Qt4 Celestia preview for Windows

[chris]

I've made available a preview of the Qt4 version of Celestia for Windows:

http://www.celestiaproject.net/~claurel/celest ... 080509.exe

(Anyone with a access to a server with a high-bandwidth connection is welcome to mirror this file.)

EDIT:
In order to run the Qt4 version, you first need to install the
Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable Package (x86).

Qt4 is a cross-platform C++ toolkit which allows to use the same code to create versions of Celestia for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux. The interface has identical behaves the same way on all platforms, but keeps a native look and feel.

Keep in mind that this is just a preview. Much needs to be added and much will change before the Qt4 version of Celestia is ready for an official release (which should happen this summer, *after* 1.6.0 is released.) Nevertheless, this preview version already offers many features that the current Windows user interface lacks: dockable tool bars and panels, vastly improved bookmarks, an improved eclipse finder, a deep sky browser, context menus in the the solar system and star browsers, proper multiple star support in the solar system browser, and quite a lot more.

Comments and suggestions are very much welcomed.

--Chris

[selden]

Some things I noticed:

1. No splash/progress screen
2. Disconcerting message about not being able to find the Bookmarks file, seen only the very first time Celestia-QT4 runs.
Suggestion: either don't complain or include a statement about creating an empty one.
3. "invalid" desktop icon instead of Celestia's.
My guess is that it's trying to create an icon for Celestia.exe instead of for celestia-qt4.exe
4. capitalization issue: It'd be nice to have Caps in the name, like
Celestia-QT4 perhaps.

5. inconsistant verbs for image/movie capture in File menu:
grab image
capture video
copy image

Suggestion: use more nearly standard commands:
Save Image As...
Save Video As...
Copy Image (I'm not happy with this. Adding "To Clipboard" would be nice if it weren't so long.)

[selden]

grab image includes a menu, not just the 3D view

System info:
2GB 1.86GHz 6300 Core2Duo, Win XP Pro SP3
128MB Quadro FX 550, ForceWare v162.62

[chris]

Some things I noticed:

1. No splash/progress screen

The code to display a splash screen is actually present but currently commented out. This is one of the very few steps backward with Qt4: there's no way to alpha blend the splash window with the background. Well, not quite *no* way: you can manually copy and composite the background with the splash window. We'll either have to resort to this or use a splash window that doesn't need alpha blending.

2. Disconcerting message about not being able to find the Bookmarks file, seen only the very first time Celestia-QT4 runs.

That message is only supposed to appear in the debug version. I'll get rid of it.

Suggestion: either don't complain or include a statement about creating an empty one.
3. "invalid" desktop icon instead of Celestia's.
My guess is that it's trying to create an icon for Celestia.exe instead of for celestia-qt4.exe

Yes, that does sound like an installer problem. Should be easy to fix.

4. capitalization issue: It'd be nice to have Caps in the name, like
Celestia-QT4 perhaps.

Eventually, it will just be called Celestia.

5. inconsistant verbs for image/movie capture in File menu:
grab image
capture video
copy image

Suggestion: use more nearly standard commands:
Save Image As...
Save Video As...
Copy Image (I'm not happy with this. Adding "To Clipboard" would be nice if it weren't so long.)

The inconsistency is bad . . . I'm not sure if 'Save Video' is quite the appropriate wording however. I do like 'Copy Image to Clipboard' even if it is a bit long.

--Chris

[chris]

grab image includes a menu, not just the 3D view

System info:
2GB 1.86GHz 6300 Core2Duo, Win XP Pro SP3
128MB Quadro FX 550, ForceWare v162.62

Strange . . . I haven't observed this problem when I've saved images.

--Chris

[Derek]

Help

I've tried to run this but I get a message that "application failed because the application is incorrectly configured try reinstalling" this I've tried any suggestions.

[selden]

I just finished upgrading my home system from XP Pro SP2 to SP3 (after doing a full disk-to-disk system backup)

I then installed Celestia-QT4.

It fails to start with what seems to be the same problem that Derek reports. It generates a PopUp which says
==================
Unable to execute file:
C:\Program Files\Celestia Qt4\celestia-qt4.exe

Create process failed: code 14001.
This application has failed to start because the application configuration is incorrect. Reinstalling the application may fix this problem.
==================
System config:
1GB 3.4GHz P4-550, WinXP Pro SP3
256MB GF 7800 GTX, ForceWare v169.21

Celestia built from svn, v1.4.1 and v1.5.1 all are OK.
An older version of Celestia-QT4 dated 2/11/2008 fails in the same way when run from its old directory (i.e. I didn't install it again). It ran OK when I tried it in February under SP2.

[selden]

I switched back to the SP2 system disk.

Celestia-QT refuses to start in the same way as noted above.
Apparently something changed since February, but I dunno what.

[chris]

I switched back to the SP2 system disk.

Celestia-QT refuses to start in the same way as noted above.
Apparently something changed since February, but I dunno what.

I think that the problem is missing Microsoft Visual C++ runtime DLLs. I thought that I'd included the necessary ones in the package. Here are the MSVC8 dlls, which you can try unpacking in the same folder as celestia-qt4.exe:

http://www.celestiaproject.net/~claurel/celest ... vc8dll.zip

(While Celestia was built with MSVC9, the Qt4 DLLs were built with MSVC8. I'll rebuild Qt4 eventually so that the MSVC8 dlls are no longer necessary.)

--Chris

[CAP-Team]

I copied the DLLs to the QT4 directory, but Celestia still fails to start.

Same error as above.

[selden]

It still fails for me, too, so it's not (just) those libraries.
I finally managed to remember that it had failed for the older version on this system in February, too. VS2008E has never been installed on this system, although it had been (and probably still is) installed on the system at work.

I just now downloaded and installed
Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable Package (x86)
and that fixed the problem.

According to the Web page http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/8kche8ah.aspx
the VS2008 libraries all end in ...90.exe. The libraries in your msvc8dll.zip all end in ...80.exe. I suspect they're actually the older VS2005 libraries.

[selden]

The "grab image" browser does not allow selecting a specific image type: the filetype field says
Save as type [ images (*.png,*.jpg) ]

When I specify the filetype in the filename field
(e.g. test.jpg)
the resulting empty image file has a size of 0.
When I specify no image filetype, it's saved in a valid non-empty image file with filetype .png.

[selden]

I can't reproduce the grabbed image containing the File menu on my system at home. I'll try it again on my system at work on Monday.

[chris]

It still fails for me, too, so it's not (just) those libraries.
I finally managed to remember that it had failed for the older version on this system in February, too. VS2008E has never been installed on this system, although it had been (and probably still is) installed on the system at work.

I just now downloaded and installed
Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable Package (x86)
and that fixed the problem.

According to the Web page http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/8kche8ah.aspx
the VS2008 libraries all end in ...90.exe. The libraries in your msvc8dll.zip all end in ...80.exe. I suspect they're actually the older VS2005 libraries.

There are three VC2008 runtime libraries, and two of them were included in the Qt4 package that I posted: msvcp90.dll and msvcr90.dll. I omitted msvcm90.dll because the dumpbin utility didn't list it as a dependent. I deliberately included the VS2005 libraries in the msvc8dll.zip because I noticed that I had built the Qt4 libraries with this compiler. Until I sort this out, I'll just recommend that people install the Visual C++ 2008 redistributable package.

--Chris

[chris]

The "grab image" browser does not allow selecting a specific image type: the filetype field says
Save as type [ images (*.png,*.jpg) ]

When I specify the filetype in the filename field
(e.g. test.jpg)
the resulting empty image file has a size of 0.
When I specify no image filetype, it's saved in a valid non-empty image file with filetype .png.

I'm unable to reproduce the problem: I get valid images of the correct format when specifying the .jpg or .png extension. There's currently no error reporting when an image save fails; I'll add this and it will hopefully help in determining the problem here.

--Chris

[symaski62]

Some things I noticed:

Code: Select all

1. No splash/progress screen

OK

Code: Select all

2. Disconcerting message about not being able to find the Bookmarks file, seen only the very first time Celestia-QT4 runs.
Suggestion: either don't complain or include a statement about creating an empty one.

OK

Code: Select all

3. "invalid" desktop icon instead of Celestia's.
My guess is that it's trying to create an icon for Celestia.exe instead of for celestia-qt4.exe

yes image

Code: Select all

4. capitalization issue: It'd be nice to have Caps in the name, like
Celestia-QT4 perhaps.

english OK

Code: Select all

5. inconsistant verbs for image/movie capture in File menu:

grab image OK
-------------------------------------
capture video ERREUR image

-------------------------------------
copy image OK

Suggestion: use more nearly standard commands:
Save Image As...
Save Video As...
Copy Image (I'm not happy with this. Adding "To Clipboard" would be nice if it weren't so long.)[/quote]

---------------------------------------------
C:\Users\pseudo\AppData\Roaming\celestia\bookmarks.xbel

Code: Select all

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE xbel>
<xbel version="1.0">
    <folder folded="no">
        <title>Bookmarks Menu</title>
        <desc>Add bookmarks to this folder to see them in the bookmarks menu.</desc>
    </folder>
    <folder folded="no">
        <title>Bookmarks Toolbar</title>
        <desc>Add bookmarks to this folder to see them in the bookmarks toolbar.</desc>
    </folder>
</xbel>

TEST video ERREUR