[Kstars-devel] Re: Using QML in KStars

[Akarsh Simha]

On Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 02:59:45PM +0530, Abhijit Apte wrote:
>    Hi All,
> 
>    Is there anything happening on this subject?
>    Atleast I googled for "QML KDE" and I didn't seem to find any technical
>    documentation on efforts in this front.
>    Is someone aware?

Well, I don't know much about QML, but it might be a nice thing to
experiment. In fact, I have some interesting ideas which might be
implementable using QML, if whatever bit I know about QML is right.

John Tapsell who is an astronomer and a KDE developer, suggested that
we have something helpful for beginners, to tell them how to use
KStars and tell them what's interesting in the sky.

I've been imagining this as a widget that's semitransparent -- quite
like the infoboxes -- that overlays on the skymap and is a dockable
widget that can be pulled out from the sides of the screen (much like
everything in Stellarium). This widget should be able to contain links
that implement specific actions. I was thinking of something that'd
look like this:

---------------------------------------------------------------------
What's Interesting to see?

+ Naked eye

  * Venus is visible in the evening
  Venus is shining at mag -4 and is at 45% phase. Elongation in 11
  days. <link>Click here to slew to Venus</link>

  * Jupiter is visible in the morning
  Just before daybreak, Jupiter is at an altitude of 30°. Rises at
  2:30 AM. Magnitude -2. <link>Click here to slew to Jupiter</link>

+ Telescope

  * Io transits Jupiter tonight at 3:23 AM.
  <link>Click here to open Jupiter's Moons tool</link>

  * Random Springtime galaxy showcase?
  Have you seen NGC 4565?
  <link>NGC 4565</link> is a bright edge-on spiral galaxy in
  <link>Coma Berenices</link>. At magnitude so-and-so, it is an
  interesting target for small telescopes... blah blah blah
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Now, here's the problem -- all these links are internal action links
-- they are to be bound to slots. And there should be an easy way of
writing all this, instead of coding each snippet! I'm wondering if QML
will help here. Maybe I'm completely mistaken and am looking for
something totally orthogonal.

Regards
Akarsh