setFlagIsolateSelected behaviour

Bug #1412595 reported by Don Barry
6
This bug affects 1 person
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
Stellarium
Fix Released
Wishlist
Alexander Wolf

Bug Description

ConstellationMgr.setFlagIsolateSelected(true);
ConstellationMgr.setFlagArt(false);
ConstellationMgr.setFlagBoundaries(false);
ConstellationMgr.setFlagLines(false);

core.selectObjectByName('Orion',true);

ConstellationMgr.setFlagBoundaries(true); // Boundary of Orion now shown

core.selectObjectByName('Betelgeuse',true);core.wait(1); // Betelgeuse now highlighted
// Boundary of only Orion still shown

core.selectObjectByName('Mintaka',true);core.wait(1); // Mintaka now highlighted
// Boundary of only Orion still shown

core.selectObjectByName('45 Ori',true);core.wait(1); // 45 Ori now highlighted
// *ALL* boundaries now shown throughout the sky

It appears that one can point out a star with a highlighted constellation and maintain the setFlagIsolateSelected isolation of that constellation when a star is chosen that happens to be selectable by common name. I.e. even if Mintaka is selected by Flamsteed designation, everything still works. But select a star which does not have
a proper name, or a Messier object, and suddenly the whole sky is filled with constellation boundaries.

This makes it difficult to script an introduction to a constellation, pointing out its salient parts.

Debian Jessie, Stellarium 0.13.1-1

Related branches

Don Barry (don-4)
description: updated
Changed in stellarium:
status: New → Opinion
Revision history for this message
Alexander Wolf (alexwolf) wrote :

Stellarium recognize the constellations from stars, who use for drawing lines of their constellations - this is standard behaviour for all versions. Betelgeuse and Mintaka in the list of stars, who used for drawing the lines of constellation. Of course 42 Ori and Messier objects not in this list.

What is expected behaviour of selection of the constellation for you?

Revision history for this message
Don Barry (don-4) wrote :

Thanks for your quick reply. I think that it is dangerous for side-effects of selection to vary based on minor characteristics of the object selected, i.e. whether a star is in a proper name catalog vs having only a Bayer or a Flamsteed designation. In my case I was writing a script which would draw the boundaries of Orion, then identify the shoulders, knees, belt, and sword, and then turn on the artistic overlay -- imagine my surprise when it worked until it reached the three Flamsteed-selected stars of the sword, and suddenly the whole set of constellation boundaries on the sky appeared. This violates the "principle of least surprise".

Obviously "taste" in a matter of setting up such APIs is to some extent subjective. I would, however, entirely separate the idea of constellation isolation from star selection, and let *all* object (as opposed to constellation/region) selections made by core.selectObjectByName operate identically. For instance, if one is trying to show the sequence of stars which compose, say, Taurus, then one needs to refer to some "shared" stars, like the tip of one of the horns which is properly part of Auriga. The question then becomes more of how one should handle multiple constellation selections: sometimes you might want to leave several sets of constellation art or boundaries highlighted, e.g. for showing the constellation flotilla comprising the Summer Triangle. IsolateSelected might take a trinary rather than binary argument, with the options being non-isolated (default) behavior, fully-isolated behavior in which only one constellation is isolated at a time, or "incremental" in which additional selections toggle the state of the extra constellations, allowing one to add and subtract from the group of selected constellations.

Thanks for all your efforts with Stellarium. I owe you several beers for your recent work in restoring the spheric functionality!

Changed in stellarium:
importance: Undecided → Wishlist
summary: - setFlagIsolateSelected constellation isolation broken by some star
- selections
+ setFlagIsolateSelected behaviour
tags: added: constellation scripting
Changed in stellarium:
status: Opinion → Confirmed
Changed in stellarium:
milestone: none → 0.15.1
assignee: nobody → Alexander Wolf (alexwolf)
status: Confirmed → Fix Committed
Changed in stellarium:
status: Fix Committed → Fix Released
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