Re: ANNOUNCE: MChronos - Astronomy Clock Applet
 

This works fine !
Nice feature !
The only con is that it is slow, after clicking on a mode it takes sometimes over 30 seconds to respond.

Re: ANNOUNCE: MChronos - Astronomy Clock Applet
 

skatebiker:

Thanks for the short feedback. I am not experiencing the delay that you mention -- I would say that sometimes it might be as long as 5 seconds, but not 30 seconds (for me), so that is unusual. We need to wait for more people to respond with their experiences...

I can say, though, that it is not possible to make it any faster, without taking away functionality, or without using something other than Python. My hope is that people will not be tempted to do a lot of 'mode changing', but will typically just leave it in one of their 'favorite' modes most of the time :)

Re: ANNOUNCE: MChronos - Astronomy Clock Applet
 

I did not exactly measure it but it is definitely longer than 5 secs. Is Python so slow ? I also notice that you calculate sun/moon rise settings with an accuracy to 1 second. Reducing accuracy to a minute (which is enough for normal use) will save a lot of polynomial terms, particularly with lunar coordinates.

I have some Javascript ephemeris which run in any standard browser (including MicroB), but are much faster (and use less accuracy).

http://start.nicejewel.com/astrotools/astrotools.html

On this page the last two (Quick Ephemeris and Eclipses) are made by myself and the other three by Oleg Nielsen and slightly modified by me.

But still my opinion is the MChronos is a nice tool with nice graphics.

Re: ANNOUNCE: MChronos - Astronomy Clock Applet
 

The delay I have between modes is on the order of five seconds, also. Perhaps skatebiker has a lot running on his tablet?

At any rate, it's fun switching between the modes, but like you said, I'll usually keep the same one up.

Re: ANNOUNCE: MChronos - Astronomy Clock Applet
 

I tried again and watched my watch, the time is really around 5 sec some a bit more.

Re: ANNOUNCE: MChronos - Astronomy Clock Applet
 

Thanks, guys, for the timing tests. One of the 'disadvantages' of only having a single device, and being only one person, is to never be 'confident' that what works for me, will also work for other people. I rely on others to 'kick the tires' for me beyond what I have done :)

skatebiker, since I use the 'PyEphem' Python library (totally amazing), I have no choice as the the 'accuracy' of the calculated results. All in all, I think I am willing to settle for a slightly slower speed that this might generate. As well, I am not sure how much of the (lack of) speed is due to that, to using Python (which is 'scripting' language, and not 'compiled' like 'C' would be), or to the use of 'Cairo' to generate the graphics. If and when I purchase the next tablet device (N900), I am very much hoping that it will be MUCH faster. One of the things that I wanted to do was to generate a '3d globe' of the Earth using Python on the N800, but my tests show that it would take almost 1.5 *minutes* to do so -- which is way too slow.

P.S. Those Javascript astro pages are neat! You had never mentioned that you were also creating stuff like that!

Re: ANNOUNCE: MChronos - Astronomy Clock Applet
 

I upgraded today and it works great! I have about the same time between different screens as the others; around 5 seconds. You added a lot more screens in addition to the buttons. Very nice. :)
Question - when the GPS mode is on, does the position get saved in the .ini file? I was thinking of turning GPS to on, connecting to my bluetooth GPS to set the location and time, then turning GPS off. Would it slow things down to leave GPS set to on?

Also, are civil, nautical and astronomical twilights listed anywhere? I know they're shown on the bar and circle graphs but I don't see the times listed anywhere.

Thanks for a great app!

Re: ANNOUNCE: MChronos - Astronomy Clock Applet
 

slick204, I hope that you like the ability to toggle the text mode on and off, since you were the main reason that I tried to do something like that -- even though it may not be exactly what you requested in post #26 of this thread :)

As for the GPS mode, well, I have not studied that mode for a long time now, but referring back to the README file, it indicates that putting a GPS 'mode' of 'lock' in the 'ini' file will result in the GPS just trying to establish a *single* lock on the GPS, and thereafter ignoring it. This may be what you are asking for (?). No, no settings (including GPS stuff) is saved back to any file.

As for the 'twilight' times, no, I wasn't able to find any room to record those 'textual' values anywhere -- especially on the 'bar' display, which is already so full that I had to squeeze the lines closer together. Are you asking for a 'text-only' mode of some kind that would include that? Maybe some people don't want graphics at all? I can note, however, that I *did* manage to squeeze the sun/moon alt/az onto the screen so that people knew 'textually' what the current locations in the sky were...

Re: ANNOUNCE: MChronos - Astronomy Clock Applet
 

That's exactly what I was wanting. Thanks!

I was going to to try it last night but I ran out of time. Maybe tonight. I'm wondering if when the GPS signal is gone (disconnected) does it revert to the position in the mchronos.ini file?

I would like to see the values available somewhere, but that's just me. There's already a whole lot of information shown, as you say. I do appreciate all your efforts and have rearranged my applets to be able to view the expanded version. :D

Re: ANNOUNCE: MChronos - Astronomy Clock Applet
 

No, the intent with the GPS 'lock' mode was to use the 'ini' file lat/long setting until a single 'lock' was acquired, and thereafter to use that single captured GPS coodinate -- only to revert back to the 'ini' one at the next restart of the applet. I am pretty sure it worked that way when I originally wrote it, but you will get to re-test it :)

Re: ANNOUNCE: MChronos - Astronomy Clock Applet
 

I finally got around to testing the GPS functions. I put it in "lock" mode with time adjustment on. With the GPS connected it updated my position and presumably the time. Great! So I disconnected the GPS and put my tablet away. When I got it out later, the time in the applet had not changed and nothing had moved in the graphic (bar). I had to turn the GPS mode back to off before the time would update automatically.

Is there a way to have the time update normally in the GPS lock mode?

Re: ANNOUNCE: MChronos - Astronomy Clock Applet
 

Ah! It looks like you were clever enough to discover a bug in my code, so you win a brand new Nokia N800! Actually, not really, but I appreciate you doing so :)

I had a pickle of a time getting my BT GPS device to repair with my N800, but once I did so it did not take long to discover my error. I will make sure that a fix is available in the next release! :)

Re: ANNOUNCE: MChronos - Astronomy Clock Applet
 

It's not a big deal but I'm glad I saved my GPS coordinates to the .ini file!
Now about that new N800... ;)

Re: ANNOUNCE: MChronos - Astronomy Clock Applet
 

OK Folks, another updated version for you (0.36):

2009/07/25 = version 0.36
- add 'info' (text only) mode
- add 'full window', 'clock', and 'gps' toggle buttons
- add 'grid' option
- add ability to graphically set/reset current latitude/longitude location
- change 'circle' mode to 'sphere' mode (to allow 'C' option for 'clock' mode)
- fix bug in 'lock' GPS option
- fix bug in terminator (shadow) plot in 'earth' mode

You need to check the 'README' file for the gory details of the new/changed stuff...

The package is quite a bit larger, since the Python code is now about 3000 lines (up 20%), but the main reason is that there are some larger PNG pics of the earth and moon for the new 'full' window mode.

I learned how to better handle 'toggling' buttons from my latest changes to 'MOrrery', and implemented them now in 'MChronos'. The active buttons now are hilighted in green, so that you know when toggle/mode buttons are set.

Yes, slick204, I did fix (I hope) the GPS 'lock' mode, and I also created a 'gps' toggle button. Please test that feature, since you inquired about it. I also created an 'info' mode (text only) that includes 'twilight' times. If you turn text mode off while on this display, you see nothing at all :)

NOTE: You must be *patient* when clicking the virtual 'buttons' on the app. Give it time to respond, and if it does not, *then* try clicking it again. Sorry for the 'slow' behavior, but there are a lot of calculations being made :)

I would also appreciate it if anyone confirming success from installing (and running) the app from 'extras-devel' would let me know, so I can promote it to 'extras'.

P.S. My 'software' page has some updated screen shots.

Re: ANNOUNCE: MChronos - Astronomy Clock Applet
 

Since, for now, MChronos will not have an option to *replace* the lat/long values in the '.ini' file, you will need to do what you did i.e. find some way (GPS or not) to determine your own coordinates, and store them in that file.

As for the N800 prize, I may have been a bit too hasty -- what I meant to say was that what you discovered isn't a bug -- it is a 'feature', and so you are not entitled to the prize :)

Re: ANNOUNCE: MChronos - Astronomy Clock Applet
 

I installed the new version this evening and everything seems to be working great.
Using the GPS to set the location worked perfectly and the toggle button made it very easy to do. Thanks for adding the info mode with the twilight times! :D

I hadn't been in the dome or horizon modes after sunset; I was surprised to see the stars and planets. I guess I'm going to have to install MEphemeris to find out which ones they are. :) Any information on the "pending release" of the new version?

Thanks again.

Re: ANNOUNCE: MChronos - Astronomy Clock Applet
 

Thanks for testing the GPS modes! Also, I cannot think of what to do when the 'text' mode is toggled 'off' when displaying the 'info' window. Any ideas?

EDIT: I created a slightly newer version (0.37) which puts a 'larger font' version of the current dates/times for the 'graphic' (non-text) mode of 'info'.

Yes, that stuff is mentioned in the README file. I wasn't looking forward to the hassle of creating a separate 'stars' data file, but then I remembered that PyEphem has a small 'built-in' database of the brightest stars, so it was just a matter of me figuring out how to use them all -- rather than one-at-a-time -- and it was not too difficult. The 'planets' are also, always, just 'built-in' with no external data file required. I was thinking about allowing stars/planets to be toggled 'on' during daylight hours as well -- but who would want to do that? I am *considering* putting labels on this stuff, but the only way that sufficient room would be available is in the new 'full' mode. Hmmm...

As mentioned in the MEphemeris thread, I was/am very close to a new release, but I am waiting for the author of PyEphem to respond (and possibly fix) some strange behaviors with his new 'satellite prediction' features.

Anyways, if any of you have any other 'easy' ideas for MChronos, let me know. I think it is getting a bit 'bloated', though :)

Anyone successfully installed via 'extras-devel'?

Re: ANNOUNCE: MChronos - Astronomy Clock Applet
 

any chance of the settings being moved to its own setting dialog, accessed via the "applet settings" part of the "desktop" menu?

btw, love the "sun clock" ;)

Re: ANNOUNCE: MChronos - Astronomy Clock Applet
 

That's what I've been using to install mchronos; it installs fine that way.

By the way, there seems to be a problem with sphere mode. When I click on the S button, I get a disk on the screen, but the buttons on the bottom are gone. (They seem to still work, so if I guess their positions, I can get out of sphere mode.)
I checked the README to see if anything were mentioned; I noticed that at the top the "info" description is sort of missing.

Re: ANNOUNCE: MChronos - Astronomy Clock Applet
 

Hello tso! Could you elaborate a bit more on that idea? Are you suggesting moving all the buttons to another display, so that there are no longer any buttons along the bottom of the window? If so, why would that be better that currently?

Thanks for the positive comment on that :) The most recent version of MEphemeris also has a 'sun clock' (not released yet), so I wondered if I could duplicate a 'mini' version of it in MChronos. The weird hassle with doing 'transparent shading' in these desktop applets is that it looks like I have to use a radically different technique to do this, which was very confusing for me -- but I suppose that is a side-effect of the whole 'transparent desktop applet' API.

Re: ANNOUNCE: MChronos - Astronomy Clock Applet
 

Thanks for confirming! Now I can safely promote to 'extras', I guess.

Hmmm...I will have to check that out! The version on my tablet seems to be fine in that mode -- but maybe I fixed something along the way unitentionally (?). Thanks for pointing out missing 'info' description in the README file :)

Re: ANNOUNCE: MChronos - Astronomy Clock Applet
 

Mostly that one could set the location and similar using the interface rather then having to edit the ini...

Re: ANNOUNCE: MChronos - Astronomy Clock Applet
 

(Regarding Sphere mode)
I don't think there's anything unusual about my setup (mchronos 0.37-2, I changed the latitude and longitude in mchronos.ini by hand, but I restored the original file and had the same problem), but still I wonder if I'm the only one with this problem. Is there anything I can do to figure it out?

Re: ANNOUNCE: MChronos - Astronomy Clock Applet
 

Ah! I was afraid that you meant that...unfortunately, as mentioned earlier in this thread (or ones also discussing the limitations of the 'HildonDesktop' applet technique), many of the 'typical' PyGTK buttons (including ones that would probably enable the use of 'text' editing) don't appear to work (i.e. the desktop crashes). This is what prevented me -- for the longest time -- from having any 'interactivity' at all (buttons, etc). It was only when it dawned on me to use my own clumsy 'virtual' buttons that I was able to introduce that ability. Specially for setting the lat/long, another feeble alternative is to use the new feature in the 'earth' mode (sunclock) to set a new location by 'clicking'. However, this is not permanent -- but it quickly enables re-setting to any other world location.

On the other hand, I have *not* investigated what other developers have managed to accomplish re: interactive GUI features on their desktop applets -- especially not the Python-based ones, so perhaps there are (now) ways of doing stuff like this that I am not aware of :)

Re: ANNOUNCE: MChronos - Astronomy Clock Applet
 

Hmmm...well, I intend to add a few more *minor* features in the near future, so I will investigate that for sure. What comes to mind is only the two possibilities:

- your 'window' is too low so the 'buttons' at the bottom are being cut off (?)
- a bug in the program is not allowing the 'button' code to run (one of the annoyances about this applet development is *no* error messages whatsoever -- at least none that I can see/use)

Re: ANNOUNCE: MChronos - Astronomy Clock Applet
 

well what hometools do is not so much add buttons on the front as open its own settings dialog.

that is, by going to menu > applet settings > hometools, one can open a window that allows one to change text colors, fonts and so on.

so basically you could open a window that allows one to set defaults like text shown or hidden, position and so on...

Re: ANNOUNCE: MChronos - Astronomy Clock Applet
 

Ah! Very interesting idea! From a brief look at 'Hometools', I am impressed at the 'professional-style' code appearance -- compared to my own. I'll check out my ability to do some of this...

Re: ANNOUNCE: MChronos - Astronomy Clock Applet
 

I see a new version is up. Only thing i would say thats missing from the menu is a may to manually enter a location.

Re: ANNOUNCE: MChronos - Astronomy Clock Applet
 

Oh man! I just put that version up last night, and I haven't had time to 'announce' it yet! I will do so shortly :)

Yep, the README file mentions the 'lack' that you point out. For now, it is the best that I can do. In the meantime, does the new version even *work*? I hadn't had time to 'test' the packaging itself.

Re: ANNOUNCE: MChronos - Astronomy Clock Applet
 

seems to work ok here, it even gave me a more correct looking daily sun track after i ended up testing the gps way of setting my location.

Re: ANNOUNCE: MChronos - Astronomy Clock Applet
 

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.

Re: ANNOUNCE: MChronos - Astronomy Clock Applet
 

heh, ouch ;)

btw, why a menu?

Re: ANNOUNCE: MChronos - Astronomy Clock Applet
 

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! :)

Re: ANNOUNCE: MChronos - Astronomy Clock Applet
 

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'...

Re: ANNOUNCE: MChronos - Astronomy Clock Applet
 

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.

Re: ANNOUNCE: MChronos - Astronomy Clock Applet
 

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...:(

Re: ANNOUNCE: MChronos - Astronomy Clock Applet
 

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/

Re: ANNOUNCE: MChronos - Astronomy Clock Applet
 

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! :)

Re: ANNOUNCE: MChronos - Astronomy Clock Applet
 

ah, ok.

i guess you have already looked at pygtk ;)

Re: ANNOUNCE: MChronos - Astronomy Clock Applet
 

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...