[Kstars-devel] KStars Lite - GSoC 2016 Project

[Артём Федоскин]

Dear developers of KStars,

My name is Artem Fedoskin and I'm a first year master's student studying
Software Engineering in Shymkent, Kazakhstan. KStars is a first FOSS I'm
contributing to and I'm pretty excited about it :)

KStars Lite is a great idea because:

   1.

   Mobile/Tablet version offers mobility and access to KStars for almost
   everyone as smartphones and tablets are very widespread nowadays. There are
   already requests for KStars Android version [1].
   2.

   Lite version can be also useful for owners of slow machines like budget
   netbooks or old PCs.
   3.

   Lite version can become a starting point for KStars developers to port
   the whole project to QML.


Currently I’m investigating the ways of creating Sky Map in QML and have
found 2 ways:

   1.

   Use QPainter based SkyQPainter class. This way I can save time by using
   existing components, but there will be performance penalty as the rendering
   will be divided into two steps[2].
   2.

   Implement painter for use with QML. This can take more time, but it’s
   indeed possible, especially because the painting logic already exists in
   SkyQPainter class and I would need only to port it to use with QML.


I’m also studying the source code of KStars and have made a small fix to
“What’s Interesting” tool by finishing it’s porting to QML 2 (though it
hasn’t been included into master branch yet as one of the classes of KF5 is
not available on all distros)

In addition to the list of features published on KStars GSoC ideas page [3]
I think it would be great to include in KStars Lite some of the tools
available in desktop version. One of them, “What’s Interesting” tool, is
written in QML and would require only changing of C++ part of it. However,
such tools as “Alt. vs Time” and “What’s up Tonight” would be also of great
use in KStars Lite. Is this something that KStars Lite needs?

I would be also very grateful for any suggestions and ideas regarding Lite
version of KStars.

Kind regards,

Artem Fedoskin


   1.


   http://www.indilib.org/forum/general/987-kstars-and-ekos-built-for-android.html
   2.

   http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qquickitem.html#details (Custom QPainter Items)
   3. https://community.kde.org/GSoC/2016/Ideas#KStars
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