KDE Prepares Smarter KRunner, Steam Scaling Better Under Plasma Wayland

[skeevy420]

To be fair, the PDF spec is quite complicated and tons of apps generate PDFs and don't really care if they break the spec as long as it works in acrobat or whatever they assume people are using. So saying the PDF is broken is probably accurate. It's just that any quality PDF viewer has to deal with broken PDFs and display things anyway.

I agree. Still, though, it doesn't help that some of the "your PDF is broken" issues were fixed by copying the right files into the right places because it wasn't packaged correctly.

[skeevy420]

Actually, that's a common misconception. Your eyepiece's field stop diameter (not focal length!) can can exceed the baffle tube's diameter by 10% with no perceptible effects whatsoever, and generally up to 25% with very minor vignetting around the extreme outer edges. I've done this myself with a 6" Mak and can confirm it. So this means you could use an eyepiece with a field stop of 42mm without noticing a thing, and go up to an eyepiece with a field stop diameter of 47.5mm without much negative effect, which means you could use the overpriced-yet-perfect-for-this-use-case Masuyama 32mm eyepiece. It would give you 64x magnification with 1.3° field of view without having to use a focal reducer. I had that eyepiece briefly but found it awful in an f/7.5. In an f/10, though, it would be very interesting indeed.

I'm just getting into the very, very technical parts of this. I didn't know about the 10% part. The few posts I read recently seemed to be pretty hardline about the baffle limit/fstop. Granted, some people on CN seem to be very, very particular to put it nicely. I'm not that particular...at least I don't think I am...I don't have a whole lot to base that on...

Of course with a focal reducer the light cone's geometry changes so you have to reduce the effective baffle tube diameter to compehsate, leaving you with an effective diameter of only 24mm to work with. So using 1.25" eyepieces here makes sense. 125% of that for a 2" eyepiece would give you only 30mm of eyepiece field stop diameter. The best widefield 2" eyepiece at that field stop diameter is a 27mm Panoptic (30.5mm FSD), which would give you a bigger view than your 24" Pan (1.43° vs 1.27°), but indeed it's not a lot. So maybe not worth it unless you're an absurd micro-optimizer of astronomical equipment like I am! This thread may be interesting: https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/8...40mm-eyepiece/

You just described why I got the Panoptic 24mm last month. To go beyond that would have been $500+ and, to be frank about it, I only had $400 saved up in fun shit money.

Anyway, in a perhaps silly attempt to turn this topic back to KDE, have you ever used KStars? It's just a fantastic astronomy app. It's my go-to for researching targets and figuring out how to get there (I use a manual telescope, not a go-to).

No, but only because I don't have a laptop. I've played around with it on my desktop, but that's it. Unfortunately, my desktop is too far away from my telescope for remote controlling to be of any use so I don't use any desktop astronomy software. I generally stick with SkySafari 6 or 7 since I have an Aux-Fi adapter to control my Go-To from my phone and because I can use the app to star hop with my manual equatorial refractor (3" f11 Meade). If I had a laptop with wifi I'd probably be using Kstars to fulfill both of those roles. Yet another reason for me to get an eBay special craptop. It'd be a lot more reliable, that's for damn sure.

To put this into some perspective -- The Nexstar 8SE was a gift last year from a friend who has much deeper pockets than mine. It is so, so far out of my price range it isn't funny. For years I was happy with my $250 Meade Polaris 90 refractor I bought on sale off eBay for $150 and a $200 Meade eyepiece set.

Long story short, a year ago we were hanging out talking about geology because he used to be a science teacher, somehow the moon came up which made me mention how awesome it is to zoom in on a crater in a refractor, and that turned into my friend buying me a $1500 telescope out of nowhere. I've been slowly buying accessories since I wasn't expecting it and the equipment that I have doesn't do it justice.

I can't tell you how hard it was to drop $352 on an eyepiece that costs the same as my refractor and eyepiece set combined. Damn it was worth it. I had no idea what I was missing out on.

It looks like there's an 80% chance that I'll have cloud cover Tuesday morning. I like lunar eclipses, I have a kickass lunar viewing setup, and there's gonna be friggin clouds.

[smitty3268]

What I can tell you is that your PDF is probably just fine. Your PDF is broken is the generic bullshit response that the KDE maintainers give out.

To be fair, the PDF spec is quite complicated and tons of apps generate PDFs and don't really care if they break the spec as long as it works in acrobat or whatever they assume people are using. So saying the PDF is broken is probably accurate. It's just that any quality PDF viewer has to deal with broken PDFs and display things anyway.

[ngraham]

My 8" SCT shipped with a 2" visual back, however, it has a 1.25" diagonal attached and the C8 tube itself has an internal baffle of 38mm (1.49"). That means that any eyepiece larger than 38mm gets vignetting. While it can use 2" eyepieces with the right diagonal, any eyepiece over 38mm will have degraded performance.

Actually, that's a common misconception. Your eyepiece's field stop diameter (not focal length!) can can exceed the baffle tube's diameter by 10% with no perceptible effects whatsoever, and generally up to 25% with very minor vignetting around the extreme outer edges. I've done this myself with a 6" Mak and can confirm it. So this means you could use an eyepiece with a field stop of 42mm without noticing a thing, and go up to an eyepiece with a field stop diameter of 47.5mm without much negative effect, which means you could use the overpriced-yet-perfect-for-this-use-case Masuyama 32mm eyepiece. It would give you 64x magnification with 1.3° field of view without having to use a focal reducer. I had that eyepiece briefly but found it awful in an f/7.5. In an f/10, though, it would be very interesting indeed.

Of course with a focal reducer the light cone's geometry changes so you have to reduce the effective baffle tube diameter to compehsate, leaving you with an effective diameter of only 24mm to work with. So using 1.25" eyepieces here makes sense. 125% of that for a 2" eyepiece would give you only 30mm of eyepiece field stop diameter. The best widefield 2" eyepiece at that field stop diameter is a 27mm Panoptic (30.5mm FSD), which would give you a bigger view than your 24" Pan (1.43° vs 1.27°), but indeed it's not a lot. So maybe not worth it unless you're an absurd micro-optimizer of astronomical equipment like I am! This thread may be interesting: https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/8...40mm-eyepiece/

Anyway, in a perhaps silly attempt to turn this topic back to KDE, have you ever used KStars? It's just a fantastic astronomy app. It's my go-to for researching targets and figuring out how to get there (I use a manual telescope, not a go-to).

---

To y'all fighting about PDFs: file a bug report so someone with some actual knowledge can investigate it and fix it for you.

[skeevy420]

...And I'm jealous of the extra detail and brightness on planets, nebulae, and galaxies that your 8" will provide compared to my 4.7"! Different scopes for different things.

JFYI you can get a 2" visual back for your 8" SCT that permits the use of 2" diagonals and eyepieces for a wider field view with your focal reducer. See https://www.nexstarsite.com/Book2/Up...WidestTFOV.htm. 1.7° ain't too bad. Just keep in mind that if you use the standard single or double arm Celestron mount, you have to be careful not to make it stick out the back so much farther that you won't be able to reach zenith anymore and risk crashing the diagonal into the base when slewing. I find it somewhat odd that Celestron doesn't ship the 8SE with a 2" visual back.

Funny. Last month I debated between the Panoptic or getting a 2" diagonal with an Astro-Tech 28mm UWA or 55mm TV Plossl. I opted to go broke spending my new GPU money on the better, premium eyepiece instead of two mid-range parts. Looks like I'll have at least another year with the 4GB RX 580. Sorry, bridgman and AMD.

I'm already at that slew limit with my regular setup when my focal reducer is attached. An extended dovetail bar is on my purchase list. I mainly use the reducer for full-disk solar and lunar viewing with the Panoptic which doesn't bring me into the danger zone so it isn't that high up on the list. An alternative would be an equatorial wedge, but that costs way too much money for what it is and does.

My 8" SCT shipped with a 2" visual back, however, it has a 1.25" diagonal attached and the C8 tube itself has an internal baffle of 38mm (1.49"). That means that any eyepiece larger than 38mm gets vignetting. While it can use 2" eyepieces with the right diagonal, any eyepiece over 38mm will have degraded performance. Basically, it only benefits half as much as it should before vignetting occurs which would explain why they ship it configured for 1.25". If it was 2" by default I can easily see people buying the scope and a 55mm eyepiece, justifiably complaining that the outer 1/3 is darker than the rest, and returning it for some other brand or model.

It isn't that odd when you know that 38mm limitation.

That said, going 2" is still said to be a damn good upgrade assuming you know that 38mm limitation ahead of time and know to buy around it. Because of that, they also say that on this tube that a cheaper 2" diagonal can perform as well or better than a higher cost 1.25" diagonal due to that extra .25" of light coming through.

[Steffo]

Yeah, sure! XD

https://www.fireebok.com/resource/how-to-fix-that-pdf-can-not-open-on-macos-catalina.html

https://www.makeuseof.com/cant-open-pdf-in-safari-how-to-fix/

It's probably fixed, but acting like maco$hit is some kind of savior makes me laugh.

Maybe you should read your own links. First link: The user did an upgrade to an 64 bit OS, but Adobe Reader (well, I don't use this crappy app), runs at 32 bit. --> Not macOS` fault.

Second link: Well, you installed some crappy Safari extensions --> Not Safari`s fault.

[Volta]

I have 22.08.3. I can narrow the problem: I see only a blank page with a maximized window, but when I make the window smaller, I see the content. When I maximize again, I have the same problem.
Anyways: Next week my MacBook Air arrives. --> Problem solved.

Yeah, sure! XD

https://www.fireebok.com/resource/how-to-fix-that-pdf-can-not-open-on-macos-catalina.html

https://www.makeuseof.com/cant-open-pdf-in-safari-how-to-fix/

and 'wonderful tip' from above:

If you can’t see or load a PDF in Safari, one of the easiest fixes is to stop using Safari to try to view the PDF.

It's probably fixed, but acting like maco$hit is some kind of savior makes me laugh.

[Volta]

This is unfortunately a pretty common behavior I observed among open source devs. When you present them with a bug, the first thing they do is prove as hard as humanly possible that it's not a bug and/or an issue on your side. I don't know why they do this (probably lazyness), but yeah, it's annoying.

Pretty common behavior when comes to closed source devs: 'try reinstalling', 'read FAQ', 'did you find this response helpful?'.

[Vistaus]

So, I have hundreds of PDFs on my computer. If I test several PDF, I get the reported problem. Same, when I download somewhere a PDF. Firefox and Chrome can display them. Before the KDE Neon update: no problem with Okular. But MY PDFs are broken!!!
I have no words, when I encounter arrogance and stupidity at the same time!

No URL to a bug report = no bug.

[ngraham]

Arkansas; around 30 miles to the east of blue and grey skies, but my home skies are orange with yellow to the north and red to the south.

40MM XW with your scope setup seems really nice. Much, much wider than widest view I can get with a 1.25 diagonal with my ultrawide setup -- a 24mm Panoptic and an f6.3 focal reducer. 3.11 FOV to my 1.27. I'm jealous.

...And I'm jealous of the extra detail and brightness on planets, nebulae, and galaxies that your 8" will provide compared to my 4.7"! Different scopes for different things.

JFYI you can get a 2" visual back for your 8" SCT that permits the use of 2" diagonals and eyepieces for a wider field view with your focal reducer. See https://www.nexstarsite.com/Book2/Up...WidestTFOV.htm. 1.7° ain't too bad. Just keep in mind that if you use the standard single or double arm Celestron mount, you have to be careful not to make it stick out the back so much farther that you won't be able to reach zenith anymore and risk crashing the diagonal into the base when slewing. I find it somewhat odd that Celestron doesn't ship the 8SE with a 2" visual back.