Arrrgh!! Target Lock or Something???

[Don. Edwards]

Well I did something that I now regret and will never do again. I clicked one of the html scripts here in the forum and it adjusted a setting in Celestia and I can't get it out. This is what I am getting.

Its that darn targeting diamond. Now its there every time I start Celestia and I can't find anything in the commands to turn it off. If I right click the oject and select mark it turns green and then if I do that again the target goes away. But on the next start of Celestia its right back. This kind of thing is enough that I will very try another posted html script for Celestia again.
So can someone tell me how to turn this bleeping thing off. I didn't even know it was in Celestia in the first place.

Don.

[Christophe]

A manual has been written. You should read it.

CTRL+K turns markers off.

[Don. Edwards]

Christophe,
I am not a new user so telling me to read the manual I feel is an insult. I know the manual quite well and the keyboard command would not turn it off, and the manual doesn't cover anything about when things go wrong so put that in your pipe and smoke it.
I did figure a way to shut it down. The html script in question was HankR's for the lunar eclipse. The script has the command in it to track. This turned tracking on but I couldn't get it turn off. So I saved the html code to a shortcut and then edited out everything past the entries for the sun and earth. I then launched the script and low and behold tracking is back to normal. I don't know what caused this to lock in like this in the first place but this did solve the problem.
As a Celestia Veteran so to speak I have never come across anything like this before. But it has made me very leery about using any future html scripts.
So all in all the problem is solved but if anyone has any idea what went wrong and another way to fix it please go ahead and chime in. I am sure we will see this again in the future and at least there will be an answer in the forum database for future users to find.

Don.

[selden]

Don,

The Mark has nothing to do with Tracking. Maybe that's your confusion? (Using the wrong technical term for something can cause serious communications problems when discussing computer problems, as I'm sure you know.) The red Mark indicates the object that is currently Selected -- the object named in the upper left corner. It does not indicate the object that's being Tracked unless that object happens to be Selected, too.

"T" turns Track off and on, and does not change Marks.
Control-K turns Marks off and on, and does not change Track.
Turning a particular green Mark off does not change the status of the "Mark objects" flag, as you've found.

I use Marks all the time to help find and align deep space objects, and Control-K has always worked for me.

If Control-K didn't turn off Marks for you, then there must be a bug somewhere. If you can tell us exactly which Cel:// URL did it to you, I'm sure Chris would like to fix it.

[Don. Edwards]

Hey Seldon,
Well I haven't been able to recreate the problem. So I can't be sure what caused it now. Of course having 5 diferent installs of Celestia on my system isn't helping any either. I do need to get in there and get eveerything cleaned up and keep it to just 2 installs. I have noticed that if I go from one install and then to another I am having problems with settings. So I migth have somehow turned the bleeping maker on inadvertatly. As I said I have just to muuch stuff spread over five hard drives and its not getting any better. Sorry I can't reproduc what happened, but I am almost positive theat it was Hank's html cel script that turned it on. But again its not doing it anymore.

Don.

[Christophe]

Sorry Don, I read your message a bit fast and didn't notice it was you writting. You should have mentioned the first time that CTRL-K didn't solve your problem. I suppose that by HTML script you mean a cel URL?

Also that's always a good idea when reporting a bug to specify the version of celestia (number and OS) you're using. Anyway since it's not reproducible there's not much we can do...

[t00fri]

Sorry Don, I read your message a bit fast and didn't notice it was you writting. You should have mentioned the first time that CTRL-K didn't solve your problem. I suppose that by HTML script you mean a cel URL?

Also that's always a good idea when reporting a bug to specify the version of celestia (number and OS) you're using. Anyway since it's not reproducible there's not much we can do...

;-)

Christophe, I am wondering now: you remember after you included the LT flag at first into the cel://urls also the LT was always on for pre-LT cel://url's and I could not turn it off anymore with the key shortcut....

Bye Fridger

[HankR]

Don,

I'm sorry my lunar eclipse URL caused you so much aggravation! It definitely does turn markers on (although that wasn't intentional; it's simply because I had markers on when I created the URL). But I don't know why you weren't able to turn them off with ctrl+K. That seems to work reliably for me on the Mac OS X version.

- Hank

[Christophe]

Christophe, I am wondering now: you remember after you included the LT flag at first into the cel://urls also the LT was always on for pre-LT cel://url's and I could not turn it off anymore with the key shortcut....

Yes, but markers are part of the render flag (rf) which has always been there. The addition of a new flag is transparent, when using a URL including the new flag on an old version, it will simply be ignored, and when using an old URL on a new version the flag will be considered off.

[chris]

So, I'm not sure that I understand: did typing Ctrl+K make the marker go away or not? If it didn't, that's a bug . . .

There are a couple definite problems, however . . . First, a show markers option is missing from the View Options dialog on the Windows version. I'll fix that today. The trickier issue is that clicking on a cel:// URL can change your render settings. Sometimes, this is useful--a large scale view of the solar system may require labels and orbits to be turned on. Other times, as with the lunar eclipse URL, messing with a user's render settings is not required or desirable. Perhaps we should provide two methods of saving a cel:// URL: one that preserves just the location, and another that saves rendering and label settings also. Or would this just make things too confusing?

--Chris

[the guardian]

I believe Don was referring to the cel script he clicked on and was unaware of the CTRL + K option to remove markers. I had the same experience at first but using the help feature built into Celestia for keyboard commands achieved a markerless universe 8)

[Darkmiss]

Well thank you guys for that.
I had this problem too, and didn't know where it came from

Now i can turn it off, thanks again.

[selden]

guardian,

A quibble: these are Cel:// URLs not Cel scripts. Scripts are quite different.

URLs immediately put Celestia at exactly the viewpoint that someone has recorded.

Scripts are used to give Celestia a list of places to go, things to look at, how fast to do it, and with messages on the screen if you want.

[bh]

Don...yes I too had the 'target' diamond appear after the cel url 'Earth from Mars' thread. I tried the spacebar but no missles were fired! Took me a while to find ctrl K.

All back to normal now though.

[Don. Edwards]

Chris and Everyone,
Well I now convinced it wasn't Celestia at all but Windows XP. I tried to replicate the problem several times and each time things worked as they should. Then my system became unstable and I had to reboot. Then I got the shock of my life. The GUI wouldn't launch and Windows told me it could not verify my copy of Windows XP as licensed. After rebooting several times and getting the same message I ended up using the boot option to roll the system back to last known good configuration and that seemed to fix the licensing issue but then my video drivers were gone. So I ended up having to reinstall the video drivers and now everything is back to normal. Thank goodness. I did not want to have to reinstall XP.
I do have a very unusual install of XP. I have a severely modified GUI interface but have never had any issues in the past. I go back and forth between OS X and XP many times a day and something had to give. Needless to say it was easier to make XP like OS X than OSX like XP and since I like OS X better that is the way it went. So basically my install of XP looks and acts like OS X. So I have to chock this up to an OS issue and not Celestia at all. If anyone wants to see what my desktop looks like click this link and have a look. http://63.224.48.65/~impulse/My%20XP%20Install.JPG

Don.

[selden]

Is that a Theme you developed yourself?
Is it available on the 'Net somewhere?

I probably wouldn't install it myself (I've never used a Mac), but I know there are others who would be very interested.

[Guest]

Yes, very nice Don. I sometimes use StyleXP's Mac OSX theme (just to p*** off my mac user friends), but yours looks much better. Where?

[Gordon]

Chris,

I suggest an option that saves default user setting somewhere. thx to this, you can use any cel/url, see exactly what the person who created it wants you to see, but when finished, it would be very easy to come back to your favorite settings.

G.

[julesstoop]

Off-topic-alert!

Why would any Mac user envy this. It's just flattery. Besides, the opposite can be done too. All be it that I have to admit the XP-Aqua-themes are 'slightly' better developed than the Mac OS X-XP-themes.

http://homepage.mac.com/max_08/

Click: Themes -> Mac OS X XP

Still however you just get the looks, not the guts... We macusers can easily run XP in an emulator, very usable (but slow). I have to admit that I luckily allmost never have to use it; there's more than enough native software available for OS X.

[Don. Edwards]

julesstoop,
Sure its Mac OS X envy. My power Mac is rather old and I can't see playing into Apples constant game of built-in-obsolescence. I use a 9500 with a G3-350MHz processor card and 256mb of RAM. It’s a little on the slow side but I can run Mac OS X 10.2.6 on it. There are few things that are easier to do on my Power-Mac than on the PC but when it comes to raw speed I hate to tell you but my Athlon XP 2400 is faster than just about any PowerMac on the market period! You never here Apple compare their processors to the Athlons and there is a reason for that. Lets face it they just can’t compete. Apple doesn’t even do speed comparison tests anymore.
I just put the finishing touches on my system. It has the afore mentioned Athlon XP 2400, 1.5GB of RAM, ASUS A7N8X Deluxe motherboard with 6 channel Dolby Digital sound on board, My GeForce4 TI 4600 128MB video card, 2 Western Digital 120GB hard drives, and 1 60GB IBM hard drive. All this for just under $560.00 US dollars. Oh yes and my copy of Windows XP Pro that was a steal at $99.00 with the purchase of my motherboard. So for $659.00 US dollars I have a system that outperforms a new Mac for 1/3 the price. Is it any wonder Apple is in the state they are in? Don't get me wrong. I love Apple and there OS but they are way off the beaten path when it comes to price and performance. And yes Windows XP isn't the best OS on the planet, but it can get the job done better than Win98 ever did and I can put anything in my machine I want. You still can not do that with a Mac. Period. I seriously considered buying a new Mac but after I weighed in all the factors and compatibility issues I decided to upgrade my PC. I am still looking for a good used G4 Mac but I will only pay about $500 for one. You may ask what would tip the scale into the Power-Mac’s favor, 100% compatibility with all of Celestia’s present feature set and it running at a speed equal to the speed I get on my PC.
Enough said.

Don.