Info not available

[Guckytos]

NASA's worldbook pages might be reasonable alternatives for many SSC objects
e.g.
http://www.nasa.gov/worldbook/venus_worldbook.html

Unfortunately, they're not all that rigorous.

I would also say that it is a lot better to link to an "official" website. And it would be a really good idea to have the "Info" tag only when there really is a link to a defined info.

Generally speaking I would say the NASA website looks nice and could be used.

But as a starting place for people to get information about something Wikipedia is also quite useful.

[chris]

So?
Should I start doing this or not?

Bob,

Thanks for you offer to help out. There's no need to start doing anything yet. More discussion needs to happen before anyone invests effort in adding info URLs for solar system objects.

--Chris

[t00fri]

To me my first impressions of NASA's Worldbook were quite positive. Most of all, this might be a reference, backed up with NASA's "good" name. After checking a few bodies,however, the second look was less positive: e.g. Titan just made it to 1/2 page without a single image! We know LOTS of things about Titan meanwhile, notably after years of Cassini@NASA!

So it seems the worldbook is also a VERY low budget project....

@Christian:

The aspect of "usefulness" in case of Wikipedia is NOT the crucial issue here. I also might use Wiki to get some further ideas where to look... But Wiki with it's intrinsic anonymous authorship CANNOT be a scientifically valid reference.

Fridger

[BobHegwood]

Bob,

Thanks for you offer to help out. There's no need to start doing anything yet. More discussion needs to happen before anyone invests effort in adding info URLs for solar system objects.

Okay...
Well, whenever you'd like to do this, I would be happy to investigate potential sites,
and to modify some SSC's. This offer is genuine, so just lemme know when you
decide what is appropriate.

By the way, I firmly agree with Dr. Schrempp here. As demonstrated by the
current default, I think that more investigation needs to be invested in
potential web sites which are used for informational purposes.

Thanks a lot, Brain-Dead

[chris]

To me my first impressions of NASA's Worldbook were quite positive. Most of all, this might be a reference, backed up with NASA's "good" name. After checking a few bodies,however, the second look was less positive: e.g. Titan just made it to 1/2 page without a single image! We know LOTS of things about Titan meanwhile, notably after years of Cassini@NASA!

So it seems the worldbook is also a VERY low budget project....

Titan was the second body I looked at on Worldbook, and I was similarly disappointed.

@Christian:

The aspect of "usefulness" in case of Wikipedia is NOT the crucial issue here. I also might use Wiki to get some further ideas where to look... But Wiki with it's intrinsic anonymous authorship CANNOT be a scientifically valid reference.

Here I disagree: usefulness is very much the point. And while I wouldn't cite a Wikipedia article as a reference in a scientific paper, I don't see a problem with offering the interested Celestia user a shortcut to a Wikipedia page. There simply doesn't seem to be a lot of competition: when it comes to solar system bodies, Wikipedia has more breadth and detail than any other free online source that I'm aware of.

We should consider having multiple information sources appear in the popup menu. For example, the right click menu for stars could have links to both SIMBAD and Wikipedia. The SIMBAD page for Sirius is useful for the professional or well-informed amateur, but there are a lot of Celestia users who would find pages like this nearly incomprehensible:

http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/sim-b ... BAD+search

The current situation where specifying a custom InfoURL overrides the default is not ideal since it overrides the very useful (for many people) SIMBAD link.

The situation is similar with extrasolar planets. I'd like to make the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopedia at exoplanet.eu the default link for extrasolar planets, but there should also be room for another link to more accessible information. Many Celestia users would be better served by something less technical than exoplanet.eu's lists of orbital data and publication references.

--Chris

[Cham]

Chris,

I fully agree with you. I think that the option to show several URLs in a sub-menu of the contextual menu would be greatly appreciated. Users could then define several links for the same object in a given SSC file. Those web links could then be shown in a sub-menu (something like the references vectors).

[t00fri]

@Christian:

The aspect of "usefulness" in case of Wikipedia is NOT the crucial issue here. I also might use Wiki to get some further ideas where to look... But Wiki with it's intrinsic anonymous authorship CANNOT be a scientifically valid reference.

Here I disagree: usefulness is very much the point. And while I wouldn't cite a Wikipedia article as a reference in a scientific paper, I don't see a problem with offering the interested

I thought we have meanwhile reached in Celestia a consistent culture of scientific level citation of our data. I also thought that Celestia is meant to largely be conceived as a scientific level visualization....

You will destroy the good reputation of Celestia by referencing Wiki, about which scientists are laughing openly. I assure you this is true! The reason is NOT so much that Wiki might contain nonsense, but that it's authors remain anonymous, despite complex and offen controversal subjects being treated!

Who asserts the correctness of what we are referring to??

Do whatever you like. But once Wiki appears as a default Celestia reference, I cannot go along with it. Sorry.

There simply doesn't seem to be a lot of competition: when it comes to solar system bodies, Wikipedia has more breadth and detail than any other free online source that I'm aware of.

Yes, may be, but WHO stands up with his reputation that all this "breadth and detail" is CORRECT?? Apparently you don't care...

Fridger

[chris]

@Christian:

The aspect of "usefulness" in case of Wikipedia is NOT the crucial issue here. I also might use Wiki to get some further ideas where to look... But Wiki with it's intrinsic anonymous authorship CANNOT be a scientifically valid reference.

Here I disagree: usefulness is very much the point. And while I wouldn't cite a Wikipedia article as a reference in a scientific paper, I don't see a problem with offering the interested

I thought we have meanwhile reached in Celestia a consistent culture of scientific level citation of our data. I also thought that Celestia is meant to largely be conceived as a scientific level visualization....

You will destroy the good reputation of Celestia by referencing Wiki, about which scientists are laughing openly. I assure you this is true! The reason is NOT so much that Wiki might contain nonsense, but that it's authors remain anonymous, despite complex and offen controversal subjects being treated!

I don't buy this argument at all. No one seems to be laughing openly about the fact that Microsoft's World Wide Telescope links to Wikipedia (as well as SIMBAD).

Who asserts the correctness of what we are referring to??

Do whatever you like. But once Wiki appears as a default Celestia reference, I cannot go along with it. Sorry.

There simply doesn't seem to be a lot of competition: when it comes to solar system bodies, Wikipedia has more breadth and detail than any other free online source that I'm aware of.

Yes, may be, but WHO stands up with his reputation that all this "breadth and detail" is CORRECT?? Apparently you don't care...

I do care, but I'm also a pragmatist who wants the solution that best serve the users of Celestia. I'm completely aware of the shortcomings of Wikipedia, but please compare:

Here's where Celestia's selecting the default info link will show you now:
http://www.nineplanets.org/enceladus.html

Compare that to Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enceladus_(moon)

With all respect to Bill Arnett for his work on the Nine Planets site, the Wikipedia page is simply much better: there's more information, it's more current, and it's full of references. Curious about the source of the 498km figure given for the radius of Enceladus on nineplanets? You're out of luck... On the Wikipedia page, the listed dimensions of 513.2?502.8?496.6 km are followed by a reference to a publication from the 37th Annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. Despite this, you'd still prefer to stick with nineplanets? I understand your discomfort with Wikipedia's open editing process, but surely this is a case where the overwhelming quality of the Wikipedia page over another our current source renders your philosophical objections moot.

Let's look at some others....

http://www.solarviews.com/eng/enceladus.htm
Decent site, but full of ads. Also, the content of the page is primarily a list of nice Cassini images with descriptions. No references.

http://www.planetary.org/explore/topics ... ladus.html
The Planetary Society's page on Enceladus. Nice layout, nearly ad-free, but very limited information.

http://www.daviddarling.info/encycloped ... ladus.html
The Internet Encyclopedia of Science. Limited information, ads, no references.

NASA's World Book doesn't have an article about Enceladus at all yet. (Also, its article on Saturn seems to have no images or references more recent than 2004.)

But maybe there's something better lurking out there? I'd love to know about it if there is.

--Chris

[BobHegwood]

Just FYI Chris...
You left off the ending parenthesis in your URL above.
See "moon)"
EDIT:
Fixed now. By the way, I actually like the URL's you posted.
Dunno what that means, but they are much nicer than the default.

[chris]

Just FYI Chris...
You left off the ending parenthesis in your URL above.
See "moon)"

Oops... phpbb stripped it off, so I had to add explicit bbcode for it. Thanks for the alert!

[Guckytos]

Just one other question,

why can't we have more than 1 InfoURL for each body in Celestia? Like if you right click on a star for example you get a list you can choose from.
First entry(entries) should be scientifically ones (coded directly in Celestia; perhaps confic file?) like Simbad.
Second entry could for example be another star based website (NASA/ESA, whatver)
Third entry could go to Wikipedia.
4th entry anything else.

The second and third options could be added by a "modify" + "add InfoURL" command within a STC.

The same should then go for the SSC files.
1st entry scientific one (NASA/ESA) (coded in Celestia; perhaps config file?)
2nd also (if available) (for example for NEA objects a NEA database)
3rd Wikipedia
4th anything else

Addition of the other links with a "modify" + "add InfoURL" command on the object.

My 2 cents,

Guckytos

[chris]

Just one other question,

why can't we have more than 1 InfoURL for each body in Celestia? Like if you right click on a star for example you get a list you can choose from.
First entry(entries) should be scientifically ones (coded directly in Celestia; perhaps confic file?) like Simbad.
Second entry could for example be another star based website (NASA/ESA, whatver)
Third entry could go to Wikipedia.
4th entry anything else.

The second and third options could be added by a "modify" + "add InfoURL" command within a STC.

The same should then go for the SSC files.
1st entry scientific one (NASA/ESA) (coded in Celestia; perhaps config file?)
2nd also (if available) (for example for NEA objects a NEA database)
3rd Wikipedia
4th anything else

Addition of the other links with a "modify" + "add InfoURL" command on the object.

I agree completely with the idea that there Celestia should support multiple URLs, but I'm not sure what the ideal syntax should be for multiple InfoURLs in ssc/stc/dsc files. It's certainly not good that right now the InfoURL overrides the link to SIMBAD. The list of sources that you've given makes a lot of sense to me... For stars and deep sky objects, the SIMBAD link should always be there. For asteroids, we could have link to the Minor Planet Center. For all objects, a link to Wikipedia (ideally, the version in the appropriate language.) Finally, a link to some other information source as specified by the InfoURL.

Now... Do we absolutely need more than one InfoURL, given that links to other sources would automatically be added? If so, the Modify plus AddInfoURL isn't ideal, as it behaves differently than everything else in Celestia: normally, a modified field completely replaces what was there before. But AltSurfaces are additive, so maybe we could do something like that. For example,

Code: Select all

InfoUrl "Sol/Venus Express"
{
    Name "ESA's Venus Express page"
    Url "http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/area/index.cfm?fareaid=64"
}

InfoUrl "Sol/Venus Express"
{
    Name "Venus Express forum at UMSF"
    Url "http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?s=dd97823715e88fb6fb8c659fed3749e2&showforum=32"
}


--Chris

[Guckytos]

...

I agree completely with the idea that there Celestia should support multiple URLs, but I'm not sure what the ideal syntax should be for multiple InfoURLs in ssc/stc/dsc files. It's certainly not good that right now the InfoURL overrides the link to SIMBAD. The list of sources that you've given makes a lot of sense to me... For stars and deep sky objects, the SIMBAD link should always be there. For asteroids, we could have link to the Minor Planet Center. For all objects, a link to Wikipedia (ideally, the version in the appropriate language.) Finally, a link to some other information source as specified by the InfoURL.

Now... Do we absolutely need more than one InfoURL, given that links to other sources would automatically be added? If so, the Modify plus AddInfoURL isn't ideal, as it behaves differently than everything else in Celestia: normally, a modified field completely replaces what was there before. But AltSurfaces are additive, so maybe we could do something like that. For example,

Code: Select all

InfoUrl "Sol/Venus Express"
{
    Name "ESA's Venus Express page"
    Url "http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/area/index.cfm?fareaid=64"
}

InfoUrl "Sol/Venus Express"
{
    Name "Venus Express forum at UMSF"
    Url "http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?s=dd97823715e88fb6fb8c659fed3749e2&showforum=32"
}


--Chris

I really do think it would be very good to have more than one link/InfoURL for the objects. And I also strongly think that the link order should be in "decreasing" scientific order (if you know what I mean) as far as it is possible.

I only mentioned "modify" as a possible command. If it would be able to use some additive feature like AltSurfaces, this would be even better.

Best regards,

Guckytos

[ajtribick]

Wikipedia? What's the point... Google already acts as a Wikipedia redirection service anyway... do we really need to bring another one into the world?

[Guckytos]

Wikipedia? What's the point... Google already acts as a Wikipedia redirection service anyway... do we really need to bring another one into the world?

Wikipedia is only one possible candidate for being used as a provider for information. How about using "Encyclopedia Britannica"? Are they free accessible and have astronomical information? Well, then we can use them also or instead of Wikipedia.

So, the best thing that comes to my mind would be to "hardcode" the first few scientific resources for the different classes of objects (stars, galaxies, comets, NEA, ...) in the celestia.cfg and everyone can then add/replace InfoURLs for classes there.
Or put the scientific ones in the code, with no configuration possiblities and let the user add InfoURLS for different classes in celestia.cfg.
For special objects, the InfoURL can then directly be added in the corresponding SSC.

This would be a very good idea in my opinion. If you don't need Wikipedia, just comment it out in the celestia.cfg (perhaps this should be the standard).

The only thing that I have not figured out (as a non-coding person that's not too hard to do ) is with only one address per class how to call up the right website. But I think that enough of you have the knowledge to do that. So I am not worried.

Regards,

Guckytos

[duds26]

Bob,

Celestia provides default values for InfoURL for various classes of objects.
For example, by default, the Info link for a planet goes to http://www.nineplanets.org/

Before the code could be changed so that the lack of an infourl would not provide an Info entry, someone would have to edit all of Celestia's SSC files to add appropriate InfoURLs.

Okay, I appreciate the information, Selden.
My problem, however, lies in the fact that the default goes to the Nine Planets web site.
I absolutely HATE that website. Popups and advertisements from everywhere.
Is this a good place to default to?

Not anymore. I think that Wikipedia would be a much better source of information for solar system bodies. I know some people have troubles with Wikipedia, but the articles on at the planets and major natural satellites seem quite good. Also, there are no ads

--Chris

Totally agree, wikipedia would be an improvement.
And multiple url's would be very liberating for addon makers.
(If there are too many they should go into a submenu, but that's only a detail.)