[Kstars-devel] On the popularity of KStars

[Bruce]

I quite agree with Bogdan.  Kstars maturity is also an issue when you compare 
it to other programs free and commercial in all platforms.  Kstars is just now 
at the beginning a full usable alternative to other programs.

I also agree with Akarsh that we need to look at our menu system to make it 
more human friendly.  

What is the Kstars mandate or statement of purpose?  It seems that we are now 
leaving the world of education and entering the world of full featured 
program.  In which case we need to define what we want to achieve, who is our 
user base now and who do we wish to target in future.  We have beginner, 
intermediate and advanced users.  What feature do we need to fulfil the 
expectations of each group.  How best to we give each group what they need.

Maybe we might want to think about being proactive in this summers Google code 
thingie and see if we can attract some who not only codes but has some 
experience with user interfaces.  Put posters out in our schools and 
universities, post to our lists, encourage those people to apply for the 
position... is that do able?

-- 
Bruce Harding
Information Broker
Member: IEEE, SPIE, IACR
http://goo.gl/ln3rw

On January 25, 2013 12:00:09 PM kstars-devel-request at kde.org wrote:
> On 1/24/13, Akarsh Simha <akarshsimha at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I wonder why, but I don't find KStars as popular with amateur
> > astronomers as it should be.
> > 
> > I think we are missing something crucial. I think most of our features
> > are probably too convoluted and hidden and are not intuitive.
> > 
> > So I'm inviting some discussion on this forum on what might be good
> > things to implement.
> 
> Perhaps because it's tied to a specific platform? I mean not just
> Linux, but KDE. As far as I know, it's a bit hard to discover if you
> are not already a Linuxite.
> 
> There's also the effect that popularity tends to perpetuate itself -
> once a product reaches a certain threshold, people start recommending
> it to others. KStars is just not that well-known.
> 
> Regards,
> Bogdan Marinov