New coordinate grids features

[Cham]

On Chris demand, I'm posting a suggestion I made to him by email about the new coordinate grids. In my view, the current implementation of grids is only a partial solution. Here's what I'm suggesting :

1. For the advanced users, we need a keyboard shortcut for each grid. ";", "shift-;", "ctrl-;" and "ctrl-shift-;" for the four grids. I also recal that the "D" key is now free, since the demo script is now a part of the script sub-menu. I suggest to use "D", "shift-D", "ctrl-D" and "ctrl-shift-D" instead, to activate and desactivate all the grids, since "ctrl-;" appears to be used for some locking operation in Celestia, and "D" for "griD" may be a good choice. Of course, the grids should also be shown in a "Coordinate Grids" sub-menu, in the menubar.

While using "D" for all the grids, I suggest to use the ";" key to activate/desactivate the nebulae, since "^" isn't working on many keyboards (such as mine).

2. We should have an UI feedback when we activate a grid (in the lower-right corner, above the FOV) : The grid's name with proper color should stay indicated in the corner until we desactivate the grid. When we decide to use several grids at once (which may be usefull from an educational point of view), all the grid names should be indicated (with proper grid color) in the screen's corner.

3. It is very desirable to have the selected object's coordinates, with proper grid color in the upper-left corner, as we currently have with the equatorial coordinates. This is a necessity for consistency, and "democracy" of coordinate grids, and may be extremelly valuable for educational purposes. Some user may be interested to see the horizontal and galactic coordinates of some selected object, when he/she activates the horizontal and galactic grid, for example. In the same way, for consistency, I suggest that the equatorial coordinates be shown ONLY when the user is activating the equatorial grid.

These features will help a lot to put Celestia well above all the astronomy tools currently available. From a scientific point of view, we really need a way to use the new coordinate grids in the same way as we currently do with the equatorial grid.

[abramson]

Support. Three VERY good suggestions.
Guillermo

[ElChristou]

Support. Three VERY good suggestions.

True!

[Imy]

I don't know if this is the place to post this message, if it is not, please don't care about it.

Wouldn't be welcomed to use mouse with grids? Would not be interesting to point with mouse a square of grid ( even in constellation map) and celestia centers on it?

[t00fri]

On Chris demand, I'm posting a suggestion I made to him by email about the new coordinate grids. In my view, the current implementation of grids is only a partial solution. Here's what I'm suggesting :
...

As I earlier wrote in my respective thread (Flipping Grids),
viewtopic.php?f=9&t=12479, I have even made (and discarded for now) some code experiments with a similar aim.

It's not so clear to me, why we now needed a separate thread for Cham's partial iteration of what he wrote in viewtopic.php?f=9&t=12479 already, ... anyhow:

1) Cham's key shortcut proposal seems a bit better than my earlier cycling ansatz (analogous to the cycling through the star shapes), since for educational reasons, it may be useful to activate more than 1 grid at a time.

Yet, Cham's proposed key association is about equally bad than our association of all the other key short cuts . Notably, it will be hard to remember (even for me ) which grid has been associated with "D", "shift-D", "ctrl-D" and "ctrl-shift-D". This assignment is in no way mnemonic. Soon or later it is time to introduce 2 letter key successions (as we decided long long ago ), e.g. like

g<space> => equatorial
gg => galactic
ge => ecliptic
gh => horizontal

The only non-mnemonic choice is the first one since equatorial and ecliptic both start with e.
Of course this type of association would require a systematic reworking of ALL short cuts!

2) Keeping track of which grid has been switched on at a given time, is indeed important, since the difference among grid types is not always immediately obvious. I have also coded (and discarded) a respective earlier proposal: it was in line with our other transient annotations: I had the respective grid name flashed for a few seconds on the canvas. Just as we have it for the render paths or the star types.

As to Chams proposal, I am always worried to fill the canvas too much with persistent text output! That's why I had explored before the "transient output" option. In addition we always have the color coding of the grid, which might be of some help.

3) Obviously, we need some appropriate coordinate output on the canvas. It was always my understanding that the coordinate display has to switch with the used coordinate system, i.e. the grid. We don't need much discussion about this. I guess the code was just not yet completed in this respect.

Fridger

[ElChristou]

3) Obviously, we need some appropriate coordinate output on the canvas...

Why not a little pictogram? It could even be clickable to switch grids...

[abramson]

Fridger is right. Two keys will be better. I am already turning stuff on and off until I find what I want.
G

[ElChristou]

3) Obviously, we need some appropriate coordinate output on the canvas...

Why not a little pictogram? It could even be clickable to switch grids...

Something that could be like this:

grid-pictogram.jpg

The advantage are that only one key is needed to show/hide this little GUI, the color scheme is present on screen and also what grid is presently on/off... (in that case equatorial grid)

[t00fri]

Christophe,
how can I display your tiny "attachement", i.e. that proposed pictogram of yours?? When I click on it, nothing happens in my browser. With my 1600x1200 resolution I can virtually see NOTHING. It's just too small...

Fridger

[ElChristou]

Christophe,
how can I display your tiny "attachement", i.e. that proposed pictogram of yours?? When I click on it, nothing happens in my browser. With my 1600x1200 resolution I can virtually see NOTHING. It's just too small...

Fridger

You don't see anything? (attachment not displayed?)
(strange, I'm presently also on a 1600 screen and despite being small (it is supposed being not obtrusive in any corner of the screen) I suppose it is readable...)

[abramson]

Pictogram can also be good in addition to keys, esp. for the reasons mentioned by Christophe. But it would be good to have it bound to the "v" verbosity of the info, so that a clean screen without info is still possible.
Guille

[t00fri]

Christophe,
how can I display your tiny "attachement", i.e. that proposed pictogram of yours?? When I click on it, nothing happens in my browser. With my 1600x1200 resolution I can virtually see NOTHING. It's just too small...

Fridger

You don't see anything? (attachment not displayed?)
(strange, I'm presently also on a 1600 screen and despite being small (it is supposed being not obtrusive in any corner of the screen) I suppose it is readable...)

Since I installed the brandnew FireFox 3.0 yesterday, let me ask (to be on the safe side): If I click on this tiny thing, is it supposed to become bigger or to remain this 2.5 x 2.5 cm^2 'timbre-poste'?

I can see something like 2 red letters above a green line and the rest is black. Is that what I am supposed to see? Except that I can hardly read that red stuff on my analog monitor.

Fridger

[ElChristou]

Again for Fridger, double sized:

grid-pictogram.jpg

[ElChristou]

Christophe,
how can I display your tiny "attachement", i.e. that proposed pictogram of yours?? When I click on it, nothing happens in my browser. With my 1600x1200 resolution I can virtually see NOTHING. It's just too small...

Fridger

You don't see anything? (attachment not displayed?)
(strange, I'm presently also on a 1600 screen and despite being small (it is supposed being not obtrusive in any corner of the screen) I suppose it is readable...)

Since I installed the brandnew FireFox 3.0 yesterday, let me ask (to be on the safe side): If I click on this tiny thing, is it supposed to become bigger or to remain this 2.5 x 2.5 cm^2 'timbre-poste'?

I can see something like 2 red letters above a green line and the rest is black. Is that what I am supposed to see? Except that I can hardly read that red stuff on my analog monitor.

Cross posting, no it was in real size above. Color and size is nothing here but a quick mockup, so all is possible...

[BobHegwood]

Since I installed the brandnew FireFox 3.0 yesterday, let me ask (to be on the safe side): If I click on this tiny thing, is it supposed to become bigger or to remain this 2.5 x 2.5 cm^2 'timbre-poste'?
Fridger

Doctor Schrempp and others here...

Please be aware that Firefox 3 had MANY problems still to be solved, so this could very well have something to do with your problem in viewing. You are aware that you can use CTRL+ and CTRL- in order to adjust the size of a site's views are you not? In fact, I have had to do this for every new site I visit with the new browser. It seems to remember the view settings for each site after a visit, but it is a real pain in the Wazoo so far.

Sorry to jump into your discussion here, but I just thought that I'd mention this small problem with FF3.

[t00fri]

Again for Fridger, double sized:

grid-pictogram.jpg

Excellent, now it can really be seen in detail

Where do you want to place this image on the canvas? It's hardly understandable/ instructive for newbies, I am afraid...

In any case, I agree, we need to add clever graphical indicators to the canvas, in order to avoid the

"educational syndrome" = all canvas covered with explaining text

Fridger

[t00fri]

Since I installed the brandnew FireFox 3.0 yesterday, let me ask (to be on the safe side): If I click on this tiny thing, is it supposed to become bigger or to remain this 2.5 x 2.5 cm^2 'timbre-poste'?
Fridger

Doctor Schrempp and others here...

Please be aware that Firefox 3 had MANY problems still to be solved, so this could very well have something to do with your problem in viewing. You are aware that you can use CTRL+ and CTRL- in order to adjust the size of a site's views are you not? In fact, I have had to do this for every new site I visit with the new browser. It seems to remember the view settings for each site after a visit, but it is a real pain in the Wazoo so far.

Sorry to jump into your discussion here, but I just thought that I'd mention this small problem with FF3.

Thanks, Bob,

sure I know this and actually use a special add-on (no squid) that most conveniently allows to adjust both the text and graphical display size of pages and notably stores the adjustment for each WEB page separately.

There is only one problem so far with FF3 both under Linux and Win32: FF3 hangs/stalls for ~1 minute from time to time. The FF3 CPU load then is at 98% and the browser simply ceases to react temporarily. That is already widely discussed in the net and notably in the respective Mozilla forums. In my case it is NOT due to some add-ons or other non-default adjustments. This can be easily checked by starting FF3 in "safe mode" via

/path/to/firefox -safe-mode

This disables any kind of add-on atc temporaily and is very convenient for debugging.

Fridger

[ElChristou]

Where do you want to place this image on the canvas? It's hardly understandable/ instructive for newbies, I am afraid...

Well, if one is conscious of clicking on the key to display such GUI, I suppose the rest is self explanatory; Eq, Ga, Ho, Ec are not so hard to understand, or not? And after all, after a few clicks to show/hide the grids (we can also add a feedback line), I suppose it will be crystal clear... (now to say so a lua test would be nice; Vincent?? )

For the placement, no idea, again some tests should be done...

[Cham]

The keyboard shortcuts I suggested ("D", "shift-D", etc) are for the "experts", which would become used to the right combo after some uses. There will be a sub-menu in the menubar (and most probably checkboxes in the preferences window too), for the "newbies" and lazy users. And I don't feel that cycling between all three "non-memnonic" combos (since "D" alone is only the standard equatorial grid) shouldn't be so much annoying. Personally, I don't think that a little pictogram would be much better.

I suggest these combos :

"D" = standard equatorial grid
"shift-D" = horizontal grid
"ctrl-D" = ecliptic grid
"ctrl-shift-D" = galactic grid.

I see some pattern here. From the "local" equatorial grid with the simplest keyboard shortcut to the "global" galactic grid with the most complicated combo.

[chris]

On Chris demand, I'm posting a suggestion I made to him by email about the new coordinate grids. In my view, the current implementation of grids is only a partial solution. Here's what I'm suggesting :
...

As I earlier wrote in my respective thread (Flipping Grids),
viewtopic.php?f=9&t=12479, I have even made (and discarded for now) some code experiments with a similar aim.

It's not so clear to me, why we now needed a separate thread for Cham's partial iteration of what he wrote in viewtopic.php?f=9&t=12479 already, ... anyhow:

1) Cham's key shortcut proposal seems a bit better than my earlier cycling ansatz (analogous to the cycling through the star shapes), since for educational reasons, it may be useful to activate more than 1 grid at a time.

Yet, Cham's proposed key association is about equally bad than our association of all the other key short cuts . Notably, it will be hard to remember (even for me ) which grid has been associated with "D", "shift-D", "ctrl-D" and "ctrl-shift-D". This assignment is in no way mnemonic. Soon or later it is time to introduce 2 letter key successions (as we decided long long ago ), e.g. like

g<space> => equatorial
gg => galactic
ge => ecliptic
gh => horizontal

The only non-mnemonic choice is the first one since equatorial and ecliptic both start with e.
Of course this type of association would require a systematic reworking of ALL short cuts!

I agree that the 2 letter approach is a good direction for the future--it doesn't map well to the various GUIs which all require a single key, but perhaps something can be done about that. I'm of the opinion that a reworking of keyboard shortcuts should wait until after 1.6.0, however. In the mean time, we can use the various (and rather confusing) variations of D or ; I'd prefer to use the semicolon, since we're currently using it for the equatorial grid.

2) Keeping track of which grid has been switched on at a given time, is indeed important, since the difference among grid types is not always immediately obvious. I have also coded (and discarded) a respective earlier proposal: it was in line with our other transient annotations: I had the respective grid name flashed for a few seconds on the canvas. Just as we have it for the render paths or the star types.

As to Chams proposal, I am always worried to fill the canvas too much with persistent text output! That's why I had explored before the "transient output" option. In addition we always have the color coding of the grid, which might be of some help.

Agreed--I don't want to see the screen cluttered either. Especially since the great majority of time, users will have either one or no grids visible and there should be no confusion about the grids. This suggests that we could perhaps get by with only showing the grid types when more than one is shown. But really, I don't have any trouble figuring out what's going on simply based on grid colors.

3) Obviously, we need some appropriate coordinate output on the canvas. It was always my understanding that the coordinate display has to switch with the used coordinate system, i.e. the grid. We don't need much discussion about this. I guess the code was just not yet completed in this respect.

Here's my only concern: should we only display coordinates when the grid is enabled? It might be nice to see the altitude and azimuth of an object without actually enabling the horizon grid. But, I'm flexible about this--if people tell me this is not necessary, I'll go with that.

One last thing to consider is that Celestia can also show the ecliptic line. Should there be a separate key to toggle this? Or should it automatically be shown when the equatorial grid is active?

--Chris