StarChart/Bug tracking

Welcome to the StarChart bug tracking page. This is where users can report bugs found in the StarChart activity or suggest new features. See the change log for the list of which bugs were fixed or features were added and when.

Report a Bug

This section is for reporting a bug. Please identify which version of the activity and which build of Sugar you were using. Do your best to describe what the bug was and how you found it, so I can try to reproduce the problem. When you add your entry, please do so using the same form as the other bug entries and please adjust the "next bug number". Also, please look at the list of known bugs, below, before adding your report.

• bug # 20: this is the next bug number.
• feature # 5: this is the next feature number.

I am trying to run Activity version 12 on the latest Sugar build: os 874 (11.2.0). I am doing this on an XO-1 and to conserve space, I have installed Star Chart on an SD card and am running it from there.

I am having the following problems:

• Will not draw constellations.
• Locate function not working for any type of object
• Will allow change of Latitude but not Longitude
• Does not show moon or planets

I'm sure there are more problems, but it doesn't seem worth looking for more at this point. Could this be caused by incompatibilities with os874/ 11.2.0? If so, I can just run them with the old build they had before that seemed to work when I checked it last summer (os860).

This is for a set of 10 Contributors Program XO-1s that are being transferred form a stalled project at Montana State University to a K-8 school in rural Montana. The middle school science teacher there would like to be able to use this Activity.

Confirmed bugs that have not yet been fixed

• bug #5 (version 10, 8.2.1): A POT exists but there is only English and Spanish localization.
• bug #8 (version 1, build 650): Rotating the screen causes some controls to "fall off the edge" because they won't fit in that narrower dimension.
• bug #9 (version 1, build 650): The accuracy of the plot suffers if the timestamp is outside of the range 1950 to 2050. (The moon's position is the least accurate; the fixed stars and deep sky objects have the most accurate position.)
• bug #11 (version 2, build 656): The "Share" option on the activity toolbar does not function and is therefore presently hidden.

Features requested but not yet implemented

This is where you get to suggest improvements. Try to suggest what you want without saying how it should be done.

• feature #3: Provide a way to "animate" the plot so that the motion of the sky (and the objects therein) over time can be demonstrated.

Bugs which have been confirmed fixed as of the current release

The current release is version 14, also identified as "Version 2.3 (build 120) of 2010.11.28.1830 UT" in the "About" display. The following bugs were fixed in the current or in some prior release:

• Bug #1: The color scheme of alternate-action buttons is white-on-white by default when selected but becomes red-on-white when selected if "night vision" is set. It's supposed to always be black-on-white (selected) or white-on-black (deselected).
• Bug #2: The default latitude and longitude are hard-coded into the program.
• Bug #3: The program will not complain (but will also mess up) if you make typos in coordinate or time fields.
• Bug #4: The chart defaults to E on the left but the "flip l/r" button is not checked.
• Bug #6: The program icon is very bland.
• Bug #7: Display preferences, position, time and offset settings are not saved.
• Bug #10: Even though you have selected "specify" for the time (and therefore the plot will be for the specified time), the update timer runs and causes the plot to be recomputed once per minute, wasting system resources.
• Bug #12 (version 5, build 711): An "Input Error" on the "When" menu is corrected silently without an Alert being displayed.
• Bug #13 (version 5, build 711): An "Input Error" on the "When" menu is corrected to the current local time and local time-zone instead of the most recent valid entry.
• Bug #14 (version 5, build 711): After an "Input Error" has displayed the Alert, you must click "Apply..." again to clear the Alert. There should be an "Ok" on the alert and only after clicking THAT should the values be reset and the alert dismissed.
• Bug #15 (version 5, build 711): You must select "Specify Time" and click "Apply Time" to prevent the automatic replotting in "Now" mode from erasing your attempts to edit the time or time-zone offset data. Then you need to click "Apply Time" again to get the newly-entered data to "take".
• Bug #16 (version 5, build 711): Attempting to support localization in a language other than US_English will break the GUI control message handling for some of the controls due to inadvertent use of gettext() on some button-click message strings.
• bug #17 (version 12, build 8.2.1): The "travel.py" location override is broken. Sets timezone but not latitude and longitude.
• bug #18 (version 12, build 8.2.1): You cannot identify the Large Magallenic Cloud, though you can locate it.
• Feature #4: Magnified view provided so that an observer using binoculars can see a more detailed plot for a small area of the sky.
• bug #19 (version 13, build 8.2.1): In the Spanish localization, the labels of the buttons are too verbose on the "Visualization" ("What") tab, causing the radio buttons for magnitude to disappear.