Cumulus Support

I really like, and am very thankful for the ability to make Cumulus look pretty much the way I like.

Is there anything that can be done about the ugly moon? I'd love to use my own images of the moon in its respective phase. Are the png files within the software, or is this fetched from somewhere?

I'd be thrilled if the "New Record" indicator did not blink. A solid light would be awesome! Ditto for the "All Time Records" window.

Can anything be done about the drop shadow, I'd prefer it wasn't there at all. For illustration, I removed it from everywhere except within the red circle. Being able to square up the corners would be beautiful as well.

I apologize for being so picky. I do like the look and the software over all. Prettiest out there IMO.

I am currently working on a completely new cross-platform version of Cumulus - see various posts elsewhere in the forum - and I do not propose to do any more changes to the appearance of the current version. The new version has a separate user interface in HTML and JavaScript which runs in a browser and can hence be completely customised by the user.

Incidentally, the 'ugly moon' is provided by a free third-party component. The image is built in to the code and 'masked', so it's not possible to do anything about it. At the moment I am unable to find anything similar for the new version of Cumulus, so it doesn't currently have a moon image. I don't think it's a particularly important feature anyway, but if someone would like to provide something (that doesn't need to run code hosted on a third party web site) I'd be happy to consider including it.

I am currently working on a completely new cross-platform version of Cumulus

Thank you Steve! All I could find was the "scrapping of 2.0", sorry I missed this. Could not ask for more.

I use an alternative moon image which I found here. http://www.calculatorcat.com/moon_phase ... ases.phtml

The guy will ask you what you are using it for and once I'd explained it was for my weather website he was happy with that.

Yes, I know that a few people use that on their web sites, and they could continue to do so with the future version of Cumulus, but doesn't using it require linking to the code on his web site, rather than getting your own copy of the code (which is what I was referring to in my earlier post). That's fine for a real web site, but not really suitable for what is effectively a desktop application.

You're quite right Steve. It's purely for websites rather than the Cumulus application. My mistake.

I appreciate that until you've actually seen and used the new user interface, it's quite hard to understand exactly what it is and how it works. It is quite like a web site, but the web server is part of Cumulus, and hence it doesn't require connecting to the internet (but would in theory work across the internet). So something like the thing you've mentioned would work with the new interface (and someone could actually put it in their user interface if they wanted) but for the 'default' interface it needs the code to be loaded locally rather than from a third party web site.

So we just need someone to write something that is similar to the calculatorcat thing, but make the source code available and allow me to distribute it with Cumulus

How accurate would you want it Steve?
Assume HTML5 and canvas available?

mcrossley wrote:How accurate would you want it Steve?

I think that anything that gives a reasonable representation of the current state of the moon would do fine.

Assume HTML5 and canvas available?

Yes, I'm assuming a 'modern' browser will be used.

There is already such code in Ken True's PHP script - the code calculates the different phases of the moon and associate those phases with moon images (stored in a directory accessible by the code) - check the function 'cGetMoonInfo' found in the 'common.php' script of the 'PHP/AJAX Website Template Sets'.

The PHP code has also been ported to JavaScript by Rainer Finkeldeh.

SpaceWalker wrote:the code calculates the different phases of the moon and associate those phases with moon images

Well, yes, I already have code to determine the current moon phase, so showing an image for each phase is trivial. Perhaps that's near enough.

I might still be asleep, thus I do not understand your response. If you have the code to calculate the phases of the moon, and you feel that associating images of the moon with those calculated phases is trivial, why would you be looking for someone to write code that is similar to the copyright code used on the 'CalculatorCat Moon Pages' to produce the moon phases?

I have been using Rainer Finkeldeh's (Ken True's modified code) to display 28 different images (representing the different phases of the moon). How many different images are you expecting to use?

Note: There are 4 set of images, 2 sets for the northern hemisphere and 2 sets for the southern hemisphere; one set has a black background and the other set has a white background.

I don't know how the calculatorcat code works, but the code in the current version of Cumulus works by taking a single image and masking it according to the currently visible portion of the moon - i.e. it works to a higher resolution than 28 different images. My previous reply was intended to suggest/agree that perhaps a smaller resolution (e.g. 28 different images) might be sufficient, and much simpler to implement if one already has the current phase calculated.

Having 28 images should be plenty accurate in this context. I'm sure those that want it more accurate use other means anyway. Although, there is always that one.

If it's scrapped, I would be a disappointed, but it certainly would not stop me from using the software.