Arrrgh!! Target Lock or Something???

[Sum0]

And even the only major selling point of a Mac - it's not beige - isn't exclusive to Apple anymore...

Incidentaly, just how do you get that incredible desktop of yours? Is it Litestep or something like that?

[Don. Edwards]

It is a combination of many things. Many of the .dll and .exe files in XP have been modified with the OS X style icons and bitmaps. The windows are skinned with Star Docks WindowBlinds4, the Apple menu is there ObjectBar, the dock is there program ObjectDock. The browser is an alternative front for Internet Explorer called Savanna. The iTunes look-a-like is a program called iPlay that is in its very early alpha stage. Then there are various skins for a number of other programs. All in all it does a nice job. It makes it very easy for me to move back and forth between my Mac and PC. Because they are almost identical and operate similar I don't have the problem of wasting time adapting back and forth. Plus of course it looks very classy. Here is another pic http://63.224.48.65/~impulse/untitled3.JPG

Don.

[Guest]

Chris, I would strongly support an option to load a cel:url either with, or without render settings changing. However, I'd like to suggest an alternative to saving two different cel:url's.

I am encountering a problem right now in the NASA activities. Some computers that visitors will have are just too slow or have a lower-end graphics card, and if all render options are turned on by a cel:url, their systems simply freeze up. Yet visitors with top systems should have the benefit of maximum render options. So I set all of my cel:url's with optimum options in my activities. That may force a low-end computer user to manually turn off some options, which is OK. However, the next cel:url he/she loads turns them all on again and again, the user's computer may lock up. The activities break down if a user has to "fix" his render settings every time he/she loads a cel:url.

What would be ideal is a menu command instructing Celestia to either pay attention to, or ignore cel:url render options. That way, only one cel:url needs to be saved by everyone, everywhere. If a user's system is low end and he/she checks the "ignore cel:url renders" option in a pull-down menu, then when he/she loads a new cel:url with all options active, it won't affect his adjusted settings. Can that be done? If so, can it be done soon? The NASA activities are suffering the problem now. Thanks.

Frank G

[t00fri]

Chris, I would strongly support an option to load a cel:url either with, or without render settings changing. However, I'd like to suggest an alternative to saving two different cel:url's.

I am encountering a problem right now in the NASA activities.

What are the NASA activities??

Bye Fridger

[julesstoop]

@ Don
I won't put too much fire on this age-old debate on this forum, there are many other places. But to plainly state that an Athlon XP-2400 is faster than any Mac is wrong.
Secondly, I was allways much more annoyed by the (Windows) pc's built-in obsolescence. Mac usually run for many more productive years. Then again, one could allways use a taylored Linux install on any platform which doesn't run the newest Mac OS or Windows version anymore.

@ Chris
Sorry, I'll stop or take it elsewhere, just couldn't swallow my 'Mac' pride :wink:

[Don. Edwards]

Fridger,
Frank is making an observaion that he is having dificutlies while working with the NASA project that several of us are working on. That's what he means by "NASA aciviies"

Don.

[Christophe]

What can be easily done is allow a URL to hold only the settings. Something like:
cel:///?rf=XXX&lm=XXX
rf: Render Flag (which objects are displayed)
lm: Label Mode

That would make things easier on Linux where the bookmark is based on URLs and not on 'Favorites' and where you can assign a shortcut to any bookmark.

Another solution would be to introduce sticky settings; you would specify which settings are left unchanged by URLs.

[fsgregs]

Christophe and Chris:

Either approach would seem to work fine. Either create a "lock" for settings somewhere in the pull down Render menu so anyone loading a cel:url could prevent it from changing settings if you didn't want it to, or a simple "default" sticky setting/keyboard command as Christophe suggests. After you load the cel:url and are finished with it, just press the [F9] key (or something) and your original "default" settings will reappear. Since Celestia already knows what those settings are (it remembers your last settings), it seems a simple task to provide you access to them somehow with the stroke of a single key.

This might solve a second problem I recently encountered. I wanted to mark the closest star to us (Promixa Centauri), so that whenever Celestia opened and I toggled Marks on, I could see it. I added the Mark command to the start.cel and everything was fine. However, when later on I used a cel:url to open Celestia, the Mark was gone, since the start.cel had not been used. Could someone propose a simple way to help me around this problem? Is there someway I can set a Mark on an object so that no matter what cel or script opens the program, the Mark will remain there until I manually remove it?

Frank G