Celestia UI redesign

[chris]

Chris,
I like the new deep sky tab. Compact and neat. A solar system browser would be a good choice for another tab in my opinion. Like the internet browsers, maybe a box on the top tool bar that lets the user choose between tabs or new windows might be useful for moons. Just a thought.

A tree-based solar system browser would indeed be useful. But should it be integrated with the star browser, as Christophe has done in the KDE version? There's a logic to doing it that way. On the other hand, the spaceflight professionals using Celestia would I think prefer a dedicated solar system browser.

Also, maybe another group of tabs just above these to choose between the celestial browser, eclipse browser, etc. As you probably already know, the kde version lists the 2 ui's under the navigation pop down. That wouldn't be a bad idea either. That would leave the space where the word celestial browser is displayed for other yet to be defined tabs.
cartrite

Possibly . . . Or, the eclipse browser could be a separate dockable tool, visible at the same time as the star/solar system/dso browser. Also, I think that the eclipse browser could be renamed something like 'event browser' and could be used to find occultations, oppositions, etc., not just eclipses. But that probably needs its own thread

--Chris

[ElChristou]

Chris,
I like the new deep sky tab. Compact and neat. A solar system browser would be a good choice for another tab in my opinion. Like the internet browsers, maybe a box on the top tool bar that lets the user choose between tabs or new windows might be useful for moons. Just a thought.

A tree-based solar system browser would indeed be useful. But should it be integrated with the star browser, as Christophe has done in the KDE version? There's a logic to doing it that way. On the other hand, the spaceflight professionals using Celestia would I think prefer a dedicated solar system browser.

Also, maybe another group of tabs just above these to choose between the celestial browser, eclipse browser, etc. As you probably already know, the kde version lists the 2 ui's under the navigation pop down. That wouldn't be a bad idea either. That would leave the space where the word celestial browser is displayed for other yet to be defined tabs.
cartrite

Possibly . . . Or, the eclipse browser could be a separate dockable tool, visible at the same time as the star/solar system/dso browser. Also, I think that the eclipse browser could be renamed something like 'event browser' and could be used to find occultations, oppositions, etc., not just eclipses. But that probably needs its own thread

--Chris

I follow Chris completely here, Solar system, Stars and DSOs browsers make sense for educational purpose because of completely different scales...

The "Event browser" is also a nice idea...

[t00fri]

...One other feature that would be VERY useful in this context is an efficient general incremental search engine!...

What's your idea? (what do you mean by incremental?)

That's a standard sort expression: the sort starts on the letters that are typed in already and throws away anything that doesn't fit at any given moment, ONLINE so to speak!

F.

[chris]

Chris,

your new DSO browser feature together with the already much improved star browser adds much to my longstanding wish, to be able to access our sky data base in a much more systematic manner!

Thanks! I just checked in a few tweaks. There's now a search results label that displays how many objects were found. And, I replaced closest/brightest in the DSO browser with radio buttons for galaxies, nebulae, and open clusters. The closest/brightest buttons aren't really necessary for DSOs, since the maximum number of objects allowed in the list view is as large as the DSO catalog; thus per-column sorting serves the purpose of closest/brightest.

This graphical way of arranging these different browsing tasks into tabs is very clear, logical and it economizes the available space.

One other feature that would be VERY useful in this context is an efficient general incremental search engine!

Can you give some more detail? I don't think that I understand.

Another general matter refers to making the data base references (publications) and (PERL) scripts accessible via some reference feature from within the browser. This would add MUCH to the seriousness of our data base towards the (scientific) outside world... The browser could eventually summarize all the sources for our catalog data, their mods via PERL scripts AND the sources for all the textures...

Yes, there's definitely some potential to add more per-object information.

--Chris

[t00fri]

...

This graphical way of arranging these different browsing tasks into tabs is very clear, logical and it economizes the available space.

One other feature that would be VERY useful in this context is an efficient general incremental search engine!

Can you give some more detail? I don't think that I understand.
...

--Chris

I suppose you know what an incremental search is? Emacs has one since decades... 'Beagle' & 'Google Desktop' use a more modern version, recently...

While you type in the search string/regular expression, the engine already starts off working. It's the analog of an octree... This is extremely efficient for general regular expression searches.

F.

[ElChristou]

What about the previous real time marker idea? useless?

[t00fri]

Chris,

your new DSO browser feature together with the already much improved star browser adds much to my longstanding wish, to be able to access our sky data base in a much more systematic manner!

Thanks! I just checked in a few tweaks. There's now a search results label that displays how many objects were found. And, I replaced closest/brightest in the DSO browser with radio buttons for galaxies, nebulae, and open clusters.
...
--Chris

Nice! Compilation goes so quickly, in /parallel/ on my XP laptop and the Linux desktop and the results are absolutely identical

On the latop I have Selden's nebulae & open clusters which fills your nebulae/clusters button selections with quite a few data. But the App.Mag is -995 (!) for all these nebulae and also the clusters?? Well there are no Abs Mag entries in Selden's file, but I am not sure whether App. mag ~ -995 is the best of all possible default values

Looks like a bug of some sort!

F.

[EDIT]: The distance values of nebulae & clusters are also displayed wrongly and ~ identical, after flipping more than once between them.

[dirkpitt]

...Yes, the UI is hard coded, because I find that easier than using a UI design tool. But, my work should be considered a prototype: the UI is functional, but not beautiful, and I would welcome help in producing a better layout of the controls...

If we can switch to the UI tool I'm sure more people could help

An important question I think is: Is Qt Designer free? (do I have to pay for it?)
If not, is there a free alternative?

[t00fri]

...Yes, the UI is hard coded, because I find that easier than using a UI design tool. But, my work should be considered a prototype: the UI is functional, but not beautiful, and I would welcome help in producing a better layout of the controls...

If we can switch to the UI tool I'm sure more people could help

An important question I think is: Is Qt Designer free? (do I have to pay for it?)

No, DW,

it's all part of the OpenSource Qt package. It's quite a comfortable tool.

F.

[dirkpitt]

Ah ha, little did I know that Qt Designer was in fact installed on my system! Thanks Fridger.

ElChristou: It's in the /Developer/Applications/Qt folder.

[mjoubert]

A tree-based solar system browser would indeed be useful. But should it be integrated with the star browser, as Christophe has done in the KDE version? There's a logic to doing it that way. On the other hand, the spaceflight professionals using Celestia would I think prefer a dedicated solar system browser.

If the Sun is in first place in the star browser, then there's no need of a dedicated browser.

I add few ideas for the GUI :

* Changing time scale should be easier to find. Vincent's slide bar is a good solution.
* Another point from Edu Tools : a system to visualize scene orientation quickly (like a simple 3-axis display on a corner).
* I'd like the bookmark facility to be extended to save views : if I set 3 views and cameras to look to a spacecraft mission, I'd like to save the full set of settings to reload it or to share it with others.

Mathieu

[ElChristou]

Ah ha, little did I know that Qt Designer was in fact installed on my system! Thanks Fridger.

ElChristou: It's in the /Developer/Applications/Qt folder.

Tx mate, but I could find it. What is missing is a compatible UI file. See Chris post, for now all is hard coded.

[chris]

What about the previous real time marker idea? useless?

No, not useless, though my intuition is that it's easier to use the way it is now. I'm going to give it a try though.

--Chris

[ElChristou]

What about the previous real time marker idea? useless?

No, not useless, though my intuition is that it's easier to use the way it is now...

At first sight it's what I was thinking, but thinking in it a bit more I think it could be a +.

Imagine a presentation, 2 screens, one mirrored on a video projector (the GL window) one with the browser. The user could select distant object with immediate visual feedback (and without eventual selection problems via mouse), freeze the marker, point other objects , freeze their markers to show relation of distance for example, unmark all, switch to select all to show an entire population, freeze, switch back to mark selection to point something special, etc...

Anyway, if you are able to test this it would be cool...

[Vincent]

What about adding a setting for markers size ? (particularly useful for arrow markers):

[ElChristou]

What about adding a setting for markers size ? (particularly useful for arrow markers):...

I agree, more control on markers, better!

[chris]

What about adding a setting for markers size ? (particularly useful for arrow markers):

Yes, this would be useful. Want to get your feet wet with Qt4 and have a go at it? Eventually, it might be nice to support markers with distance-dependent sizes, though this requires more than a modification to the UI.

--Chris

[t00fri]

What about adding a setting for markers size ? (particularly useful for arrow markers):

Yes, this would be useful. Want to get your feet wet with Qt4 and have a go at it? Eventually, it might be nice to support markers with distance-dependent sizes, though this requires more than a modification to the UI.

--Chris

Let me just warn a bit that there might well be more important entries coming up. The Marker stuff took quite a few lines in the GUI. I think it would be good to FIRST assemble ALL entries of interest, then discuss their hierarchical importance and only then... code the survivors

F.

[Vincent]

Want to get your feet wet with Qt4 and have a go at it? Eventually, it might be nice to support markers with distance-dependent sizes, though this requires more than a modification to the UI.

Chris, do you mean adding the distance-dependant size as an option to the UI or adding it by default for all markers ?

Let me just warn a bit that there might well be more important entries coming up. The Marker stuff took quite a few lines in the GUI. I think it would be good to FIRST assemble ALL entries of interest, then discuss their hierarchical importance and only then... code the survivors

Fridger, this is true, of course. Playing around with Qt4 before starting serious things can't be that bad, though...

[chris]

What about adding a setting for markers size ? (particularly useful for arrow markers):

Yes, this would be useful. Want to get your feet wet with Qt4 and have a go at it? Eventually, it might be nice to support markers with distance-dependent sizes, though this requires more than a modification to the UI.

--Chris

Let me just warn a bit that there might well be more important entries coming up. The Marker stuff took quite a few lines in the GUI. I think it would be good to FIRST assemble ALL entries of interest, then discuss their hierarchical importance and only then... code the survivors

I agree that the marker stuff already uses a lot of space. However, putting the marker size on the same line as the marker color and symbol boxes is a very logical arrangement: all the marker style options on a single row of the UI. Making room for a size selector is one reason why I ditched that 'Marker Color' push button and integrated it into the color swatch.

--Chris