[APBeta] AstroPlanner V2.0a11 released

[Paul Rodman]

On Jul 6, 2008, at 22:27 , Paul Kemp wrote:

> APv2.0a11 has returned the snappy loads. Especially with large APDs  
> and 3000+ Observations.
>
> From the moment I press Open Selected Plan to final display is the  
> fastest that APv2.0 has produced so far. Although, there a lot of  
> screen shuffling and displays being moved and redrawn all over the  
> show.

The joys of Windows. Actually this might be better on Win Vista, but  
I'm surely not going to be recommending that you upgrade :^)

> The screen appears to load at a lower window size and then resize to  
> 1280 x 1024. Some of the graphics go missing and then arrive at the  
> end. The recalculating message is only briefly shown.

I'll look into doing the resizing up front, that might help a bit. I  
have some other strategies I can try too. I thought I had that handled  
in V1.6, but I suspect I need to rethink the V2 code.

> Any ideas on how to streamline all the activity behind and then  
> display at the end?
>
> The flicking of the two windows next the Alt Az  indicators is still  
> worrying, especially as they can flick when nothing is apparently  
> happening.

I'm not sure why they are flickering, since they are now double- 
buffered. Note that they are updated each time the "rolling"  
visibility update passes the currently selected object. I might be  
able to minimise this happening, particularly on smaller plan docs.

I also plan to work on "cosmetic" problems more in the beta phase  
(still a long way off). Things like tabbing order, preferences layout,  
flickering, menu shortcuts, etc. Right now I'm concentrating on (a)  
putting in the remaining missing bits, and (b) fixing operational (as  
opposed to cosmetic) bugs.

This week I'm looking at nailing a lot of bugs (since they are  
accumulating at a far faster rate than I'm squishing them),  
particularly with observing.

Paul R.