Celestial Navigation Plugin Redux

[rgleason]

Yes, Late one night after working with Cel Nav I believe I entered -10000 into Clock Offset. Nothing seemed to change. I don't believe I added any sights that night. I closed down cel nav, opencpn and the computer. Next morning 7-8 hrs later I opened up cel nav and it had shifted east across the atlantic. I found the clock offset entry of -10000 and zeroed it nothing happened. Then I closed cel nav and opened it and everything had shifted back, but I and not at all sure it shifted back to the same place. Then throughout the day the sights seemed to drift south enough for me to noticed it.

As it happens I am going to see Sean today and will ask him about this and how clock offset should be used and what it should do! How it is used.

Also why the drift of sights.

And why dont they cross properly? Large inaccuracy here.

To. Label time with UT rathet than GMT? Actually I realize UTC is universal time correction, in this use it is not a correction, we are to use UT!

Anything else?

Thanks again for helping to get this fixed and confirned.

Rick

[rgleason]

Yes, Late one night after working with Cel Nav I believe I entered -10000 into Clock Offset. Nothing seemed to change. I don't believe I added any sights that night. I closed down cel nav, opencpn and the computer. Next morning 7-8 hrs later I opened up cel nav and it had shifted east across the atlantic. I found the clock offset entry of -10000 and zeroed it nothing happened. Then I closed cel nav and opened it and everything had shifted back, but I and not at all sure it shifted back to the same place. Then throughout the day the sights seemed to drift south enough for me to noticed it.

As it happens I am going to see Sean today and will ask him about this and how clock offset should be used and what it should do! How it is used.

Also why the drift of sights.

And why dont they cross properly? Large inaccuracy here.

To. Label time with UT rathet than GMT? Actually I realize UTC is universal time correction, in this use it is not a correction, we are to use UT!

Anything else?

Thanks again for helping to get this fixed and confirned.

Rick

[rgleason]

What is -10000 minutes/60 min/24hrs = - 6.944444 days!

If that was what I entered, and I think it was

[stelian]

I've just pushed to my github a few corrections:
- clock offset modifications are now visible immediately
- I believe I fixed the date/hour problems, be careful because the Sights.xml file format has changed, the first time you load from a previous version it may get the wrong date or time
- relabeled UTC to UT
- made the FIX take into account the clock offset

Please test.

[P_Dub]

Originally Posted by stelian

I've just pushed to my github a few corrections:
- clock offset modifications are now visible immediately
- I believe I fixed the date/hour problems, be careful because the Sights.xml file format has changed, the first time you load from a previous version it may get the wrong date or time
- relabeled UTC to UT
- made the FIX take into account the clock offset

Please test.

Could you provide me the exact location of the Windows version modified?
Bye
P_Dube

[stelian]

Originally Posted by P_Dub

Could you provide me the exact location of the Windows version modified?
Bye
P_Dube

Here you are, I fergot to build it yesterday: http://popies.net/tmp/celestial_navi...4sp5-win32.exe

[stelian]

Originally Posted by stelian

edit: after re-reading I understood you were talking about the coordinates of the Find dialog not being the exact same as the ones of the boat. I'll look into this.

Looking at the source I see that the plugin uses:

virtual void SetCursorLatLon(double lat, double lon);

which is an OpenCPN plugin API which gives the current cursor coordinates (mouse over chart coordinates) to the plugin.

However, it's not so simple: first of all the plugin uses this function only for the first time after invocation. On all further "FIND" dialog opens, it re-uses the same coordinates as the first time.

Moreover, the current cursor coordinates are updated only when the mouse is over the map and not over the dialog. And once a modal dialog (like edit sight) is opened, the mouse position is not updated. In other words, the coordinates will be at the point where the mouse entered the main celestial plugin dialog. (not sure I'm being very clear...)

Anyway, this is probably broken. I haven't looked at the plugin API yet, but I suppose it's possible to obtain the current boat position, and use this position instead.

But this would be on the first "FIND" invocation. What do we do for the next ones ? Do we revert each time to the boat position or do we use the latest coordinates the user entered in that field ?

[P_Dub]

Presently needs to be done at each entry of sight. I think it should be done in the parameters at first and once when calculating sights for a given time. this is what I meant earlier at the beginning. If someone can do it there will amelioration.
Best regards

[stelian]

Originally Posted by P_Dub

Presently needs to be done at each entry of sight. I think it should be done in the parameters at first and once when calculating sights for a given time. this is what I meant earlier at the beginning. If someone can do it there will amelioration.
Best regards

If you want to do several sightings at the same (or near) time, you can enter just once then use the Duplicate button...

[P_Dub]

If you do looks at other program that allow the calculations of sights, you will note on the interface a space to enter lat and long and that's what should be done.
Bye

[stelian]

Originally Posted by P_Dub

If you do looks at other program that allow the calculations of sights, you will note on the interface a space to enter lat and long and that's what should be done.
Bye

On one side, we have the right to do it differently

On the other side, if you can point us to some screen captions of those interfaces it would be nice...

[seandepagnier]

Originally Posted by stelian

Looking at the source I see that the plugin uses:

virtual void SetCursorLatLon(double lat, double lon);

which is an OpenCPN plugin API which gives the current cursor coordinates (mouse over chart coordinates) to the plugin.

However, it's not so simple: first of all the plugin uses this function only for the first time after invocation. On all further "FIND" dialog opens, it re-uses the same coordinates as the first time.

For this I am sorry. I don't know what I was thinking.
[quote]

Moreover, the current cursor coordinates are updated only when the mouse is over the map and not over the dialog.
[quote]
There isn't much I can do about this.

And once a modal dialog (like edit sight) is opened, the mouse position is not updated. In other words, the coordinates will be at the point where the mouse entered the main celestial plugin dialog. (not sure I'm being very clear...)

Anyway, this is probably broken. I haven't looked at the plugin API yet, but I suppose it's possible to obtain the current boat position, and use this position instead.

But this would be on the first "FIND" invocation. What do we do for the next ones ? Do we revert each time to the boat position or do we use the latest coordinates the user entered in that field ?

I will fix this in a better way.

[P_Dub]

Originally Posted by stelian

On one side, we have the right to do it differently

On the other side, if you can point us to some screen captions of those interfaces it would be nice...

Stelian if you send me your email I will send you a small program that do it.
email:-pierdube@videotron.ca

[stelian]

Originally Posted by boat_alexandra

I will fix this in a better way.

Nice.

Sean: your changes caused merge errors wrt my changes. I have corrected this now, but if you could merge my pull request it would be easier to maintain, there are quite a lot of changes pending now.

[rgleason]

When Sean went over the coodinates position he found that the cursor was being used and thought that sometimes the middle of the screen was being used. He liked the idea of using boat position.

For find I think he would agree that initially, boat pos when find is opened the first time a subseqently what happened would be determined by a checkbox in the Find box.
I think Sean said for the checkbox something like "Check to use boat position."

Stelian thank you. I'll try to use it and test tomorrow. Been working on Weatheefax and others today.