[Kstars-devel] Popup menu usability

[Akarsh Simha]

Hi Alexey,

> * Object name 
> If object has proper name it should be provided too. 
> 
> For star 'object name' is its bayer designation or flamsteed designation or 
> any other catalog name (e.g. HD###). 
>
> For deep-sky object it's catalog name. As for Messie and NGC catalogs it's 
> better to provide both.  
> 
> For planets, Moon and Sun it's unsurprisingly it's name. 
> 
> For any other kind of object 'object name' is its catalog name. 

Don't we already do this? In trunk, we display the Messier catalog
number (if exists), followed by Name / NGC number for Deep Sky
Objects. For HD catalog stars, you should see the HD numbers as well.

> * Object type. 
> Obvious. I'm only think that "solar system" for planets and sun etc. is a bit 
> of misnomer. Planets are _part_ of Solar System not Solar System itself.

Okay. Acceptable.

> * main characteristics. 
> Stars: magnitude, spectral class (if available)
> deep-sky: magnitude, angular size
> planets: magnitude, angular size 

Wouldn't that make the menu too broad and tall? I completely agree
that these are important parameters and are really useful to have in
the menu. We should probably work out some way to make sure that we
could display these without bloating up the menu. We could probably
reduce the font size for these items, like we do for the Rise, Set and
Transit times.


> I'm working slowly on patch to cover this functionality.

Cool! Thanks for working on it.

BTW, I think something similar for the status bar will also be nice. I
liked Cartes du Ciel's status bar which used to display all the
important parameters when you click on an object - magnitude, surface
brightness, angular diameter, NGC description...

Regards
Akarsh