Hi Barry,
I speed touch type thanks to my Mother making me take a typing course in high
school when I really, really did not want to.
And when navigating files and browsing I drive two handed, the right on the
mouse to grab and move things,
and the left then acting on them for cut, copy, paste, save, close,
quit, hide...
It is fast, and I've been irritated with Apple ever since they adopted the PC
keyboard layout and misaligned the Opt/Alt key relative to x c v so that they
don't line up for four relaxed fingers any more. It is as though my left hand
has been mangled and can't do it's thing any more without my having to look
down at it to check positioning all the time. This irritation has been going
on for, what, 15 to 20 years now. And then I come to Stellarium.
I'd like to drive Stellarium with ease, too, and it almost works. But time
jumps by hour, day and week don't have anything to do with H, D or W keys and
the difference is solar versus sidereal is Opt versus Cmd - combinations that
for me are hard to remember. And I would like to be able to increase and
decrease things like the number of stars being displayed versus light pollution
by keying +S and -S without fooling around with window panes that take time and
obscure what I am looking at. The thing that got me going, though to make a
proposal, was having to figure out what Stellarium means by Save and when,
where and how to do it.
I like Stellarium very much. It is a lot nicer than a commercial package I
bought.
So I am not complaining, just sort of like panting, like - Hey, that's great.
Give me more.
Ed
PS: Just for fun and at age fifty, and after 35 years of using QWERTY, I
decided to learn the Dvorak keyboard.
The first sessions of a minute or so were interestingly trying, like smoke
coming out of my ears.
I can do Dvorak now, but not as quickly as QWERTY, and I have doubts about the
claim that Dvorak is fundamentally faster.
On Mar 20, 2012, at 8:55 AM, Barry Gerdes wrote:
> Hi Ed
>
> Yes key board operation has improved betweem O/S's now but when Apple was
> Motorola based and Microsoft was Intel based there were some problems that
> required separate coding and I have always avoided the Apple path..
>
> I personally hardly ever use a keyboard except for letter typing as I am only
> a two finger "expert" who needs to look at the keyboard to type. Even so my
> keyboard suffers from dyslexia and keeps printing the wrong characters. I
> come from an era when computers were judged by the size of the buildings and
> the number of valves and relays used. I taught myself to program in BASIC and
> never had the time or incination to go to structured
> programming although I have progressed to qb64 which is a hybrid c++ program
> with a Basic style IDE.
>
> Barry Gerdes
> Beaumont Hills Observatory
> S 33' 41' 44" E 150' 56' 32"
>
>
> From: edtak...@cox.net
> Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2012 06:23:31 -0400
> To: stellarium-pubdevel@lists.sourceforge.net
> Subject: [Stellarium-pubdevel] Re2: Re 2: New Idea: DSO viewing options
>
> Another thought.
> I haven't looked to see how, but Apple and Microsoft have both
> internationalized their OS pull-down menus and equivalent keystrokes.
> So it is doable.
>
>
> Hi Barry,
>
> Part of the objective I suggest is to NOT have duplication of function,
> menus allowing removal of some parts of Settings panes, like slide bars,
> (and providing clarification of what Save means and when, where and how
> to do it).
> Or perhaps rearrange the panes so that they totally do not or totally do
> duplicate menu/keystroke functionality.
> Or if not that maybe find some way to provide indication in panes for
> what settings are duplicative.
>
> The type of keyboard layout is, today, just a software setting.
> Perhaps more of a problem is muddling of keystrokes that start with the
> first letter of an English word.
> Provided everything else like Help files and Preference panes is in the
> native language for a user, though,
> would it be acceptable to have menus and their keystroke equivalents
> be in English,
> and be normally operated with the keyboard set to the same?
> A little English is very widely known, and pull-down menus provide a
> very ready tutorial for keystroke equivalents.
>
> Yes, there is a problem here.
> Maybe duplication within panes does need to be provide so some can avoid the
> English.
> But one thing for sure is that there is tremendous user interface reach and
> power in keystroke equivalents with menus, and not just on laptops.
> The words that say it all are "intuitive" and "facile," as in Apple's track
> record for software.
> Stellarium is missing some (or a lot).
>
> Please read my hopefully now more readable notes.
> Ed
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Mar 19, 2012, at 9:24 PM, Barry Gerdes wrote:
>
> Hi
> Key stroke (key bindings) are very useful. particularly on lap tops although
> not so important on desktops where a mouse works well.
> The biggest problems we have with key bindings is twofold, the number with
> duplicate functions and the use of non USA keyboards. Check through the help
> file for the current key bindings for those that are already in use before
> commiting new ones
>
> Barry Gerdes
> Beaumont Hills Observatory
> S 33' 41' 44" E 150' 56' 32"
>
>
> From: edtak...@cox.net
> Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2012 20:46:55 -0400
> To: stellarium-pubdevel@lists.sourceforge.net
> Subject: [Stellarium-pubdevel] Re 2: New Idea: DSO viewing options
>
> I should have added that keystroke equivalents give both
> ease of learning for the beginner via the menus, and
> good (perhaps the best possible) facile and fine-tuned control for the
> experienced users and astronomers.
> Ed.
> PS: Just updated my notes at takken.us/stellarium. Hopefully they are more
> readable now.
>
>
> Hi Tom,
> It is the keystroke equivalents that are magic.
> The menus after a while are just a help display.
> Sub-menus can be used to make things fit on a small display.
> Ed
>
>
> On Mar 19, 2012, at 5:38 PM, Thomas Morris wrote:
>
> Hi Ed,
>
> I'm not convinced that replacing the nebula sliders with a drop-down
> menu would be more intuitive although I'm no expert on GUI design.
> Bear in mind that non-numerical information needs translations unless
> you use icons, potentially causing layout problems. Also drop-down
> menus wouldn't fit on a small screen (e.g. smartphone).
>
> Thanks,
> Thomas
>
> On 19 March 2012 21:14, <edtak...@cox.net> wrote:
> Hi Thomas and Brian,
>
> I think the way to do this one, as well as make the user interface both more
> facile and intuitive, is with drop-down menus.
> I put a draft of my idea at takken.us/stellarium, but need to do more to
> explain it.
> I suggest that the present slide bars are an encumbrance for the user.
>
> Ed Takken
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Mar 19, 2012, at 1:30 PM, Thomas Morris wrote:
>
> Hi Brian,
>
> Perhaps this could be implemented as a plug-in? ("extended DSO
> controls" or something like that). Personally I would like some
> extended controls particularly for making full use of the new NGC data
> catalogue. (Galaxy display based on surface brightness for example,
> which would certainly be useful for objects at low altitude.)
>
> Thanks,
> Thomas
>
> On 19 March 2012 17:03, Bogdan Marinov <daggers...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Mon, Mar 19, 2012 at 1:48 AM, bdwashbu <bdwas...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Cool!
>
>
> I have a prototype image here:
>
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/81471534@N00/6848489598/lightbox/
>
>
> Oh, my, more interface clutter. While users have requested a way to
>
> select which categories of DSOs are displayed, I think that a separate
>
> slider for each is overkill.
>
>
> Also, a comment on a previous question of yours:
>
>
> On 18 March 2012 14:15, bdwashbu <bdwas...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I also think that the sliders should be ticked and a label show their
>
> current value, because I'm not even sure what their value currently
>
> represents. (I assume apparent magnitude)
>
>
> The sliders are deliberately unitless and don't represent apparent
>
> magnitude. Instead, they control the number of objects shown on the
>
> screen with a somewhat unclear formula which includes apparent
>
> magnitude and dynamic eye adaptation.
>
>
> Please also have in mind that one of the reasons Stellarium is popular
>
> with educators and people who are total beginners in astronomy is the
>
> simplicity of its interface. New features should be carefully
>
> designed. Just slapping hack over hack as has been the tendency
>
> recently won't lead to anything good. We already kicked out the
>
> planetarium users, let's not alienate more groups.
>
>
> Bogdan
>
>
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