Celestia Forums

Dear Group, i only just discovered Celestia so right off i'd like to say how very much i enjoy this program, i have nothing but admiration for all the clever people who contribute to it.
This is my 1st ever posting and its a request for your consideration.

I'm English, and old, and i don't like Kilometers any more than i like Kilograms, nasty foreign inventions.

Any chance that in a future version you could add the option to read distances in good old Miles?

Dreamofgilgamesh

They may be "nasty foreign inventions" to you, but metric/SI is the standard measuring system of science. Even though the Imperial is in public use in the US and in the UK (though it's on its way out in the UK, and good riddance to it), scientists in both countries still use SI instead.

That said, It wouldn't be too hard to make a script to convert distances to a target into miles (though that'd only be useful for interplanetary purposes - lightyears are still the unit of interstellar distance in Celestia)

Either that, or just have a calculator handy and divide all the kilometre distances you're interested in by 1.609.

Ah i see, well that makes sense to me, thanks very much for your answer.

Although i'm not so sure about the "Good Riddance" hahaha, i still prefer to buy my beer in pints!!

Dreamofgilgamesh wrote:Although i'm not so sure about the "Good Riddance" hahaha, i still prefer to buy my beer in pints!!

OK, I'll give you that one .

I must admit that a beer in pint has nothing to do with a beer in half a litre.
Simply does'nt taste the same

Boux wrote:I must admit that a beer in pint has nothing to do with a beer in half a litre.
Simply does'nt taste the same

Indeed. In Argentina, where SI units are the norm, we also drink beer by the pint. Half a litre is too little, and a litre just too much.

Cheers,

Guillermo

Dreamofgilgamesh said >
" I'm English, and old, and i don't like Kilometers any more than i like Kilograms, nasty foreign inventions.
Any chance that in a future version you could add the option to read distances in good old Miles? "

Malenfant said >
"They may be "nasty foreign inventions" to you, but metric/SI is the standard"

Yes, very clever, we all know that ! Tollerance old chap ,,,
IS is the operative word there ! Dreamofgilgamesh PLAINLY SAID he was old, and English,
and so am I !
please cut him (and me if you wish) some slack. He only asked iif there was "any chance" --- is there any chance of adding some more (keystrokes) to add exttra display options ( I dont think he was asking for a fundamental change in the parameters of Celestia or the universe for *&^sake! )

SI _WAS__ not the standard that some of us grew up with !

For example :
when I was in junior school I was confused with foot-pounds, poundels and slugs
when I was in senior school we diid things in cgs ( i think it was called !)
when I went to college it was MKS and in uni it was SI.
In professional life it was SI, and my input to a craft that passed by Halley's comet and another that still collects data from orbit round the sun caused no loss, (unlike some Mars spacecraft -with mixed units- of recent times !)
However, now I can relax in my garden with a pint of beer and know that if it is 78F out in the garden than I shall be pleasantly warm, whatever the C or K is in the lab !!! and the rest of the world can go ,,,, and I only need Celestia as a recreational software, _not_a_professional_instrument (like Fridger would like to straight-jacket us).

@Abramson
You caused me to get down from the shelf a few treasures from a period some years ago in Brasil(Brazil) and some beerfests(Rio Claro)
Gosh !! Yep, they are indeed pint tankards !!

Just for info - I'm British, and over 30 (I leave it to the reader to decide whether that's "young" or "old"). I grew up with an unholy mix of units - I basically go millimetre, inch, foot, metre (roughly = yard), kilometre, mile from smallest to biggest. But I prefer using the metric ones by far (I'd rather use foot than "decimetre" though), and I still would love to see the Imperial system (and the even more confusing-for-its-own-sake form of it the Americans use) obliterated completely in its favour.

But you'll note that I said that SI was the standard measuring system of science, not just the "standard" as you edited it to be when you quoted me (please don't do that. I really don't like it when people edit what I say to suit them).

Whether you like it or not, Celestia is an educational package that uses units that scientists use. And since scientists use SI, it stands to reason that Celestia should as its default use SI too.

I also made it clear that I wasn't opposed to someone writing a conversion script (or the user just having a calculator handy to figure out the conversion by hand).

So I'm not entirely sure what you're complaining about, though you seem to have misread what I said (or just stopped reading when you hit the word 'standard').

Malenfant wrote:Just for info - I'm British, and over 30 (I leave it to the reader to decide whether that's "young" or "old"). I grew up with an unholy mix of units - I basically go millimetre, inch, foot, metre (roughly = yard), kilometre, mile from smallest to biggest. But I prefer using the metric ones by far (I'd rather use foot than "decimetre" though), and I still would love to see the Imperial system (and the even more confusing-for-its-own-sake form of it the Americans use) obliterated completely in its favour.

But you'll note that I said that SI was the standard measuring system of science, not just the "standard" as you edited it to be when you quoted me (please don't do that. I really don't like it when people edit what I say to suit them).

Whether you like it or not, Celestia is an educational package that uses units that scientists use. And since scientists use SI, it stands to reason that Celestia should as its default use SI too.

I also made it clear that I wasn't opposed to someone writing a conversion script (or the user just having a calculator handy to figure out the conversion by hand).

So I'm not entirely sure what you're complaining about, though you seem to have misread what I said (or just stopped reading when you hit the word 'standard').

Sorry.
I only quoted that liittle bit about "standard" to be brief, I agree that SI is "standard measuring system of science". I thought that my post agreed with you in that respect. I did not edit your post to be mean nor to misrepresent you.
I also presumed that anyone could see my brief reference and that they could scroll up the page to see the original context ( if they had not already been reading the thread.)

I was not complaining,
I was commenting !
But if you want a real complaint then here it is :
I thought that you were being _condecending_ to DG by telling him that SI was the standard(snip), there was no indication in his post that he did not _already_know_that ! (Which is why I said "Yes, very clever, we all know that !" all he said was that he did not like kilometers, is that a sin !?) It was not relevent to his request, I thought that his post was in good humour.

Try to have a good day and have a vitrtual pint (or gallon) on me tonight :-!)

Goodby

Well, there was no indication in his post that he did know that SI was the standard for scientific measurement. We get people with all sorts of background here, and you'd be amazed at what people don't know.

What I found somewhat annoying was his labelling of metric as a "nasty foreign invention". That strike me as being a somewhat xenophobic, ignorant and unpleasant comment. Maybe he meant that in "good humour" but it struck me as being an unnecessary comment that wasn't particularly amusing (especially given than there are a lot of "foreigners" on this board) - but that's the problem with the internet, sometimes things get misinterpreted or come out wrong.

Im from texas (not exactly proud of that one), but I agree that SI is a superior form of mesasurement. Although the United States has made many contributions to science reguardless of its incompatable measurements, they need to switch over to SI; SI is easily convertable between higher and lower units, making it much easier to deal with.

--GO BRITTIAN!!--

Malenfant wrote:
What I found somewhat annoying was his labelling of metric as a "nasty foreign invention". That strike me as being a somewhat xenophobic, ignorant and unpleasant comment. Maybe he meant that in "good humour" but it struck me as being an unnecessary comment that wasn't particularly amusing (especially given than there are a lot of "foreigners" on this board) - but that's the problem with the internet, sometimes things get misinterpreted or come out wrong.

Dear oh dear! I'm sorry if i appeared rude, xenophobic or ignorant, it was just a joke old chap!
And of course i'm well aware that the SI system is standard and i do use it, its just that i still prefer to drive my car miles and feel warm in degrees fahrenheit.
My apologies if my language has offended the more politically correct members amongst us.

It's true though, that although in the UK we are supposed to be able to use the SI system in practise we dont. It's perfectly possible to go to a hardware shop and buy a dozen 10mm bolts lol.

Anyways, thank you all for your input.

I see no particular harm in having Celestia display ditances in miles if that is what users want. Until then, people who want miles can easily use a calculator to work out the conversions.

Here's a simple conversion tip. The conversion between miles and kilometres (1.609344) is close to the Golden ratio (1.618034), so the Fibonacci sequence can be used as a good approximation.

bdm wrote:I see no particular harm in having Celestia display ditances in miles if that is what users want. Until then, people who want miles can easily use a calculator to work out the conversions.

Here's a simple conversion tip. The conversion between miles and kilometres (1.609344) is close to the Golden ratio (1.618034), so the Fibonacci sequence can be used as a good approximation.

S'close'nuff for me !
Thanks for the comparison, nice one !

Dreamofgilgamesh > "Dear oh dear! I'm sorry if i appeared rude, xenophobic or ignorant, it was just a joke old chap! "
Not to me, no prob. as I said earlier I took your post to be in good humour(as you say, a joke), I'm just sorry that others did not see it that way, they are rather prone to that hereabouts.

Hungry4info > Im from texas (not exactly proud of that one),
Dont worry, we dont hold you personally responsible for your president errrummm,, sorry in advance, does that count as a joke in bad taste ?!

You know, because EVERY person in the U.S. supports the Bush administration.

Political discussions are not appropriate for the Celestia Web forums. Please reread the Forum Guidelines at the top of the Celestia Users Forum.

Hi guys


On a similar note to Dreamofgilgamesh's request, I'd like to be able to change how speeds are displayed in Celestia. Personally, "AU/s" or "LY/s" doesn't mean that much to me. But, for example, "10,000c" or "353c" does. It's not exactly an urgent thing or anything like that, but it would be handy.

Also, being able to change how distances are displayed could help put it into perspective. Though for some stars there might not be enough room on the screen to display the distance in milimetres or inches or something silly like that