My next post will probably a summary of all that I have acomplished during my project and will be posted somewhere near November 1.

<?xml version=”1.0” encoding=”utf-8” ?>
<kstars-skyguide version=”0.1”>
<guides>
	<guide>
		<title>Guide title</title>
		<description>Guide description</description>
		<author>Author name</author>
		<authorEmail>author@email.com</authorEmail>
		<authorWWW>www.author.com</authorWWW>
		<thumbnailImg>
			<image>
				<url>Image URL</url>
				<description>Image description</description>
			</image>
		<thumbnailImg>
		<creationDate>Creation date</creationDate>
		<slides>
			<slide>
				<title>Slide title</title>
				<centerPoint>Coordinates that will be set when slide is 		active</centerPoint>
				<text>Slide text</text>
				<images>
					<image>
						<url>Image URL</url>
						<description>Image description</description>
					</image>
				</images>
				<links>
					<link url=”link url”/>
				</links>
			</slide>
		</slides>
	</guide>
</guides>
</kstars-skyguide>

As it can be seen, each XML file following this convention will contain at least one guide, which in turn will contain at least one slide. Each slide will have it’s center point (SkyPoint at which SkyMap will be centered when this slide is shown), title, informative text, images and links.

This week I am also finishing changing to OAL support with the help of my mentor. I hope to close it this week.

In two weeks I should catch up with my schedule and proceed to work with sky guides feature. I’ve decided that it will be better idea to first implement sky guides and later the changes to What’s up in the sky feature.

1. Lack of support for coobservers – only one observer can be featured for every session.
2. All observers, equipment, etc. are currently identified by QString objects. It’s really simple solution, but full of disadvantages.
3. All the observers, equipment, etc. are saved to XML file. This is not good; only used items should be saved.
4. A few typos in element names – fixed.
5. Wrong tag opening-closing in site element, spoiling the entire XML document.
6. Minor problems with observation planner feature (oal/execute.cpp).

Log browser window is almost done. Rafał told me that I should postpone work on OAL downloading and now focus on fixing problems listed above with OAL support, because he didn’t found any sites with considerable quantity of logs to download. I plan to finish all OAL-related work on 4^th September and proceed to timeline view work. The plan is to merge all changes to OAL support right after I finish my work on it.

This week I am working on Observation Browser window which will be used for browsing OAL reports in read only mode. During this week I have also planned to add the possibility to edit existing reports in a standard observation planner, which now doesn’t have this possibility.

All of my work in related to OAL loading will be ready in middle of next week.

First of all, in order to clearly implement loading of OAL 2.0 reports, I need to enable KStars to store multiple Log objects at a time (I plan to do some serious changes to that class, but describing this will take too much space) – currently there can be only one Log object (KStarsData::m_logObject member). I’ll store multiple log objects in a QList. Surelly, there’d be quite a lot of work to get dialogs and all that stuff to use it, but I done some mock-ups, and I am sure everything will be done on time.

Log object currently is able to store all the informations taken from the OAL 2.0 log. During this week’s I’ll verify all of this and also provide improved dialog for adding and deletion of observers (currently this option is unavailable).

Proposed project can be divided into three parts:

• Create timeline view for “What’s up in the sky” feature using QML.
• Verify OAL 2.0-compliance of KStars, provide log loading feature (this is already almost done), validate logs using OAL XML Schema Definition when loaded. Add the feature to download logs from internet.
• Implement “Sky guides” feature with QML based UI.

Timeline view for “What’s up in the sky” feature
Currently, KStars has nice feature called “What’s up in the sky” that comes in handy when user is planning his observations. In this part of my project, I will design and implement new QML-based frontend for this feature, that will present information about objects that are worth observing (and observable with use of the equipment, that user possesses).
The information about objects worth observing will be presented in chronological manner, sorted by rise or set times. There will be also a possibility to filter object categories and magnitudes. There will also be the option to print the timeline or add it to finder chart, when printing support is finished.

OAL 2.0-related work
KStars OAL 2.0 support needs verification and addition of a few features like loading reports from XML files on local file system or from the internet. This feature can be easily added – I am already working on this (I am using Qt’s implementation of SAX2 API, to be consistent with code that is used for saving it).
Upon loading, XML files should be validated using OAL 2.0 XML Schema Definition – this can be achieved easily using following classes from QtXmlPatterns module (QXmlSchema and QXmlSchemaValidator). They can be also used for debugging KStars’ OAL 2.0 support when saving reports.

“Sky guides” feature
This feature is targeted particularly at beginners in the field of amateur astronomy. The idea is to create XML file format that will enable anybody to create guides which can be then published in the same way as custom star catalogs are. In the longer perspective, a feature that will enable creation and editing of such guides directly from KStars (without the need to edit XML files) could be implemented – it’s not hard, but is not the part of my project because of the imposed deadline on October 31.

Tentative timeline

*August 1 – August 7: Research of the KStars codebase, especially in areas related to logging, DSS/SDSS image downloading and displaying information about sky objects.
*August 8 – August 14: Further research of the KStars source code. Preparing final project of QML-based GUI. Work on OAL 2.0 report loading feature.
*August 15 – August 21: Final changes to OAL 2.0 report loading feature + gathering list of sites that enable users to exchange OAL-compliant reports.
*August 22 – August 28: Implementing a feature to download OAL logs from internet.
*August 29 – September 4: Work on backend code needed to support “timeline” view for “What’s up in the sky” feature.
*September 5 – September 11: Implementing “timeline” view for “What’s up in the sky” feature using QML.
*September 12 – September 18: Implementing “timeline” view for “What’s up in the sky” feature using QML.
*September 19 – September 25: Incorporating information from logs (both user-registered and downloaded) into timeline view and GUI.
*September 26 – October 2: Design and implementation of XML format for “Sky guide” feature.
*October 3 – October 9: Design and implementation of XML format for “Sky guide” feature.
*October 10 – October 16: Implementing QML interface for “Sky guide” feature.
*October 17 – October 23: Implementing QML interface for “Sky guide” feature.
*October 24 – October 31: Testing and amending documentation. Leaving a small time buffer in case of unexpected delays.