[Kstars-devel] Popup menu usability

[Khudyakov Alexey]

On Thursday 12 February 2009 09:23:49 Akarsh Simha wrote:
> 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.
>
Yes, to some extent. I propose to do it other way. There isn't much sense to 
display HD number for bright star. But I think it's better to name star using 
its HD/Tycho-2/USNO catalog number than use simply 'star'

Popup menu for bright star:
| ε Ursae Minoris
| Spectral type: F5
| HD123456
| Ursa Minor

For faint star: 
| star
| Spectral type: A5
| HD 26544
| Cameleopardalis

For very faint star: 
| star
| Spectral type F?
| Draco 



> 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 don't think so. And definitely not too tall. I don't intent to add any more 
rows. I don't think that info will eat too much screen space. 
It will require some experimentation to determine best variant. 

Few examples on how it may look.

| HD 123 
| star, 8.3m, K3
| Some constellation

| Dumpbell Nebula (M27, NGC6853)
| Planetary nebula, 7.5m, 8.0'x5.6'
| Vulpecula


> 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...
>
I think I need to take a look at it. 

--
  Khudyakov Alexey