Switched over my observatory to BSD

[knro]

I wouldn't class the lack of ASCOM support a "bug".

I must admit I do find that reply somewhat arrogant - Just because you don't want to run windows you won't work on any ASCOM support for the windows version of K-Stars. A lot of other astro software developers tend to listen to the users of the application and try their hardest to incorporate those requests. 

Why produce a native windows version of K-stars then...if it lacks one of the major features of the linux version - that of telescope control via the standard windows platform.

Everything filed under bugs.kde.org is technically a bug, even "wishlist" items. As for that request, there is no one to work on it within the KStars team and since I handle the instrument support in KStars, something like ASCOM support will take hundreds of man hours that is simply not available, it is a completely different architecture to INDI. Please bear in mind that all of this is done in our free time :-)

[chrisshillito]

I wouldn't class the lack of ASCOM support a "bug".

I must admit I do find that reply somewhat arrogant - Just because you don't want to run windows you won't work on any ASCOM support for the windows version of K-Stars. A lot of other astro software developers tend to listen to the users of the application and try their hardest to incorporate those requests. 

Why produce a native windows version of K-stars then...if it lacks one of the major features of the linux version - that of telescope control via the standard windows platform.

Users will come up with all kind of suggestions on how an application might be improved, and I'm sure all developers welcome that - but it is the developer who filters these and decides what if anything gets done. For instance I've spent the last seven years of my involvement with EQMOD unashamedly ignoring the requests of those who want EQMOD extended to other mounts and operating systems. Its not that these requests are without merit or impossible to do, just that I have no personal interest in doing them. Its only fair that those volunteering their time and effort to develop software for the wider community should be granted the freedom to set their own limits on what they are prepared to undertake. When it comes to software these limits my be defined by practicalities or indeed principles.

I can quite understand why someone intending to develop and maintain a multi-platform application would want to avoid being dragged into ASCOM. The good folks at stellarium take exactly the same view. ASCOM has its flaws and in truth it hasn't really advanced much over the years.  We really should encourage all those trying out alternative approaches that might just lead to better automation systems in the future.

I really don't see any arrogance in knro's comments - he is just honestly stating where he stands.  There several planetariums that do natively support ASCOM so its not like KStars is the only game in town if ASCOM is and absolute requirment.

Chris.

[perfrej]

Open source is difficult and I agree with Chris on this. On the topic of ASCOM support in Kstars on Windows, my take is that it would be better to write an INDI to ASCOM gateway for Windows. See it as an INDI server that can supply ASCOM things that are hidden behind it. No promises, but I'll look into it as I am contemplating writing an INDI driver for 10Micron mounts. Might as well when I already wrote a reasonably complicated SACOM driver for the mounts in question 

/per

[NickK]

Open source is difficult and I agree with Chris on this. On the topic of ASCOM support in Kstars on Windows, my take is that it would be better to write an INDI to ASCOM gateway for Windows. See it as an INDI server that can supply ASCOM things that are hidden behind it. No promises, but I'll look into it as I am contemplating writing an INDI driver for 10Micron mounts. Might as well when I already wrote a reasonably complicated SACOM driver for the mounts in question 

Also the manufacturers simply want not to spend on development - unlike open source isn't not free and is prohibitively expensive for the sole purpose of astro. Thanks to ASCOM they have a large hardware user base with ASCOM - hence the desire to at least have the ability to reuse that development cost (as they have the ascot version tried and tested over many years).

However there *is* a demand for cross platform now that Linux is starting to be usable by normal people (although the numbers are far less than windows). It's that point I feel ASCOM failed to resolve - perhaps due to demands by MS.

Whilst INDI's architecture doesn't support realtime well. I've made that point before. Also from what I can see IIDC isn't supported currently.

Oh.. my portable C++ ATIK dynlib for OS X and linux is almost complete. That would be very usable without the issues of Apple Objective-C++/memory management when called from C++ and would be very easy to incorporate into INDI with a wrapper, or use directly.

[JamesF]

However there *is* a demand for cross platform now that Linux is starting to be usable by normal people (although the numbers are far less than windows). It's that point I feel ASCOM failed to resolve - perhaps due to demands by MS.

I've always assumed it was because ASCOM was based on COM and therefore the underlying architecture was subject to change on Microsoft's whim.  That's really not a good basis for a long-term cross-platform interoperable system.  To the original developers it probably made a great deal of sense to use COM because those weren't the terms they were thinking in and it meant much of the heavy lifting was already done for them.  That ten years or more later it clearly wasn't a good choice from the point of view of portability and interoperability is just one of those things.  I'd have made a small wager at the turn of the century that Linux would continue to become more mainstream, but I'd already been watching it grow for six years or more when most people had never even heard of it.

James

[malc-c]

Open source is difficult and I agree with Chris on this. On the topic of ASCOM support in Kstars on Windows, my take is that it would be better to write an INDI to ASCOM gateway for Windows. See it as an INDI server that can supply ASCOM things that are hidden behind it. No promises, but I'll look into it as I am contemplating writing an INDI driver for 10Micron mounts. Might as well when I already wrote a reasonably complicated SACOM driver for the mounts in question 

/per

Per,

Something like that has already been done, using something like a wrapper, but when I tried it failed to work (from memory the telescope option in k-stars was still missing / greyed out)

Guys, I appreciate that a lot of these applications are developed in peoples free time, and are either open source or free ware, and I'm not "attacking" K-stars in particular. 

But I do feel that if developers are porting their applications to be cross platform, then some effort should be made to offer all of the functionality on both versions.  CdC is both Linux and Windows compatible and supports INDI and ASCOM respectively, and is available as freeware and produced by a small team of four.  Going by the above response to my earlier post, it seemed that 50 odd similar requests to mine for a native ASCOM support in K-stars was turned down even though there are 17 authors on the team, let alone the background support in the KDE environment, and at the time I thought that this would be seriously considered as a viable upgrade to the application, and could most definitely increase the popularity of the application, which by the way I feel has an excellent look and feel compared to some others that still resemble windows 3.11 applications.

Anyway that's my 2p worth.  The developers of K-stars have explained their reasoning and have stated that native ASCOM will  never happen, so I guess I'll just have to live with it.

[Gasman]

Please bear in mind that all of this is done in our free time :-)

And very much appreciated it is too Jasem!!

Steve

[knro]

it seemed that 50 odd similar requests to mine for a native ASCOM support in K-stars was turned down even though there are 17 authors on the team, let alone the background support in the KDE environment, and at the time I thought that this would be seriously considered as a viable upgrade to the application, and could most definitely increase the popularity of the application, which by the way I feel has an excellent look and feel compared to some others that still resemble windows 3.11 applications.

That's the number of developers who contributed to KStars over the last decade, the number of active developers is actually less than Cdc! Also, I don't believe Cdc supports INDI under Windows because INDI doesn't work in Windows. It looks like there is ASCOM-to-INDI bridge already available for Windows called wINDI. I will check with the author to see if it support recents versions of INDI Library and if it does, then the work required to support it under Windows wouldn't be as difficult as supporting ASCOM directly. Can't make promises, but I'll look into it.

[malc-c]

That's the number of developers who contributed to KStars over the last decade, the number of active developers is actually less than Cdc! Also, I don't believe Cdc supports INDI under Windows because INDI doesn't work in Windows. It looks like there is ASCOM-to-INDI bridge already available for Windows called wINDI. I will check with the author to see if it support recents versions of INDI Library and if it does, then the work required to support it under Windows wouldn't be as difficult as supporting ASCOM directly. Can't make promises, but I'll look into it.

wINDI was the system that I tried using.  At the time I managed to get the server running, and the wrapper found the server, but in K-stars the server could not be found or the option non selectable.

I appreciate you taking the time to investigate the mater further, and keep my fingers crossed that something comes of it.

Oh and I think I might of confused you.  My comment regarding CdC was that under linux, the linux version of CdC uses the INDI platform, where as the windows version when running on windows uses ASCOM  - both natively

[polakovic]

Can you tell me what is exactly the issues, what scopes that are not supported? Let's look at INDI's support in the last version 0.9.9 (the SVN version add more hardware support)...

And if you don't insist on GPL there are also drivers for ATIK CCDs and FilterWheels...

http://www.cloudmakers.eu/indi

[griz11]

I was a Unix admin for years so I'm more familiar with BSD and ATT unix than I am with windoze. In fact I had to support all the flavors. AIX is the biggest pain at least it was its been over 10 years since I was doing that stuff. First time I installed FreeBSD it was 70+ floppies. My buddy and I put the Ft Worth Star Telegram newspaper on the internet. It was the 5th newspaper on the net. We ran our whole company on BSD. Hard to tell the difference these days with BSD running Linux stuff and Solaris stuff now. Wish I was a little younger I'd write some software myself. I hacked the Celestron ASCOM driver for the NextStar when it came out and put it back in the repository. Haven't had any luck with the wifi router replacement for my notebook. Managed to brick the first one. Stupid mistake on my part. But another one is on the way and hopefully this time I can get it to work. Bsd and I suppose Linux have changed a lot since I was active. But its all coming back now. Set up FreeNAS as well on an old box I had laying around. Once my system was set up properly PI wasn't that hard to get running. Some ldconfig commands to set up the libraries and had to make a soft link to rename one lib and turn on the composting in the window manager and it came right up. One thing you gotta change is the directory for updates. It defaults to /tmp and you can't run programs out of there. So once you install it and get it to come up first thing you need to do is change that directory before you allow it to update. Sure is fast on BSD. Just wish the weather would clear up. I just bought a 7D MkII and I'm dying to try it out on AP.

Griz

[malc-c]

knro, on 18 Dec 2014 - 11:02 PM, said:

Can you tell me what is exactly the issues, what scopes that are not supported? Let's look at INDI's support in the last version 0.9.9 (the SVN version add more hardware support)...

The main issue is that under windows the "telescope" option to connect to the INDI driver isn't there or when you enter the Tools > equipment, no driver can be selected. 

For an experiment I installed wINDI and ran the JINDI server - selecting EQMOD Simulator as the telescope as this PC is not connected to the mount.  I launched CdC and set the Telescope  settings to INDI, server as localhost, and the port to match that in the JINDI / WINDI settings.  I connected to the scope and was able to slew to any object, and park the scope just as I would if using native ASCOM drivers and EQMOD.

I downloaded the installed for K-stars under the KDE platform and ran that - Launched K-Stars and there was no Telescope option - and adding a device via the tools doesn't find any "driver" - It simply seems if K-stars under windows doesn't detect that there is an INDI server running and thus provide the option to select a suitable telescope / driver.

[griz11]

I'm an old nix head from way back. The first time I installed it was from a tape and the console was a dec writer   I am tired of the updates screwing up stuff on windows. They always fix it a few days later but in the meantime its dangerous to your data. Mine had been updated I started doing some file management stuff moving things around and the file exporer kept dying. Well the last time it died it took one of my disks with it. Had a lot of pictures on it some of which weren't backed up I later found out. So I decided to get off that for my important stuff and build a freenas box to get reliable backups. I had a seagate nas but its totally worthless. Taking the drives out of that to use in the freenas box. I set it up at my brother's house last week and it works great. Pi flies on it. And if I need a driver or something similar I can write that. I did the one for my old Nexstar. Had to hack the existing ascom driver to get it to work. I haven't touched any version for over 10 years lots of stuff has changed. But it didn't take long to get back in the hang of it. If something goes wrong I like to be able to fix it myself and that requires source. Once you get used to that its hard to go back to a closed system. It really boils down to what you like. If windows does it for you by all means go for it.

Griz

[NickK]

I think there's a minority that has both the knowledge and the inclination to get into that level of hardware/coding.

The majority of AP/astronomers have limited time, balancing family/work and their hobby, that means maximising their time under the stars.

I know money can seem a bad word in the OpenSource community but there is value in what people do. If people do it and share - great. If people decide to ask for money for a closed source piece of software - great.  If you keep the source closed but share the binary for free - great. People will decide if they value something enough to pay for it or if they will accept a free solution. The majority of users of free software don't contribute to it in feedback or code updates.

What annoys me (pushes the red button) is that people get annoyed (literally) that you if don't automatically give something away for free or give away the source code even if the binary is free to use.  For me that shows a fundamental lack of respect at a human level.

There's probably a bit of red button rant in that lot but I feel you can see what I'm annoyed about

Don't get me started on supporting the oldest platform out there

Now.. back to the thread