[APBeta] Report

[Paul Rodman]

On May 29, 2008, at 19:36 , Jeff Shy wrote:

> I am running at 1400 x 1050.  Several of the boxes at the top have  
> problems displaying all of the text.  For example, in the first box,  
> the last “e” is missing in Telescope.  Under SUN, “Twiligh” is  
> missing its final “t” and it isn’t tabbed in, its on the left  
> margin.  “Civil” is the last item in this list of times, therefore,  
> only four times are displayed.  “MOON” has part of the “N” missing,  
> “Phase” is missing the “e” and “:” and “Crescent” is missing half  
> the “n” and the “t”.  “Seeing” is missing part of the “g”.  The font  
> in the HighLight list box is smaller than the font in the Seeing  
> list box.  No site was listed despite the fact that I entered a  
> default site in the set up wizard.
>
> There were problems cutting off letters in the “Show Catalogue”,  
> Search Catalogue”, and “Add Special” pull down labels.  Similar  
> problems are apparent in the preferences dialogues and I suppose  
> other places as well.

Question: are you using the "Large Fonts" option on Windows? I suspect  
so. This feature will probably be the death of me :^) I will see what  
I can do about taking it into account, but only later in the  
development process.

<http://www.astroplanner.net/reports/details/1000/1004.shtml>

> The Julian Date shows “Julian Date 245-“ in the first line and  
> 4616.56983 in the second (that doesn’t seem right).

Well, it's a way of displaying 2,454,616.56983 without excessive use  
of width. However, that's probably not required in V2, so let me see  
what I can do.

<http://www.astroplanner.net/reports/details/1000/1061.shtml>

> When I clicked on “Show Catalogue”, “Bright Star”, the catalogue  
> appeared and then immediately went behind the main window.  It was  
> easily retrieved by picking its icon bar at the bottom of the  
> screen.’’

<http://www.astroplanner.net/reports/details/1000/1062.shtml>

> In the search dialogue, there “e” was missing from the end of “date/ 
> time”.  The last letters or part thereof were missing from some of  
> the lines just above that was well.
>
> After searching, the dialogue was once again hidden behind the main  
> screen.

I've included that in the above bug report, since they appear to be  
related.

> The site that I entered during the setup wizard seemed to have  
> gotten lost.

This appears to be a "finger problem". After selecting your site  
parameters, you are required to click the "Add this Site" button. I  
suspect you didn't notice it. I will figure out a way to make this  
more obvious.

<http://www.astroplanner.net/reports/details/1000/1063.shtml>

> Under the telescope tab in resources, the “computed parameters” list  
> box did not display its scroll bar until I clicked somewhere in the  
> box.
>
> Sometimes, when I click between the two telescopes that I entered,  
> the Focal Ratio, Aperture, Central Obstruction, and FOX appeard in  
> red rather than black.  I couldn’t find a pattern.  The central  
> obstruction was 0 for both telescopes.  I had not checked the visual  
> magnitude checkbox, but the visual magnitude display edit box looked  
> like there was an odd number (304563 or 804563) displayed on top of  
> the box (not actually in it since the number was longer than the  
> box) with a gray background.  Upon playing with this some more, it  
> appeared that the number in the box was 13.5304563 to 7 decimal  
> places.  This number is displayed for either telescope unless I  
> specifically click on the second telescope which correctly displays  
> its magnitude to 1 decimal digit.  The first telescope was an  
> ETX90EC and the second a LX200GPS 8”.  After playing with this some  
> more, it appears that both are now being displayed correctly with  
> one decimal digit.

Some work needs to be done...

<http://www.astroplanner.net/reports/details/1000/1052.shtml>

> It would be great if eyepieces sorted by size rather than totally  
> alphabetically.  I think this could be more or less fixed by putting  
> a space in front of the smaller numbers.  For example, space 6.4.   
> That would cause it to sort before 12.4.

Oops.

<http://www.astroplanner.net/reports/details/1000/1064.shtml>

> How about adding the Denkmeirer binoviewer?

As what? A visual aid? What is its effect on the FOV? Does it have a  
magnification factor? Increase of focal length?

> The tabbing was kind of odd on the Observer’s tab, it did not follow  
> logically down the page.

That kind of thing will get fixed later.

> I’m not sure what “Resource Name” is supposed to be on this tab.  It  
> prompts for “Observer #1” when the Obeserver name is just below it.

Well, the Resource name is just a short form, I guess, e.g. "Paul",  
whereas the Observer Name is the whole enchilada, e.g. "Paul J.  
Rodman, MSc, MS, MBCS, CITP, C Eng., OBE, VC, VD and scars"  :^)

> I’m getting some red text in age, latitude.  Longitude was selected  
> while tabbing and now stays selected even when I tab and select a  
> different field.  Can we get something worse than 20/40 on vision  
> (I’m getting kind of old I guess).

I need to fix this stuff...

<http://www.astroplanner.net/reports/details/1000/1065.shtml>

> I put junk in the latitude, longitude (letters) and it didn’t stop  
> me from doing so.  What are they for anyway?  I guess I need to re- 
> read the documentations somewhere, but I’m trying to play the dumb  
> user (and doing pretty well so far if I do say so myself).

Right now none of the stuff is used. The Lat/Long could be used in the  
future to, say, figure out how far away observer A is from site B, or  
which observers can see a particular phenomenon from their home site,  
etc. I might just remove it for V2.0.

> Created new observation from observation tab.  It did not pick up  
> the site, seeing or transparency form the top of the screen.

<http://www.astroplanner.net/reports/details/1000/1066.shtml>

> There is a rather odd tab sequence on the observation tab.

Cosmetic. It will get fixed later when things settle down.

> All of the resource items act as though they were one tab stop, I  
> would think they should be tabbed through.

<http://www.astroplanner.net/reports/details/1000/1067.shtml>

> As I typed in notes on the observation tab, the while area under  
> “general” tab seemed to flash off quickly and then back on ever few  
> seconds.

I will work on Windows flickering problems.

> When I put in a second object, the “add to observation session” box  
> defaulted to “start a new session”.  I assume this is to log all  
> items I’m viewing during a single night.  It would seem that it  
> ought to default to ‘add to recent session”.  In fact, this box will  
> be very annoying if it comes up for every observation.  Perhaps it  
> should only come up if the date is different than the last date.
>
> After clicking add to the session, there was nothing created in the  
> observation data boxes, i.e., nothing happened.

I'll see if I can reproduce this. Meantime, dinner is calling...
>
> This observation tab did not seem to be operating correctly.  Its  
> late, I’ll try some more tomorrow.


Paul R.