Notices

tz1:

You didn't make it clear what your goals were for your own astronomy program. Are you working on it? When do you intend to release something for us to try out? I need some 'role models' out there so that I can learn from what other people have done re: astronomy programs, especially for our tablets.

I wish the author the 'Stars' port for Maemo would pick it up again, since I like the slick 'rotating sphere' look of it.

Hello again, darethehair. Well, once again this is a truly amazing effort. I have just scratched the surface of the update, but I like many of the new GUI options (show hide columns,etc), the amazing amount of downloadable web info (including the satellite elements info), etc. Now I understand that TZ1 has some good points and that the overall GUI may be a little funky, but it does work well! I am not quite to the point of either criticizing or offering good suggestions yet. But you get an A+ for effort and usefulness.

I would like to hear a bit more about your development environment and methods (when you have time) and how you packaged it into an armel debian package. Also, since this is Python, how and where could I get information that would allow Mepheremis to run under Python on OSX on an intel macintosh system.

That is all for now. I will check it out thoroughly when I have time and ask more questions and offer suggestions at that time. Thanks again for a great piece of work!

P.S. - Can you (and will the maemo powers allow you) to put this someplace where it will trigger the update notification icon under N800 OS2008 diablo?

The goals were merely a compass like viewer. Eventually to Aho's planetarium (link in the earlier post). I.e. if the dot representing the sun is at 135 degrees, I should be able to find true north by aligning the dot for the sun so it points that way. If I point north (or use GPS heading to turn) I can find the direction for the planet or stars, and the elevation.

kapresley:

I know absolutely nothing about Mac OSX, other than it is based on BSD (?) and is therefore theoretically more capable of easily running unix-ish stuff than WinXP is (?). Strangely, although it appears that PyGTK is 'standard' for Linux distributions, and nicely packaged for WinXP, that it is still 'in development' for OSX. Here are a few Google hits that I found:

http://developer.imendio.com/projects/gtk-macosx
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Sugar_on_MacOS_X
http://py25-gtk.darwinports.com/
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/list...7647?page=last

I don't see a 'consistent' message here, but I suggest that you inquire within the Python and/or OSX community for more info.

As for how I packaged this, well, like the README says, PyPackager comes to the rescue when I need to do that. As for setting up the context to actually use PyPackager, well, I guess that can be a different thread

I am not sure about the 'update notification' thing, but I doubt that it would do much good for Mephemeris, since I don't see myself doing a lot more development and releases for a while

Well, if you get the chance, let me know how close the new Mephemeris 'compass' feature meets your goals

Thank you darethehair for the PyGTK and Pyackager info (mea culpa, I read all of the Mephemeris usage info, but not ALL of your history info where you mentioned PyPackager, etc.).

I do have Python 2.5 and Python 2.6 running on my Intel Mac-mini under OSX. So I guess I will have to check out PyGTK, etc. (Of course now I am just starting some consulting work so I will be too busy for a while to do it!).

Also, thanks for the "deb" package information. I had no idea it was a special version of a tar file.

Anyway, thanks again for such a fun app and all of the useful information.

-Ken (kapresley)

kapresley:

I wish you success in getting a 'full' GUI (PyGTK) development/operational environment running on your Mac OSX

Also, I think that I was a bit too flippant in my description of what a 'deb' file is. Here is a better explanation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian_package

Sure enough, under linux the 'ar' command is what you need first in order to 'peel apart' a Debian 'deb' file without using 'dpkg' (the natural choice). Like my README says, I am much more comfortable with 'RPM' files, but was forced to learn a tiny bit about 'deb' due to Maemo.

Hello again folks:

New version released, with only a tiny handful of changes:

2008/10/10 = version 0.99
- implement PyGTK 'toggle' buttons on 'sky plot' window
- implement PyGTK 'radio' buttons on 'sky plot' window
- fix bug of constellation lines getting dim when grid was activated

Yes, I surprised the heck out myself by deciding to finally attack the 'button' issue on the 'sky plot' window -- to eliminate the 'funky' factor The result is 'proper' (?) button techniques on that window i.e. 'toggle' and 'radio' buttons.

I also changed the wording/labelling a bit. The 'equirectangular' projection sounded too much like the 'equatorial' coordinate system (especially when abbreviated as 'EQU'), so I cheated a bit and have renamed 'equirectangular' into simply 'rectangular'.

Sorry for releasing this version so quickly, but when I found out how much it annoyed everyone, and how (relatively) simple it was to deal with it, I decided not to wait.

http://darethehair.googlepages.com/software.html

P.S. Remember that every update wipes out your custom 'ini' file settings. As well, any custom 'xxx_url.dat' file changes are also vulnerable now.

P.P.S. Using toggle/radio buttons instead of my original technique actually *reduced* the the size of the program by 400 lines of code.

Hello again, darethehair! Thanks for the additional "deb" info and clarification.

Oh, yeah, the GUI improvement with version 0.99 with the "real" toggle and radio buttons is definitely much better.

I do have one interface question I forgot to ask. If I "dismiss" one of the columns in the sky window (to increase sky viewing area) is there a simple way to bring it back (sorry, I just don't see it mentioned in the docs).

Thanks again for all of your great work!

See ya around...

Ken

kapresley:

Yes, the 'menu' button toggles the various modes of those controls, so at the beginning of the cycle, all the 'columns' are back again:

- Menu (F4) = toggle on-screen controls verbose/spartan/off