[Kstars-devel] Re: KStars in Google Code-In?

[Akarsh Simha]

> Hi Akarsh,
> 
> What about translation? I'm not very familiar, but is there anything
> missing on having KStars completely localized?

Hi Victor

Translation for KDE is taken care of by the translation team, so I
really don't know about this, and I think they are putting up their
own tasks.

> KStars has a lot of useful algorithms already, but are there any other
> astronomical algorithm we want to see checked in?
> Having students implementing specific astronomical algorithms, could
> be a set of several medium 1 week tasks.

That would be good. I'd like someone to re-implement Saturn's moons
from Meeus' book.

There was some discussion about the refraction and airmass formulae,
and we figure they are not really up-to-the-mark. I think those are
good things to put up as tasks as well.

> >> What is the current status of the old AstroInfo project [1] ?
> >> I think a task could be to add new definitions and describe how they
> >> appear within KStars (and revive the AstroInfo project itself ?).
> >
> > Yes. I think that's a good idea, for a 1 ~ 1.5 or even 2 week task. We
> > can say we specifically request for certain articles.
> Let's proceed like this then, specifying some exact articles, within each task.
> Why do you think 1.5 or 2 weeks are required? Let's divide it several
> smaller tasks (2-3), at most one week each.

Yes. That makes sense. I've tried to do that on the current Ideas
page.

> What precise ideas for articles do you have?
> A very theoretical one, missing, would be about stellar evolution
> (implying the HR Diagram, which isn't anywhere).

Oh, that's a good thing. Please feel free to add it.

> Star hoping as an astronomical technique or algorithms in CS (you
> mentioned some time ago you implemented one, right?)

Yeah, I've implemented a bad version of A* -- currently, all the
parameters in the heuristics are hard-coded. I'd like to make those
parameters exposed to the user. But I must at least scrub my code
clean before I can get it into trunk.

[Or are there people with free time here, to scrub it clean? In that
case, I'll push my mess into trunk anyway]

> >> Another idea would be a PDF guide for teachers who want to use KStars
> >> in a classroom at school or astronomy club.
> >
> > That's a very good idea too. I guess Jasem would have very interesting
> > inputs here?
> I think we can already add this one. It's an easy one, since the
> AstroInfo project has a lot of neat articles that can be combined, so
> the main request from the student will be to come with a creative
> structure of the article (from basic concepts explained within KStars
> to more advanced algorithms available as modules).

Right. It could be docbook too.

> > Hmm, yes. Maybe we could work together some time during a weekend and
> > learn it?
> Yes, there are also other KDE projects that have a testing framework set up.
> Looking into this in more detail.

Thank you.

> As we discussed, we need to write as well the fastest way to compile
> KStars from sources (a refreshed documentation).

Yep.

> Let's use the advantage we have, students can learn astronomy and
> write code in the same time.

Yes, indeed! Maybe I should print something and put it on the
solicitation boards on my university's astronomy department and do my
bit :)

Regards
Akarsh
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