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Stellarium Portable 0.9.1 Development Test 2 (Testers Needed)

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Kevin Porter
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Stellarium Portable 0.9.1 Development Test 2 (Testers Needed)

Stellarium is the popular astronomy program that allows you to see the entire known universe from the comfort of your PC, no telescope required. You can view various information about the planets and some stars and nebulae, and is great for the casual stargazer or the accomplished professional.

Official Status of Switch
One of Stellarium's developers emailed me last night about the settings switch. He says that he has successfully implemented the switch, but it will be released within the next 6-12 months. So, I'd like to thank Stellarium for their cooperation, but it looks like we're stuck with the current settings configuration for now.

Download Stellarium 0.9.1 Portable Development Test 2

New in Development Test 2

  • Fixed littler issues
ZachHudock
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I'll test when I get home,

I'll test when I get home, or if Patrick or Ryan start hosting you. Mediafire is blocked here.

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Kevin Porter
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Yeah.

Patrick hosts me, but his server only allows 10MB files, and this is a 30MB file. Thanks.

"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning." - Rick Cook

digitxp
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Unless

if you use ftp...

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Patrick Patience
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While Ago

That comment was from two months ago, when I didn't have FTP accounts available.

wk
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works fine

Smile

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ZachHudock
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Works great, leaves nothing

Works great, leaves nothing behind. I think its just about ready for prime time. Nice Work Smile

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Patrick Patience
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Great

Everything looks great, there's just a few last things.

  • You can't remove John's copyright from the launcher and readme, it's his base work to. Blum Just add your copyright after his.
  • It's best to have the program run windowed on start, and then let the user decide. So place config.ini in the App\DefaultData directory, and if nothing exists in the Data\settings directory, have it copied from DefaultData. You can just use that code from another app.

    The info the should be in the config.ini in DefaultData is:

    [video]
    fullscreen = false

  • The AppInfo name says Juice Portable.
  • This one's small, but in the installer, you don't need to comment out the addons directory, you can just change it's value to "".

That's it. Awesome work Kevin, after those changes it's basicially ready to go. You're best to contact the Stellerium developers and ask them if they can add a switch like -settings to change the location of the Stellarium settings so nobody runs into problems accessing %APPDATA%.

P.S. You didn't close your unordered list tag in the main post.

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Windowed...

I agree.

stone1343
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I'm seeing an interesting thing

I've been using the standalone Stellarium 0.9.1 with no problems, so today I downloaded Stellarium Portable 0.9.1 DT 1.

I think it actually started up fine the first time, but every time since, as Stellarium is loading its star catalogs, NGC catalogs, nebula textures, constellation art, etc, the PortableApps Development/Test splash screen is trying to get in front so there's a really annoying flickering, but it also slows down the loading process substantially. The splash screen continues its flickering process for about 5s after the sky is displayed, again trying to get in front as Stellarium is updating the screen.

I think there's a way to disable the splash screen, but I can't find it... The appinfo.ini doesn't have anything, the data\settings\config.ini is Stellarium's.

Anyway, it's totally repeatable, and doesn't matter whether I start it from PStart, or directly by clicking on StellariumPortable.exe.

Jeff

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i didnt check

but the ini to disable the splash should be in /Other/Source.

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stone1343
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It's not

no ini files in \Other\Source.

But I did get this from StellariumPortable.nsi: if DisableSplashScreen = 'true' etc... so I created \PortableApps\StellariumPortable\StellariumPortable.ini with:

[StellariumPortable]
DisableSplashScreen=true

and it worked first time! Which is great to get it working for me, but officially it probably needs the splash screen.

I'll do what I can to help figure out how to resolve this, what's the next step?

Simeon
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well...

if the launcher has the code to disable it and it works, then my guess is that Kevin simply forgot to put an ini into /Other/Source.

The official way is that it has a splash screen enabled by default but that the user can turn it off by using the ini. So it doesn't "need" the splash - the splash is there for a couple of reasons (instant feedback; it looks different than the original so the user knows he's running the portable version etc.)

So there is nothing to resolve (you already did that) - lets just hope Kevin reads this and adds the ini in Development Test 2. Smile

Its funny: Looks like we both joined this community at the same time, 1 year and 18 weeks ago Smile

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stone1343
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Doesn't PortableApps require the splash screen?

I thought John would want all apps shipped with the splash screen enabled.

And why can't I find splash.jpg anywhere in \PortableApps\StellariumPortable? It's referred to by name in StellariumPortable.nsi.

I think the official answer might be displaying the splash for shorter as suggested by rab0ma (apologies - I'm sure I have that spelled wrong) in a parallel post, only until the app starts up.

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Would it help if the splash

Would it help if the splash screen were visible only until the first Stellarium splash screen were visible?

I think the pattern is to put just enough time on the splash screen so it goes away as the "real" program starts showing activity, to cover the cases where the user might not realize something is happening.

MC

stone1343
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Yes, I think that would be perfect

If it's possible, the splash screen should only display until Stellarium opens its first window.

Simeon
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Great

Its such a great App!
Leaves nothing - works well - ready for prime time?
One thing though: It would be nice if you could launch the cmd window hidden. Take a look at my Assaultcube launcher or I can post the line you need for this.

And the readme needs some work. there are some options the readme says the ini would do but the launcher wont (like AdditionalParameters).

"What about Love?" - "Overrated. Biochemically no different than eating large quantities of chocolate." - Al Pacino in The Devils Advocate

Kevin Porter
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DT2

Updated to development test 2. See above for details.

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Kevin Porter
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Alright.

The official status with the switch is posted above. I'm so glad we'll be able to implement this switch and can't wait for the next Stellarium release!

"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning." - Rick Cook

Patrick Patience
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Great!

I'd say if you know what the switch is going to be, get the launcher ready for it so you're good to go when it is released.

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new hear

i downloaded this app a while ago and still use it today my astronomy grade has gone up sence i started using it there arnt any glitches that iv found my only complaint is that the loading thing brings up a white box that says TEST on it in an update are you going to make a loading screen?

Kevin Porter
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Splash screen

The TEST splash screen is an old version. You should probably update to Stellarium Portable Development Test 2 (on this page). It has a different splash screen, but if you don't like that, you can copy the StellariumPortable.ini from the StellariumPortable\Other\Source directory to the StellariumPortable directory. Then just edit the file. Where it says "DISABLESPLASHSCREEN=false" change that to "DISABLESPLASHSCREEN=true". That will turn off the splash screen.

"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning." - Rick Cook

John T. Haller
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Yeah or Nay?

Kevin - Did you want to do an official release before the switch or wait?

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I'll catch ya before it's

I'll catch ya before it's too late this time lol.

Here's a high res logo.

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Patrick Patience
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Yeah!

I say lets put it out now, Kevin deserves it.

Kevin Porter
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Excellent

I'd love that, John. It's completely up to you. If you want to wait until the switch, then I can wait. If you think it's okay, then let's release it. I'm rather flexible on this.

"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning." - Rick Cook

Kevin Porter
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.

John, do you want me to just put it out? Or did you have any comments?

"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning." - Rick Cook

Patrick Patience
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I Change My Mind

I just realized the Vista setup is different, so say:

C:\Documents and Settings\Kevin\Application Data\Stellarium

Is the setup on XP, for Vista it is:

C:\Users\Kevin\AppData\Roaming\Stellarium

So even using variables for APPDATA or USERPROFILE, you've got a different directory setup beyong that.

Kevin Porter
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Hmm?

I really don't understand what you're saying. Is this just a comment or something I need to fix? I've tested it on Vista and so have others with nothing left behind. NSIS handles the directory setup just fine.

"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning." - Rick Cook

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Nevermind

Error on my part, it does handle it correctly using the APPDATA variable, it was just that Travis was using USERPROFILE.

Anywho, I'd just catch some last things now:

  1. In your appinfo.ini, the DisplayVersion should be 0.9.1.
  2. Change your AppSource.txt to something generic so it can be reused without editing, such as:

    The source code for the base application in this package is available from the portable applications website mentioned in the help.html file.
    
  3. Add your copyright to the Other\Source\Readme.txt.
  4. That readme file mentions KeePass once near the end.
  5. Add your copyright to a seperate line in the source, mentioning the years you've been developing (probably 2007-2008)
  6. Update the VER in the source to like 1.5.5.0.
  7. Change the 200 on the splash line to 0 as we're dropping splash fades.
  8. Look into adding support for language changing when launching Stellarium Portable from a future version of the PAM. It will set Stellarium Portable's lauguage the same as the one my the menu. Look at the FileZilla launcher and GIMP Launcher (And possibly Task Coach Portable 0.69.2 Pre-Release since you're using an INI). If you need any help, just e-mail me. I did Task Coach a bit differentely since there's no good way to determine available locales. So try to combine FileZilla 'IfFileExists "PROGRAMDIRECTORY\Locales\$APPLANGUAGE"' stuff with how Task Coach Portable Pre-Release writes the INI.
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didn't have any problems with vista

My apologies if this test is a little late, but I did test this under vista ultimate SP1 and didn't have any problems and nothing obvious was left behind.

John T. Haller
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Splash

I have a splash for Stellarium Portable just about ready. We'll ditch it from the launcher and do it like GIMP in the app itself since there is a pretty bad strobing effect with the NSIS splash as Stellarium launches. Just drop it into the textures directory. Here's the actual file:
https://portableapps.com/files/forumimages/logo24bits.png

The comet tail needs some tweaking. Jwyanze is taking a stab at it at the moment, so we may have a new one for you soon.

Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!

John T. Haller
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Updated

Ok, I updated it to move portable down and make it smaller so it doesn't mess with the version number appearing. Same file (just refresh your browser):
https://portableapps.com/files/forumimages/logo24bits.png

And if you'd like to see it in action, here it is:
https://portableapps.com/files/forumimages/stellariumwithsplash.png

Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!

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Wow

That's sweet!

formerly rayven01

digitxp
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Cool....

But how does it work????

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Kevin Porter
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Stellarium has a loading

Stellarium has a loading screen, which shows the default Stellarium splash. We just replaced that image with the PortableApps.com splash. You can see it in action: https://portableapps.com/node/13171

"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning." - Rick Cook

digitxp
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I know that...

but how does John implement it?

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Kevin Porter
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Replace the image

You just replace the image in Stellarium\textures\logo24bits.png with the PortableApps.com splash that John made.

"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning." - Rick Cook

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