Simple mechanism to remotely configure Stellarium
I propose that when Stellarium launches, early in the initialization process, it checks if the user is holding the Alt (or Option) key. If so, it displays a modal dialog to the user asking them to input the URL of a remote configuration file. This dialog has two options: "Ok" and "Cancel" (the default is Cancel). If the user inputs a URL and clicks Ok then Stellarium downloads the file at the URL provided.
This remote configuration file should be a direct replacement for the local INI file. In fact, Stellarium should even save this downloaded INI and overwrite its local one. This way, all students in a computer lab could be given a specific URL at the start of an astronomy unit and Stellarium would be appropriately configured for them.
The specified URL should be checked to ensure it ends with "ini" as the extension. Then, while downloading, the connection should terminate if the file exceeds 100kb in downloaded data. Finally, once it's downloaded the file should be checked to ensure it's a text file and that it contains a few of the expected INI keys. Any violation of these rules and Stellarium displays a warning message, "Invalid remote INI file" and simply proceeds with the normal initialization process using the local file.
Blueprint information
- Status:
- Not started
- Approver:
- Alexander Wolf
- Priority:
- Undefined
- Drafter:
- Keith Schacht
- Direction:
- Needs approval
- Assignee:
- None
- Definition:
- New
- Series goal:
- None
- Implementation:
-
Unknown
- Milestone target:
- None
- Started by
- Completed by
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GZ: You can solve this issue immediately with a simple wrapper BAT file (or shell script for non-Windows) that copies a preconfigured config.ini (and maybe other things like scripts, landscapes, ...) from a central directory ("Network drive") before launching Stellarium.
KS: If this BAT file came as part of the install package and did a wget from remote URL or something like that, it could be a good solution. But otherwise the BAT file has to be installed on every computer after the Stellarium installation is complete and when managing Stellarium installs on multiple computer lab sites in different locations, this is just as complex as the current setup. Plus, this supplemental script install has to be different for Mac and Windows machines.
