[Kstars-devel] Refined patch for wishlist 178232: List all objects within a rectangle

[Akarsh Simha]

Hi

> This is not a review or anything like that just a quick glance at code and 
> screenshots. I feel that adding new dialogs isn't really good idea. It put 
> more burden on user. He have to remember more dialogs, he may be forced to 
> jump between dialogs to accomplish task, forced to open multiple dialogs at 
> once. 
> 
> Also details dialog have similar problem (to a degree). It allow to select 
> only one object at once. However objects on the sky tend to overlap or to be 
> very close together. Consider star in a nebula as example. Sometimes it's 
> difficult to select right object. Probable solution is to allow user to chose 
> from all object in some region. Say 10px in size. 
> 
> These tasks seem very closely related. Maybe they could be merged into same 
> functionality. Comments are welcome.

IMHO, I don't think the tasks are very closely related. While one
describes the details of a given object, the other lists all the
objects in a rectangular region in a list.

The implementation of such a feature in SkyChart (a.k.a. Cartes du
Ciel) is worth looking at. They have a feature to list objects in a
rectangular region, after which they have the option to center / check
details etc. on each individual object.

With the list, one could possibly add a magnitude filter in future and
then have an "add to observing list" option -- so I could use this
feature to select a region of the sky and add everything bright enough
to see into my observing list. (One can already do this in the
observing list wizard, but this might be easier to use)

However, the 10px region thing is a very good idea, IMO. If there are
too many bright objects closeby, one could open the same object list
dialog like a "Did you mean?" box, where the user could pick the
object he actually meant to see details of.

But I leave it to Alexey to decide what's a good solution.

Regards
Akarsh