[Kstars-devel] alternate constellations

[mph]

On Monday 11 April 2005 03:00 am, kstars-devel-request at kde.org (Jason) wrote:
>
> Regarding these alternate naming schemes, is the idea to simply provide
> localization of star/constellation names for non-English speakers?  If
> so, then this is already handled by the current translation procedures.
>   Each translation team gets the list of star and constellation names as
> strings that can be translated.
>
> If, however, the idea is to provide alternate sets of star names that
> can be used by speakers of any language, then we can actually use the
> existing translations to get started.  For example, I know the Chinese
> team has already provided constellation names in their native language.
>
For my purposes, I think it is the latter.  Most of our Western names are 
derived from Arabic, for example, and I was hoping to be able to switch 
between sets (Arabic/English) or even display them simultaneously to help me 
visualize and learn some of these origins.

I also had the thought that one file might include alternate names like those 
from the Almagest:  descriptions like "star in the left shoulder of 
Heracles."

The Chinese names also brings up an interesting example.  There is a set of 
Chinese names for the standard IAU 88 constellations.  There is a different 
set of Chinese names for the traditional Chinese asterisms (which are 
sometimes also the names of individual stars as some asterisms consist of a 
single star).  The Chinese asterism are different groupings, of course, and I 
was already working on a list of shapes of the lunar asterisms linking by the 
Hipparcos catalog number (which unfortunately is stripped out of this 
database - did you just strip and hand enter all the gnames?!?).

If the Chinese translation team has already keyed in the Chinese version of 
the standard names, I'd love to get the list.  How do I contact them?

> By the way, I think these alternate name sets should be an "extra"
> downloadable through the "Get New Stuff" tool, rather than included with
> the standard distribution; any objections?
>
> As for the file format, for constellation names it can be identical to
> cnames.dat (perhaps with a header line containing the name of the set).
> For star names, something very simple like "gname : Alternate Star
> Name", where "gname" is the abbreviated genetive name as in the
> hipNNN.dat files.
>
I'm no expert on fonts, but I'm wondering if we will need to specify anything 
in case we want to use foreign characters for names of constellations or 
stars.  Specifically, Chinese, Arabic, Devanagari, etc.  Is there a reference 
I can read on how this is achieved with KDE libraries?  Perhaps I should 
contact the translation teams on this?

> > 3) Alternate constellation shapes (clines.dat) paired with alternate
> > constellation names.  We might need to reorganize the data somewhat to be
> > able to pair clines.dat files with cnames.dat files. Presumably these
> > would be paired according to a particular culture and potentially linked
> > to culture-specific star names, though not necessarily.  

Maybe I should just create some files to play with.  What is the procedure I 
should use to make them available to others?

-milton