Notices

Ah! But I discovered that the file protection bits on the 'mchronos.ini' file were not allowing 'user' to re-write the settings file (during 'Save') so I am trying to fix the package for that right now...not sure if it will work or not yet.

heh, ouch

btw, why a menu?

OK folks, new version basis the requests that have come in:

2009/07/06 = version 0.40
- major enhancements!
- add applet 'settings' menu and submenus (lots of work!)
- add 'save' mode so that all settings (including GPS location) can be saved
- add city and city names (not very useful on small screen)
- add planet and star name option (only partially useful on 'full' window)
- add more grid options (one each for sky, earth, and now moon as well)
- move earth/moon pics and 'ini' file and README file to '/home/user/.mchronos' directory
- convert 'global' variables to 'self' variables (lots of work and error prone!)
- remove 'clock' option button (better suited for just a 'menu' option)
- fix bug in formatting of time values where first character was being cut off
- fix bug in 'astro' option for 'horizon' mode
- fix bug with moon position plot in 'earth' mode when greater than 180 degrees

What people had requested:

- tso = menu settings (right?)
- slick204 = GPS position saves and planet/star labels
- belanger = does 'sphere' mode work yet? I found no problems

See my previous comments for a slight hassle -- even though I try to package the 'mchronos.ini' file to have 'public' edit access (for the sake of the 'user' account), it hasn't worked yet. So, if you want to use the 'Save' function you need to change the file permission bits (as 'root') i.e.:

chmod 777 mchronos.ini

Can someone test that as well?

To my disappointment, I expected the original support files (PNGs, README, and ini file) present for the current version in '/usr/lib/hildon-desktop' would get removed during the new version (which moves them to '/home/user/.mchronos'), but didn't on my tablet. So, you might have some minor cleanup to do. Sorry! Still learning this stuff...

Now it is time for me to take a *break* from this program -- I have spent too much time and hair-loss on it!

Hey, guy, you were the one that gently pushed me into trying to add that stuff, right? It gives me the user the ability to adjust more settings than I have room for with 'buttons'...

Indeed, tho i used hometools as an example, as its use of a settings window. Hitting menu -> applet settings -> hometools brings up a window with multiple tabs, where if one used a similar solution for mchronos could have input boxes for latitude and longditude for example.

Yep, as the README alludes to, I don't yet have the ability to do the necessary 'widgets' for that task i.e. the 'hometools' app uses 'glade', which (somehow) allows the creation of a normal (non-transparent) 'window', onto which fancier widgets can be used. My apps do not use glade, and my efforts to create such a window manually were not successful...

ah, my bad. said readme is had to get at when one update thru app manager, as its not shown in any way that i know of...

oh, and here is glade btw:
http://glade.gnome.org/

Yea, I don't know of any nice way to make a README file nicely visible/accessible by a user -- so all I do is put it somewhere where it can be read -- in this version I moved it to its own '.mchronos' directory...

Edit Reminder: an 'online' version of the respective README files is always available on my software page (http://darethehair.googlepages.com/software.html).

Thanks, but it is (currently) not so much that I *cannot* use glade if I really want to, but I wanted to learn how to do PyGTK development *without* a fancy assistant like that -- if you know what I mean. However, this, in itself, should not prevent me from being able to create a new 'window' in MChronos, so I am not sure what the trick is. I have found no examples to guide me -- after all, how many Maemo transparent-window HomeItem Python apps are out there for me to learn from?

In any case, I hope that you and the others enjoy the new version -- I think it is getting crazy to put so much *stuff* into a desktop applet! That is what MEphemeris is for!

ah, ok.

i guess you have already looked at pygtk

Yea, well, all the apps I have written so far -- including MChronos -- use PyGTK, and the graphics ones also use PyCairo. Hence, it makes me quite nervous to read (in other threads) that Nokia is switching to using Qt instead. Unless it is very *easy* to convert PyGTK syntax into Qt syntax, I am not sure what I am going to do with all my code. Perhaps PyGTK libraries will remain available, and people will be willing to download them to run my apps (?).

The PyGTK method of creating a normal 'window' is just silently ignored in my efforts for MChronos...