<div dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt" id="docs-internal-guid-e54ba28b-2e4a-cbe0-a5a3-c79a59259583"><span style="font-size:14.6667px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline">Dear developers of KStars,</span></p><br><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:14.6667px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline">My name is Artem Fedoskin and I'm a first year master's student studying Software Engineering in Shymkent, Kazakhstan. KStars is a first FOSS I'm contributing to and I'm pretty excited about it :)</span></p><br><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:14.6667px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline">KStars Lite is a great idea because:</span></p><ol style="margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><li dir="ltr" style="list-style-type:decimal;font-size:14.6667px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:14.6667px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline">Mobile/Tablet version offers mobility and access to KStars for almost everyone as smartphones and tablets are very widespread nowadays. There are already requests for KStars Android version [1].</span></p></li><li dir="ltr" style="list-style-type:decimal;font-size:14.6667px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:14.6667px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline">Lite version can be also useful for owners of slow machines like budget netbooks or old PCs.</span></p></li><li dir="ltr" style="list-style-type:decimal;font-size:14.6667px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:14.6667px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline">Lite version can become a starting point for KStars developers to port the whole project to QML.</span></p></li></ol><br><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:14.6667px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline">Currently I’m investigating the ways of creating Sky Map in QML and have found 2 ways:</span></p><ol style="margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><li dir="ltr" style="list-style-type:decimal;font-size:14.6667px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:14.6667px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline">Use QPainter based SkyQPainter class. This way I can save time by using existing components, but there will be performance penalty as the rendering will be divided into two steps[2].</span></p></li><li dir="ltr" style="list-style-type:decimal;font-size:14.6667px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:14.6667px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline">Implement painter for use with QML. This can take more time, but it’s indeed possible, especially because the painting logic already exists in SkyQPainter class and I would need only to port it to use with QML.</span></p></li></ol><br><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:14.6667px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline">I’m also studying the source code of KStars and have made a small fix to “What’s Interesting” tool by finishing it’s porting to QML 2 (though it hasn’t been included into master branch yet as one of the classes of KF5 is not available on all distros)</span></p><br><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:14.6667px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline">In addition to the list of features published on KStars GSoC ideas page [3] I think it would be great to include in KStars Lite some of the tools available in desktop version. One of them, “What’s Interesting” tool, is written in QML and would require only changing of C++ part of it. However, such tools as “Alt. vs Time” and “What’s up Tonight” would be also of great use in KStars Lite. Is this something that KStars Lite needs?</span></p><br><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:14.6667px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline">I would be also very grateful for any suggestions and ideas regarding Lite version of KStars.</span></p><br><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:14.6667px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline">Kind regards,</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:14.6667px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline">Artem Fedoskin</span></p><br><ol style="margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><li dir="ltr" style="list-style-type:decimal;font-size:14.6667px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><a href="http://www.indilib.org/forum/general/987-kstars-and-ekos-built-for-android.html" style="text-decoration:none"><span style="font-size:14.6667px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(17,85,204);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:underline;vertical-align:baseline">http://www.indilib.org/forum/general/987-kstars-and-ekos-built-for-android.html</span></a></p></li><li dir="ltr" style="list-style-type:decimal;font-size:14.6667px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><a href="http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qquickitem.html#details" style="text-decoration:none"><span style="font-size:14.6667px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(17,85,204);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:underline;vertical-align:baseline">http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qquickitem.html#details</span></a><span style="font-size:14.6667px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline"> (Custom QPainter Items)</span></p></li><li dir="ltr" style="list-style-type:decimal;font-size:14.6667px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline"><span style="font-size:14.6667px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline"><a href="https://community.kde.org/GSoC/2016/Ideas#KStars">https://community.kde.org/GSoC/2016/Ideas#KStars</a></span></li></ol></div>