[Kstars-devel] Re: [Kstars-info] start-clock locks up pc, (KSTARS-1.0, KDE-3.2 (MDK10.0 official))

[Jason Harris]

Hello Mr. Hein,

Please note, the mailing list for development issues is kstars-devel at kde.org.  
kstars-info is reserved for discussing AstroInfo articles.

On Monday 31 May 2004 02:24 pm, George Hein wrote:
> This may not be a bug, but initializing with start-clock running locks
> up my ThinkPads T20 and 240x.  It takes me about a minute to get the
> cursor to the icon and then more seconds to get it to accept my click.
> These ThinkPads are several years old and are lacking in the higher
> speeds found today even in the cheep hardware.
>
> PLEASE, if you insist on it being default, give us an ability to opt out.
>
Thank you for the report; we've actually heard a similar complaint from 
another user as well.  We'll be sure to either add an option to start up with 
the clock paused, or add a "slow CPU" startup profile that will behave better 
for low-end hardware.

> I also do not understand the clock function: why tie up the cpu
> constantly as a default.  Perhaps an update every 10 minutes or so
> should be default, not every second, as it takes a second to
> compute,nothing else can be performed by our senior 4 year old cpu's.
>
The clock does not tie up the CPU on modern hardware, unless the timestep is 
accelerated, or the zoom factor is large.  With default settings, KStars 
idles at only a few percent of the CPU on a GHz-class machine.  

Note that the screen does not refresh every time the clock updates; the 
screen-refresh interval should be pretty slow at low zoom; certainly much 
slower than once per second.

> Note that commands like "E" "S" etc work well, but shift-C does not
> start/stop CLOCK.
>
Shift-C is not supposed to Start/Stop the clock.  At present, we don't have a 
keystroke shortcut for this action.

> I have been an amateur astronomer for 55 years, and a playing/working
> with computers for 35 years - sorry I do not program in C.
>
> I do not use either GNOME or KDE for windowing, they are too slow and
> have tooooo muucchhh code.  On my 4 computers I use ICEWIN to speed
> things up.
>
You can also try reducing the number of objects displayed by KStars.  Adjust 
the faint limit for stars, exclude NGC/IC objects, exclude asteroids/comets, 
etc.

thanks for the feedback,
Jason
-- 
-------------------------------
KStars: KDE Desktop Planetarium
http://edu.kde.org/kstars