[Kstars-devel] possible features

[Jasem Mutlaq]

On Tuesday 10 May 2005 1:27 pm, Dirk Huenniger wrote:
> Hello everybody,
> I'm working on an indi driver for a 1m Telescope in Germany. Most of the
> features needed work well in my drivers when accessed with Kstars. We
> also have a non-indi gui writen in GTK. There are still some features in
> that version that I don't know how to implement in indi. We are
> considering to connect this very specific GTK gui as an indi-client,
> allthough it would conflict with the philosophy of indi. But I think it
> would be better to have a general indi client that incorporates most of
> them. I also have got three month of programming time left for this
> project, so I could try to take part in the development of Kstars,
> allthough I'm just a graduand of physics and not a computer scientist. I
> will just list the missing features, so you can tell me what you think
> about them:

Hello Dirk,

Can you provide a link for your GTK app?

> Preview:
> There is a preview that is updated during readout, furthermore such
> things as brightness contrast gamma can be changed at any time. The
> preview displays a 8 bit RGB image and the data is comming in 16 bit
> Monochrom. The conversion from 16 to 8 bits can be adjusted such that
> faint objects and even readout noise can be made visable.

Brightness, contrast, gamma can be represented as INumbers. The preview can be 
represented as an 8-bit FITS BLOB sent to KStars whenever you desire. 

> Popus:
> Some important messages are displayed in a Popup window that closes on
> OK button.

Not possible in current GUI. Furthermore, messages are not classified in INDI, 
and thus you cannot distinguish "important" messages from others.

> Terminal:
> There is a Terminal window that displays the commands send to the CCD
> Controller on the left side and the messages received from it on the
> right side of a scrollable columned list. Furthermore it provides a
> command line in which the user can send commands directly to the
> Controller.

To send a pure command, just define IP_RW IText property that should carry the 
command to the driver. 

> Hotkeys:
> An exposure is stated by pressing F2 ENTER. An a flushing of the CCD is
> initiated by F7 ENTER.

Not possible now. 

The general philosophy behind INDI is that devices should be able to describe 
themselves, and clients should not know anything about devices. Therefore, 
KStars doesn't know "capturing" or "flushing" per se. KStars is only aware of 
INDI Standard Properties which represent the most important properties found 
in astronomical devices (refer to the INDI developers manual for more 
details).

KStars is completely ignorant of all other device properties and makes no 
arrangements to treat them specially. This is why a dynamical GUI is built to 
allow the operator to control the device. Afterall, KStars doesn't really 
know much about devices. One can write an INDI driver for a toaster and 
KStars will run it.

I will add new INDI GUI features to KStars if I see them _important_ and 
_general_ enough. If you feel that KStars lacks some features you absolutely 
require for your specific project, feel free to add whatever features to 
KStars, it's open source and free after all!

Regards,
Jasem