New bugfix release 1.6.2-beta1

[onetwothree]

Hi Celestians!

I'm glad to announce that the first beta version of the next bugfix release 1.6.2 is available. Please test it and help with translation to your language.

This release is created mainly to provide 64 bit versions of Celestia for modern Windows and OS X platforms.

Changelog, only user-relevant parts are left
Bug fixes
* Options dialog is hidden on delete event instead of removed (GTK+ frontend)
* Fixed crash when loading of a celx script failed
* Add missing gettext calls to make units (km, Kpc, ...) translatable
* Fixed syntax error in GL2 shader called when there is no light sources
* First object in Guided Tour can be selected (Windows frontend)
* Fixed compilation for 64 bit target of Windows frontend

Platform-specific changes
* Unix: GTK+ frontend made translatable
* Windows: tilde (~) can be used in filenames to represent home directory
* OSX: A lot of changes to make Celestia compatible with the current requirements (@Markerz can describe them better)

Features
* Leap seconds added for 2012, 2015, 2017. Dropped for 1 Jan 1972
* Add support for Lua 5.2 and 5.3, drop Lua 5.0
* Favorites file by default is saved to user home directory:
- Unix: $XDG_DATA_DIR/Celestia (~/.local/cache)
- OS X: ~/Library/Application Support
- Windows: %APPDATA% (~/AppData/Roaming)

Scripting
* Add titles for example scripts

Translations:
* Add Norwegian Bokmål translation

Source code is available at Github

Windows builds are available at Bintray and Github. The same installation file for both 64 and 32 bit versions.

OS X builds will be made as soon as @Markerz provides them.

Known issues
* "Disable display scaling on high DPI setting" must be set in windows with high DPI desktops
* Lua 5.2 made "goto" a reserved word, scripts with "observer:goto()" will be aborted
* No NAIF kernels support (SPICE)

[Lafuente_Astronomy]

Hi Celestians!

I'm glad to announce that the first beta version of the next bugfix release 1.6.2 is available. Please test it and help with translation to your language.

This release is created mainly to provide 64 bit versions of Celestia for modern Windows and OS X platforms.

Changelog
Full changelog log will be provided later.

Source code is available at Github

Windows builds are available at Bintray and Github. The same installation file for both 64 and 32 bit versions.

OS X builds will be made as soon as @Markerz provides them.

Hello onetwothree, I'm a bit confused, what's the difference between Celestia 1.7.0 and Celestia 1.6.2? I know that Celestia 1.6.2 is just a bugfix for 1.6.1 but will it take over Celestia 1.7.0 as the latest program or not?

[onetwothree]

Hello onetwothree, I'm a bit confused, what's the difference between Celestia 1.7.0 and Celestia 1.6.2? I know that Celestia 1.6.2 is just a bugfix for 1.6.1 but will it take over Celestia 1.7.0 as the latest program or not?

1.6.2 has several fixes backported from 1.7, but by no mean it will take over 1.7. Its aim is to provide Celestia 1.6 on modern hardware and operating systems (e.g. the latest OS X dropped 32 bit mode so 1.6.1 simply doesn't work on it, on Windows we cannot build 64 bit 1.6.1, on current Windows usual users can't write to C:\Program Files\Celestia directory so we moved favorites.cel to %APPDATA%).

[Gurren Lagann]

Welp, this is the first release in both:

8 whole years (last release was in 2011)
Since/After Alexell left Celestia deveploment

[fyr02]

Nice! I fell like 1.6.2 should be updated on the Celestia website as "Celestia Classic" once 1.7 is out.

[Art Blos]

Very tempting. I will try to test the beta version soon. The stability of the final version depends on this.

[Anthony_B_Russo10]

fyr02 does make a point.

[Markerz]

The Mac binary is now also available on Github and will be distributed via Mac App Store for the 1.6.2 stable release

The macOS Specific changes are:

1. Supports 64bit and removed 32bit support, runs on macOS 10.7 or later.
2. Sandboxed and code signed for future App Store distribution.
3. Added a dialog for choosing celestia.cfg and data directory.
4. Supports dark mode on macOS 10.14 or later

Now there is an option "Change Configuration File" in the Celestia menu in menubar to change the path of celestia.cfg and data directory that Celestia will attempt to load. Extra files, scripts will be read from the sandboxed path, which should be ~/Library/Containers/space.celestia.Celestia/Data/Library/Application Support/CelestiaResources

[gironde]

How is the coexistence of Celestia 1.6.2 Beta 1 and Celestia 1.6.1 in the Windows registry?

[onetwothree]

How is the coexistence of Celestia 1.6.2 Beta 1 and Celestia 1.6.1 in the Windows registry?

As being just a bugfix release 1.6.2 uses the same registry options as 1.6.1.

[Anthony_B_Russo10]

Is there any news on Linux builds 1.6.2 in x86 and x64?

[Lafuente_Astronomy]

Since Celestia is now a sandboxed application, modification to the data folder inside the application bundle is disallowed (for example, adding additional plugins, textures), instead one should resort to the option "Change Configuration File" in the Celestia menu in menubar to change the path of celestia.cfg and data directory that Celestia will attempt to load. Extra files, scripts will be read from the sandboxed path, which should be ~/Library/Containers/space.celestia.Celestia/Data/Library/Application Support/CelestiaResources

So, does that mean I'll no longer be able to add names to the starnames.dat file? If so, does 1.6.2 takes from the AstroDB Branch that pirogronian is developing for 1.7.0, or not? I'm genuinely confused.

[onetwothree]

Is there any news on Linux builds 1.6.2 in x86 and x64?

We will provide them for the final release. The changes mostly affect Win & Apple.

So, does that mean I'll no longer be able to add names to the starnames.dat file?

You can provide a custom location of celestia.cfg and custom directories:

instead one should resort to the option "Change Configuration File" in the Celestia menu in menubar to change the path of celestia.cfg and data directory that Celestia will attempt to load.

If so, does 1.6.2 takes from the AstroDB Branch that pirogronian is developing for 1.7.0, or not?

Nope. And 1.6.x will never adopt it as 1.6.x is a bugfix release so no new features are allowed.

[Anthony_B_Russo10]

Ok, thanks.

[Lafuente_Astronomy]

Lafuente_Astronomy wrote:
If so, does 1.6.2 takes from the AstroDB Branch that pirogronian is developing for 1.7.0, or not?

Nope. And 1.6.x will never adopt it as 1.6.x is a bugfix release so no new features are allowed.

[/quote]

Alright. So AstroDB will only be in Celestia 1.7.0. That's alright

[eldee]

I just tested the new version for Mac, it works fine

First thing noticeable, the app settings are reset and the bookmarks lost (No biggies, but it should be mentioned somewhere, maybe when starting 1.6.2 the app should check if old 1.6.1 files exists and copy them to the new location ?)

Small bug, in French, Sol is also translated as "Séoul" which is plain wrong The wrong line is in https://github.com/CelestiaProject/Celestia/blob/1.6.x/po/fr.po 1858 (Should be either 'Soleil' or 'Sol')

[Markerz]

I just tested the new version for Mac, it works fine

First thing noticeable, the app settings are reset and the bookmarks lost (No biggies, but it should be mentioned somewhere, maybe when starting 1.6.2 the app should check if old 1.6.1 files exists and copy them to the new location ?)

Small bug, in French, Sol is also translated as "Séoul" which is plain wrong The wrong line is in https://github.com/CelestiaProject/Celestia/blob/1.6.x/po/fr.po 1858 (Should be either 'Soleil' or 'Sol')

Thanks for the feedback!

The mistranslation of Sol is a bug in all languages it seems.

For bookmarks and settings, it is caused by the difference of bundle identifier between 1.6.1 and 1.6.2, the current application will not read the old bookmark/setting data. I'll see to it if it is possible to read the saved data from 1.6.1.

[gironde]

I installed Celestia 1.6.2 beta 1 on Windows 10 64k by already having several versions of Celestia (1.6.1, EPV3). For now, everything seems to work, more quickly but there is no addon for now.
The only concern noted is a problem in fonts. If you look in the picture below, you may find that the term 'Windowed mode' and translated into French by odd characters instead of 'Mode fenêtré'.
The accent of the words 'Résolution' et 'Sélection' are correct but not for the word 'fenêtré'.

In the menu 'Help' / 'Orders', it is well spelled

Added after 41 minutes 9 seconds:
I think that the box for selecting the display mode in the program has a bad character set setting otherwise the problem of accents would be the same everywhere.
(ASCII, UTF8, ...)

Added after 9 minutes 17 seconds:
locale/fr/LC_MESSAGES

To prevent the celestial clock from moving from left to right when the period is UTC or summer time or winter time, I suggest the translation fr:

UTC
été
hiv (abbreviation for 'hiver')

with these words the width is stable.

[onetwothree]

Small bug, in French, Sol is also translated as "Séoul" which is plain wrong The wrong line is in https://github.com/CelestiaProject/Celestia/blob/1.6.x/po/fr.po 1858 (Should be either 'Soleil' or 'Sol')

To prevent the celestial clock from moving from left to right when the period is UTC or summer time or winter time, I suggest the translation fr:

UTC
été
hiv (abbreviation for 'hiver')

with these words the width is stable.

Could you collaborate and update https://raw.githubusercontent.com/CelestiaProject/Celestia/1.6.x/po/fr.po? You can just download it, edit it and send me.

The only concern noted is a problem in fonts. If you look in the picture below, you may find that the term 'Windowed mode' and translated into French by odd characters instead of 'Mode fenêtré'.

The problem is that Celestia internally uses UTF-8 while on Windows other encodings may be used. So some translated strings should be converted from utf-8 to local encodings. Keep hunting such cases we need to fix them all

[gironde]

onetwothree

You can just download it, edit it and send me.

here is the modified fr.po and fr.mo files :