Celestia User Guide

TheManFromUtopia · Post #41by **TheManFromUtopia** » 11.02.2003, 11:37

Any news about User's Manual :?:

Thierry · Post #42by **Thierry** » 18.02.2003, 21:10

I can translate it in french if you need it and if it ever comes out

fsgregs · Post #43by **fsgregs** » 19.02.2003, 01:47

The User's Guide is coming. Part 1, which explains in depth how to operate Celestia, has been drafted and is still undergoing preliminary review and fine tuning before posting on the forum for more review. It is over 25 pages, with photos and lots of examples. As Celestia 1.2.6 is being developed, Part 1 is also being revised on the fly. It should be out soon. Part 2 deals with the entire world of add-ons, ssc files, graphics, etc. and how to use them. These are complex topics and it is in early draft. It will be much larger and will need lots of peer review. Part 3, which will detail how to write scripts, has not been started and is a bit down the road yet.

Things are progressing well. Please hang in there.

Frank G[/u]

Post #44by **t00fri** » 19.02.2003, 16:46

fsgregs wrote:The User's Guide is coming. Part 1, which explains in depth how to operate Celestia, has been drafted and is still undergoing preliminary review and fine tuning before posting on the forum for more review. It is over 25 pages, with photos and lots of examples. As Celestia 1.2.6 is being developed, Part 1 is also being revised on the fly. It should be out soon. Part 2 deals with the entire world of add-ons, ssc files, graphics, etc. and how to use them. These are complex topics and it is in early draft. It will be much larger and will need lots of peer review. Part 3, which will detail how to write scripts, has not been started and is a bit down the road yet.

Things are progressing well. Please hang in there. :)

Frank G[/u]

Thanks for the info, Frank.

Bye Fridger

billybob884 · Post #45by **billybob884** » 19.02.2003, 21:16

I can't wait

. Can you give us any rough release dates?

fsgregs · Post #46by **fsgregs** » 19.02.2003, 22:50

Time frames are fluid, but I expect Part 1 to be out onto the forum for review within a week.

Part 2 is about 2 weeks away from completion of first draft, then Chris and others will look at it and revisions will be made, then it will be posted on the forum for peer review and comments, etc., so I expect it will be ready within 4 - 6 weeks. Part 2 will be large (over 80 pages) because it is very detailed, has photos and examples, and strives to explain add-ons and every line and orbital parameter in an ssc file and xyz file in simple to understand terms (there are over 50 possible ssc commands alone). Explaining graphic file types and what to do with them is also quite detailed.

Part 3 will not start draft until that is complete - probably a month away. Once begun, a first draft should be complete within 2 weeks, then peer review, etc., so Part 3 should be ready for posting within 2 months or so.

Once each Part is ready, we will convert it from MS Word to some web-ready format (pdf et al) and publish on the website. Each User's Guide has lots of photos, making it rather large in file size. Whether Part 1 is included in the exe file of each new release of Celestia or just referred to as a download on the web is not yet clear. I suspect that part 2 and 3 will be download links only. They are too large to be incorporated into a Celestia default exe file. I'll leave that final decision to everyone else.

Stay tuned!!

Frank

billybob884 · Post #47by **billybob884** » 20.02.2003, 01:52

i wouldnt do .pdf, i know a lot of people without it

billybob884 · Post #48by **billybob884** » 20.02.2003, 01:53

that is, if your only posting it up as one version

ANDREA · Post #49by **ANDREA** » 25.02.2003, 19:26

fsgregs wrote:Once each Part is ready, we will convert it from MS Word to some web-ready format (pdf et al) and publish on the website. I'll leave that final decision to everyone else.
Frank

Frank, I appreciate a lot the work you and Chris have done to prepare this first part of the Celestia Manual, that I find VERY beautiful and clear.
As a suggestion, I would prefere the .doc or .htm final version, and I explain the reasons:
1- normally the .pdf versions aren'n very smaller in size respect to the .doc ones;
2- all of us, I suppose, have their little preferences in documents, like our preferred text layout, graphics, fonts (due to my sight problems, I prefere Arial, because it's more easily readable), etc, but it's impossible to make any change to .pdf files, while for .doc ones there is no problem, and .htm ones can be copied in .doc.
So why don't give to everybody the possibility to make his own changes, improvements, add-ons based on each one's needs, knowledge, interests?
Thank you for your very good work.
By

Andrea

billybob884 · Post #50by **billybob884** » 25.02.2003, 20:44

i dont really have a preference for font, i mean you can easily change it in most documents, i just would like it to be available in a variety of file types.

billybob884 · Post #51by **billybob884** » 25.02.2003, 23:39

but if there's anything i can do to help, let me know.

waitigforuserguide · Post #52by **waitigforuserguide** » 15.03.2003, 19:28

Within a week ?
Muahahahahahahah :twisted:

fsgregs · Post #53by **fsgregs** » 15.03.2003, 19:59

OK, the User's Guide is DONE. We will be posting it on a website within a "short" time for review by the forum community. The delay has been caused by its updating to reflect version 1.3.0. It even contains a reference to a feature that is still not in 1.3.0 pre 3 but will be in .1.3.0 final.

I will get it on my website for your review as soon as possible. Note: There is a User's Guide already on my website, but it is an older version. Please do not try to download the guide for at least 2 days, so that we can get the old version off and the new one on.

Selden had a good idea regarding display format. The Guide is well formatted now in MS Word. It seems that Internet Explorer has an MS Word reader called WordViewer, which can be downloaded as a plug-in to IE from the Microsoft website. Once added to IE on your computer, you are supposedly able to click on an MS Word document on a website and be able to open it with full formatting and functionality from within Internet Explorer, even if you do not have Word on your computer. If true, this would be a great way to make it available at least to Windows users. I don't know much about MAC or Linux. I'll leave that the Chris or you all to help figure out.

Anyway, thanks for your patience. Give it two days, then visit my website and download. Also, I think Chris is going to make the draft available on the SourceForge site, as soon as he comes back from some much deserved R&R in a few days.

I am working on Part 2 now. That "may" be ready for review in a few more weeks. It is very complicated and requires lots of detail, which is taking time to provide without making the thing 200 pages long.

Regards,

Frank

Mikeydude750 · Post #54by **Mikeydude750** » 16.03.2003, 01:28

Hey everyone =D

If you want, I can host an HTML version on my site(I own my own domain, without ads or any things of the sort). I could also make it look better, if you'd like.

E-mail me about it, if you like my idea.

fsgregs · Post #55by **fsgregs** » 16.03.2003, 01:48

OK, User's Guide Part 1 is up on the web for review and comment at:

http://www.fsgregs.org/celestia

Feel free to download it and review. Rather than fill this thread with lots of comments, if you have suggestions or have found errors, please feel free to post them to me on the private thread. I'll try to incorporate them.

Frank

Mikeydude750 · Post #56by **Mikeydude750** » 16.03.2003, 02:00

I'm already looking at it, and I must say...it looks very impressive...

I might be able to turn it into HTML, but it will take a while.

Dave007 · Post #57by **Dave007** » 18.03.2003, 10:06

Mikeydude, I already have a temporary HTML version up if you would like to see it. Maybe you can do a better job though since I couldn't properly import the DOC (word2002 crashes immediately on this file, had to use wordpad and I lost a little formatting info, mainly with the image placement). I had to guess at some of the formatting. If you tackle this from scratch too, have fun with the tables, I know I did

http://www.freewebs.com/personal1024/Celestia_UsersGuideFinal.htm

hope this helps