smile>.

Yes Fridger, I understand your feelings about the client-side part of the equation. Every tool mankind has ever created can be "used" or "abused" -- it's up to the person using it.

-Don G.

don wrote:

t00fri wrote:Actually, I am not interested in spending any time into Add-on download managers as a matter of principle;-).

Actually, all of the initial work will be to develop the server-side, web site Repository, which is merely a central location for all Add-Ons, which will definately help everyone -- users and content creators alike <smile>.

Yes Fridger, I understand your feelings about the client-side part of the equation. Every tool mankind has ever created can be "used" or "abused" -- it's up to the person using it.

-Don G.

I am not sure you really understand my respective feelings. Christophe certainly does;-). Usually at least...

Although I never have used it or joined in myself, I thought Marc has long organized such a central WEB repository for Add-Ons?? What happened to it?

OK, let's suppose we need something new at that front.

I thought you guys wanted to get together and do some joint coding of this kind of GUI toys? At least this is what I remember from a number of excited posts by you and others during my 'winter sleep' some weeks ago...first of all, such a vast joint venture requires an alert "communication manager" for coordinating the resulting large "outburst" of new code...Clearly, there is only one candidate;-)

I guess those developers who really know, how the math and physics of Celestia works, should rather devote their available free time trying to further improve the main Celestia engine/code...

Bye Fridger

t00fri wrote:Although I never have used it or joined in myself, I thought Marc has long organized such a central WEB repository for Add-Ons?? What happened to it?

Sorry, I don't know anything about this.

The Repository is only the beginning. In the end, the idea is to have client-side (Celestia) code provide an interface that allow users to activate, de-activate, download, install, etc. add-ons from the Repository, without the need to know it even exists. You merely select something like "planets / textures", and a list is provided of what you have installed along with a list of additional add-ons currently available (or something similar). Obviously with buttons to view descriptions, screen shots, and other information resident in the repository.

t00fri wrote:I thought you guys wanted to get together and do some joint coding of this kind of GUI toys?

Not sure what you mean Fridger. I don't consider creating a web site with HTML code, perl, CSS, and a MySQL back-end to be "GUI toys".

t00fri wrote:...first of all, such a vast joint venture requires an alert "communication manager"...

Actually, it first needs volunteers <smile>. So far, Christophe, Selden and I are the only ones continuing a discussion on the subject and Christophe is the only one doing the work.

t00fri wrote:I guess those developers who really know, how the math and physics of Celestia works, should rather devote their available free time trying to further improve the main Celestia engine/code...

I agree wholeheartedly! But even celestial mathematicians need to take a break and do something different every now and then <smile>.

I know nothing of celestial mechanics and very little C++, so I and many others are not good candidates for Celestia engine work. That's why some of us would like to work on other parts of the program. The Add-On Manager / Repository project is a good way for lots of folks to get involved with Celestia development, if they want to, because it's not just C++ and math. It's HTML, CSS, web page design, graphic artistry, perl, MySQL and lots of other stuff.

-Don G.

don wrote:

t00fri wrote:Although I never have used it or joined in myself, I thought Marc has long organized such a central WEB repository for Add-Ons?? What happened to it?

Sorry, I don't know anything about this.

But there was a lot of activity early this summer about this issue, a number of Add-On people subscribed to Marc's WEB-ring. Selden knows about it for sure...

I do not like this sort of thing at all. So I stayed away.

don wrote:The Repository is only the beginning. In the end, the idea is to have client-side (Celestia) code provide an interface that allow users to activate, de-activate, download, install, etc. add-ons from the Repository, without the need to know it even exists. You merely select something like "planets / textures", and a list is provided of what you have installed along with a list of additional add-ons currently available (or something similar). Obviously with buttons to view descriptions, screen shots, and other information resident in the repository.

In order to make this work well, it is for sure a lot of work! Why vasting all these valuable human resources, just to "spare";-) downloaders a little bit of understanding "what is going on behind the curtain/scene"?? I will never understand this philosophy...

This is not Microsoft's automatic update site!:lol:

don wrote:I know nothing of celestial mechanics and very little C++, so I and many others are not good candidates for Celestia engine work. That's why some of us would like to work on other parts of the program. The Add-On Manager / Repository project is a good way for lots of folks to get involved with Celestia development, if they want to, because it's not just C++ and math. It's HTML, CSS, web page design, graphic artistry, perl, MySQL and lots of other stuff.

-Don G.

But are'nt you forgetting that such 'mass production' needs first of all most devoted people with lots of Celestia know-how, who are really able to coordinate and critically filter the generated code!?
Irrespective of the language used...
Otherwise this is bound to end in chaos.

Imagine for one moment 10 C++ devotees with no deep knowledge of Celestia would tomorrow start dumping code into the CVS archive without someone like Chris being "on guard"?;-) .

Celestia is what it is, exactly because not too many people are "stirring in the soup" ...

Bye Fridger

Fridger,

Well, let us just say that the current state of the Addon Manager project is very similar to that of Celestia. There are a very small number of people writing any code (only 1), although a larger number of people are making comments (a grand total of 2, actually). At that rate, I doubt it'll get out of hand

I fear that Don is more than slightly optimistic in the number of people who might get involved. After all, it does involve all of the things he mentioned: enough to terrify any novice.

Personally, I'd like the process of creating and installing addons to be simplified enough so that artists aren't overwhelmed by the technicalities of having to understand operating systems, file systems, which directories things have to go into, etc.

Certainly I've been quite frustrated in trying to help people who aren't able to describe what they've done that doesn't work.

t00fri wrote:In order to make this work well, it is for sure a lot of work! Why vasting all these valuable human resources, just to "spare";-) downloaders a little bit of understanding "what is going on behind the curtain/scene"?? I will never understand this philosophy...

That's why you are a scientist using Unix, instead of a business worker using Windoze <smile>. Many folks don't want to be an actor, director, producer, etc. ("behind the curtain/scene"). They just want to watch and enjoy the show.

Wasting resources? Quite the opposite Fridger. Personally, I would hope to *attract* some NEW resources! Having only 2 or 3 developers write and support code for a project as large as Celestia has become, is NOT fun for any of them. And no, I surely don't expect the whole world of C++ programmers to rush to the Celestia project either <laughing>. If we can get one or two more C++ programmers involved, that would be quite manageable, don't you think?

As I mentioned earlier, the human resources necessary for the Add-On Manager / Repository project are quite different than for Celestia as a whole.

t00fri wrote:But are'nt you forgetting that such 'mass production' needs first of all most devoted people with lots of Celestia know-how, who are really able to coordinate and critically filter the generated code!?

Not at all. Christophe is currently at the head of the Add-On / Repository project, and he is quite capable, I'm sure <smile>. No code goes into the CVS without Chris' approval and usually testing by other developers and/or users as well. Chris is the only person who can grant a developer the authority to submit code to the CVS, so there will NOT be 10 wild coders dumping untested and un-approved code into the CVS <smile>. Are you a "worry wart" (a person who worries needlessly) Fridger?

t00fri wrote:Celestia is what it is, exactly because not too many people are "stirring in the soup" ...

That would be a pessimist's viewpoint. An optomist's viewpoint would be that Celestia could have been so much more with it's age, if there were additional people working on the project. So, it's a 50/50 split -- the scientist versus the business person <smile>. Like in all decision making, there is a "sweet spot", where the best of both worlds can be enjoyed.

Personally, I would give Chris and Christophe much more credit for making Celestia what it is, than merely because of the small number of people working on it. Just my take on it...

-Don G.

Don,

I am sorry, but I can't quite follow your logics above:

--On the one hand, you state that the 'human resources' needed for the Add-On Repository project are different from what Celestia development requires (-> hence no interference to wory about!):

don wrote:As I mentioned earlier, the human resources necessary for the Add-On Manager / Repository project are quite different than for Celestia as a whole.

--On the other hand you point out that Christophe is heading the Add-On Repository project and actually the only one doing coding work for it:

don wrote:Christophe is currently at the head of the Add-On / Repository project, and he is quite capable, I'm sure <smile>.

Hence the essential 'human resources' the Add-On Repository project is 'using' at present, is Christophe...who -- as we all agree -- is a very important asset to developing the main Celestia code...So, precisely what I claimed above is happening, it seems...

But all this is of course up to Christophe;-)

don wrote:Having only 2 or 3 developers write and support code for a project as large as Celestia has become, is NOT fun for any of them.

How do you know that it is NOT fun?

Actually the list of developers who have made significant/extensive contributions to Celestia coding is considerably larger than 2-3. Otherwise the others would not appear as authors of Celestia...Please remember that Celestia already was under intensive development much before you joined in. Of course, individual activities vary, depending on available time and other constraints of the people concerned.

don wrote:...
Not at all. No code goes into the CVS without Chris' approval and usually testing by other developers and/or users as well. Chris is the only person who can grant a developer the authority to submit code to the CVS, so there will NOT be 10 wild coders dumping untested and un-approved code into the CVS <smile>. Are you a "worry wart" (a person who worries needlessly) Fridger?

It seems you completely misinterpreted the reason for my example as well as my 'feelings'...

I am certainly NOT worried at all with respect to the main Celestia code as it goes at present, since Chris indeed is on guard...

My example was merely to illustrate that 'mobilizing' a large number of C++ volunteers for coding also brings along further significant problems: My understanding is that Chris does not have the time to critically review much more incoming code than what happended up to now. Also the planning and email communications about strategies etc become increasingly difficult. And so on...

don wrote:

t00fri wrote:Celestia is what it is, exactly because not too many people are "stirring in the soup" ...

That would be a pessimist's viewpoint.

I do not see what my statement has to do with pessimism!??

don wrote:An optomist's viewpoint would be that Celestia could have been so much more with it's age, if there were additional people working on the project. So, it's a 50/50 split -- the scientist versus the business person <smile>. Like in all decision making, there is a "sweet spot", where the best of both worlds can be enjoyed.

I do not share that point of view...

Chris so far had a very good hand in inviting a limited and well selected number of people with specific, complementary strengths to actively participate in the Celestia development...

Bye Fridger

t00fri wrote:Hence the essential 'human resources' the Add-On Repository project is 'using' at present, is Christophe...who -- as we all agree -- is a very important asset to developing the main Celestia code...So, precisely what I claimed above is happening, it seems...

But all this is of course up to Christophe;-)

Thanks for the VIP comment :-) And thanks for leaving it up to me too! :-)

Maybe I can explain here some of my motivations for starting working on this:
- First, as long as 1.3.1 hasn't/hadn't been released I don't/didn't want to start any real work on Celestia, so in a way I have/had 'nothing better to do'.
- Then as has been discussed here and elsewhere before I think everyone, including you, would welcome a central repository place for add-ons - and no, web rings don't count ;-) since they are by definition personal projects.
- Another motivation was the average 'poor' quality of current add-on packages. No standard format, no standard installation procedure, poor respect of the few existing specifications (mixed and inconsistent case in file names) which is especialy annoying on Linux since add-ons most often don't work 'out of the box'. So came the idea of using the repository as a package validation tool, bringing the chaos to order, making sure all add-ons work reliably on all platforms and with all advertised Celestia versions.

t00fri wrote:

don wrote:Having only 2 or 3 developers write and support code for a project as large as Celestia has become, is NOT fun for any of them.

How do you know that it is NOT fun?

:-)
Working on the repository is fun too you know - at least for me, and that won't prevent me from doing some work on Celestia too.

Actually the way I work with Don on the repository is very similar to the way I work with you on Celestia: I code and he finds the bugs and give feed back. And he's even more of a perfectionist than you are, picture that! :-)

t00fri wrote:My example was merely to illustrate that 'mobilizing' a large number of C++ volunteers for coding also brings along further significant problems: My understanding is that Chris does not have the time to critically review much more incoming code than what happended up to now. Also the planning and email communications about strategies etc become increasingly difficult. And so on...

The Linux Kernel development however shows that the OSS model scales well.

I think we could do with a couple more active contributers, items on the TODO list are orthogonal enough so that we won't step on each other's foot.

t00fri wrote:I do not share that point of view...

Chris so far had a very good hand in inviting a limited and well selected number of people with specific, complementary strengths to actively participate in the Celestia development...

I, for one, can't go against that :-)

BUT I think that we've also, for various reasons, missed out on a couple of good opportunities to have some new people take part.

Take Alex for example:
http://ennui.shatters.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3804
His code seems well written and valuable, this has been on the TODO list for so long... And still nobody seems to have contacted him or invited him to the developers list.

Im sort of interested in how this will work...Will this be a program that one downloads and installs on thier OS and runs it as a filter for downloaded addons changing the file names etc so that they work on all platforms also including a uninstall log so that all files are tracked to thier whereabouts in the celestia directory tree? If its intended to run inside the Celestia architecture, alot of users might want this feature disabled...Other than that I dont see an issue with the addition...

To shed some light on some of the issues of filename inconsistancies with my addons...I rename files to all lowercase but for some odd reason this does nothing...they remain unchanged...I found this out today when I dumped XP and loaded Win 2000 back on my system...Ive noticed even folders in uppercase that displayed as lowercase in XP...so from now on I am hoping to have this issue in the past for my more recent addons...

The plan is to have the package checked when uploaded to the repository. Things like file names will be modified automaticaly, if other errors are detected, the add-on packager will be prompted to e.g. change the content of a file on-line. The package content and provided objects will be indexed on the site too.

The package will then have to go through a human moderation process before being made available on the site.

What will be done on the client side is not clearly defined yet. Initially packages will have to be manually downloaded and unzipped in the extras directory. A Windows Update type of interface taking care of dependencies could be developed at a later stage.

Christophe wrote:

t00fri wrote:Hence the essential 'human resources' the Add-On Repository project is 'using' at present, is Christophe...who -- as we all agree -- is a very important asset to developing the main Celestia code...So, precisely what I claimed above is happening, it seems...

But all this is of course up to Christophe;-)

Thanks for the VIP comment And thanks for leaving it up to me too!

Maybe I can explain here some of my motivations for starting working on this:
- First, as long as 1.3.1 hasn't/hadn't been released I don't/didn't want to start any real work on Celestia, so in a way I have/had 'nothing better to do'.

I checked what are hopefully the last two 1.3.1 bug fixes last night. We'll all be free to party on the code soon . . .

Christophe wrote:- Another motivation was the average 'poor' quality of current add-on packages. No standard format, no standard installation procedure, poor respect of the few existing specifications (mixed and inconsistent case in file names) which is especialy annoying on Linux since add-ons most often don't work 'out of the box'. So came the idea of using the repository as a package validation tool, bringing the chaos to order, making sure all add-ons work reliably on all platforms and with all advertised Celestia versions.

Yes! I'm a Celestia developer, and occasionally am still too lazy to install an interesting-looking add-on, because I know that I'll almost certainly have to tweak the directory structure, if not the files themselves.

Christophe wrote:

t00fri wrote:

don wrote:Having only 2 or 3 developers write and support code for a project as large as Celestia has become, is NOT fun for any of them.

How do you know that it is NOT fun?

Working on the repository is fun too you know - at least for me, and that won't prevent me from doing some work on Celestia too.

I'm glad to hear that you enjoy it . . . I start to get impatient when I'm away from the graphics and calculation side of Celestia for too long. It's taken a huge amount of restraint to focus on bug fixing for the last couple weeks when there are so many interesting new rendering enhancements to be made.

t00fri wrote:My example was merely to illustrate that 'mobilizing' a large number of C++ volunteers for coding also brings along further significant problems: My understanding is that Chris does not have the time to critically review much more incoming code than what happended up to now. Also the planning and email communications about strategies etc become increasingly difficult. And so on...

The developers mailing list works pretty well . . . The amount of traffic there is quite reasonable. I do have a hard time keeping up with the forum at times though.

t00fri wrote:I do not share that point of view...

Chris so far had a very good hand in inviting a limited and well selected number of people with specific, complementary strengths to actively participate in the Celestia development...

Thank you!

Christophe wrote:I, for one, can't go against that

BUT I think that we've also, for various reasons, missed out on a couple of good opportunities to have some new people take part.

Take Alex for example:

I'm not always the most organized person . . . Actually, that's a very kind understatement.

But, I actually have been in touch with Alex about this change. He sent me an update, and I will integrate it into Celestia 1.3.2.

Rather than immediately add people to the developers list on SourceForge, I like to have them send me a few patches to integrate first. If things go well, write access to the CVS tree follows.

--Chris

Is'nt that a nice 'composite post'? Why don't we just leave it at that?:lol:

Bye Fridger

chris wrote:I checked what are hopefully the last two 1.3.1 bug fixes last night. We'll all be free to party on the code soon . . . :)

Cool!

chris wrote:Yes! I'm a Celestia developer, and occasionally am still too lazy to install an interesting-looking add-on, because I know that I'll almost certainly have to tweak the directory structure, if not the files themselves.

Ah! So I'm not the only one frustrated by it!

chris wrote:

Christophe wrote::-)
Working on the repository is fun too you know - at least for me, and that won't prevent me from doing some work on Celestia too.

I'm glad to hear that you enjoy it . . . I start to get impatient when I'm away from the graphics and calculation side of Celestia for too long. It's taken a huge amount of restraint to focus on bug fixing for the last couple weeks when there are so many interesting new rendering enhancements to be made.

The problem for me is that I don't have enough OpenGL coding experience to really enjoy working on that part of the code, which is arguably one of the most interesting. And I feel that I'll never be able to get up to speed working on it only in my spare time, maybe I need to change job ;-)

chris wrote:The developers mailing list works pretty well . . . The amount of traffic there is quite reasonable. I do have a hard time keeping up with the forum at times though.

Same problem here, that's why I set up the news group for the repository discussions. It makes keeping track of messages a lot easier.

chris wrote:But, I actually have been in touch with Alex about this change. He sent me an update, and I will integrate it into Celestia 1.3.2.

I'm glad to hear that!

chris wrote:Rather than immediately add people to the developers list on SourceForge, I like to have them send me a few patches to integrate first. If things go well, write access to the CVS tree follows.

Sure, that's a logical step, but since in Alex's case none of this was public I feared you might have missed his message on the forum.