[Kstars-devel] Fwd: [kde-edu]: GSoC ideas

[Victor Carbune]

Hello !

I am student, in my 2nd year at Politehnica University of Bucharest.
I'm passionate amateur astronomer as well as a programmer experienced
with C++ and some basic Qt skills (developed a simple GUI some couple
of moths ago).

> Brief explanation: This feature is expected to be of use to amateur
> (hobby) astronomers. The idea is that there are aspects of amateur
> astronomy which are collaborative. For instance, one might want to
> view observations by other amateur astronomers around the world before
> making an observation of an object. Again, one would like to share
> their own observations with everyone else. There are more
> possibilities, and the student is encouraged to come up with them.

I'm very enthusiast of the idea of doing everything written above in a
real-time manner too, as much as possible.
I have researched a bit more into the topic and I have found qwaveclient [1].

Having this client extends the OAL implementation to a collaborative
experience for users with several extra code lines (of course, and
some GUI specific features that can really enhance the user experience
- like adding special comment fields depending on the type of the
object observed, etc.). This will then be done just by simply creating
a wave for the object, and further working directly on OAL xml (as
wave already works with xmls we will not need any further changes or
effort on making it compatible).

Astronomers using their laptops at astronomy observations could
simultaneously see who else is observing what, exchange information or
simply get enthusiast by seeing that so many other are out there
observing and get out fast in the yard with the telescope.

I think this would be a unique feature, the first of it's kind in an
astronomy software, and since there already  exists a wave
implementation for Qt I believe it is a really feasible idea for the
summer, attaching it to the full OAL support.

> 1) KStars produces observation logs in an XML format that is expected
> to adhere to the OAL 2.0 schema. The project will involve extending
> the existing implementation of the OAL 2.x schema and ensuring that it
> is fully compatible with the schema.

I have researched more about the OAL schema on their website and I am
currently seeing where exactly in the KStars code is the save done and
I'm trying to analyze where modifications have to be made (I'd
appreciate some tips, if you get the time).

> 2) A very user friendly GUI has to be implemented for viewing imported
> logs [ And a good SQL backend for accessing the information from them
> efficiently ]

I'm not sure yet how I could detail the GUI in this stage, probably
the best thing I could do would be a drawing / sketch of it,
containing information that can be retrieved from logs.

> 3) Ability to handle objects in the logs which are not there in the
> current KStars database.

I'm thinking on a mix implementation of the this and the import
catalog feature for KStars in a single project. The catalog import
feature seems like a great opportunity to get really familiar with the
code and everything. Currently I am having in view the community
bonding period too (actually I believe that's a great opportunity on
getting started with the project and after all, it is a whole month of
coding time).

> 4) Retrieval of logs from the internet (and other sources) on a filter
> based query. [ Filter could be anything like, Object name or location
> or observer name ]