Its great to have the horizon manager!
Since Gonzothegreat (i always wonder about his real name
) did most of the testing and Jasem responded immediately with software corrections I just waited till this thread calmed down a little .
Here are results and suggestions from my testing (having applied the latest update/upgrade 1 hour ago):
1. Kstar crashes when a long list of coordinates is entered and then applied.
After figuring out that the polygon definitely has to be closed
I scanned part of my actual horizon line from Az/Alt=85/0 to Az=210/0 using about 35 coordinate points and closed the polygon with coordinate point 85/0. The "check/OK" icon appeared but after pressing the <Apply> button Kstar crashed. I didn't try another long list of coordinates since the following procedure lets Kstars crash as well:
2. Kstars crashes after changing entries in a list of points (i.e. changing a Alt value)
Manual input of some basic point in the format 90 0, 90 25, 100 30, onto 140 15 and closing with 90 0 renders a correct polygon and can be applied without problem. Reopening the Horizon manager and changing a point (i.e. 100/30 to 100/25) gets Kstars to draw an incomplete part of the polygon obviously including a new line from the origin (first point of the list) to the changed point. Then pressing the <Apply> button lets Kstars crash.
3. Allow to insert additional points to list of points
Since a long list could crash Kstars I started out with about 8 points, applied the region and then reopend the list to add more points. However, points can't be inserted between existing points. Adding an intermediate point to the end of the list lets the "check/OK" Icon still be present but after "applying" the changes the error window "xxx polygon is invalid" appears.
4. Allow to activate/deactivate single horizon regions
Since I have different observable sky areas depending on the telescopes mounted to the instrument platform and depending on the position east or west of the pier I added several horizon polygons to the horizons list. It would be nice to be able to activate or deactivate the display of of regions (or even group of regions)
5. Format of coordinates entered
I enter a list of points using the above mentioned "short" format 140 25 (instead of 140° 00' 00" 25° 00' 00"). This works perfectly but I observed that sometimes the short format of the Az value is "completed" automatically to the long format when using the tab key to move to the Alt column and sometime it isn't ( must be some kind of a non-deterministic function
). After restarting the horizon manager all values are in the long format (OK.) But in an older list manually entered 2 days ago the values were changed to 140° 00' 01" (ending with 01" ! ) which I never entered.
6. Using the tab key
After entering a value into the Alt field and again using the tab key to leave the field the entered value is replaced by 0.
It would be nice if using the tab key in the Alt field would keep the value (
), immediately add the next line and open the Az field for data entry.
7. Missing <-> icon
The minus sign does not appear in the equivalent buttons above the regions and points list.
Keep up the great work!
CS
Michael