Pre-set configuration for Stellarium

You could just distribute a (zipped?) workspace folder with a custom-made config.ini and all data, landscapes, plugin configs, etc. for lessions etc, and launch Stellarium with a .BAT inside that calls something similar to

"c:\programs (x86)\Stellarium\Stellarium" --user-dir=%~dp0

(path to Stellarium must then be equal on all machines!)

For issue #3, please formulate a blueprint, maybe this can be implemented.

G.

Some additions for previous answer.

For Windows you can use exe2msi converter for prepare package for installation via Active Directory. In any case you can edit Stellarium.lnk file and add path to user directory, custom config.ini file, etc. - http://www.stellarium.org/wiki/index.php/Advanced_Use#Command_Line_Options Of course you can create few presets via creating lnk files + user directory can be located on network disk.

For OS X it will be not that easy. Technically you can open Stellarium.app via Finder (open content, not run!), rename executable binary stellarium to stellarium.run (as example), create inside Stellarium.app executable shell script stellarium and call stellarium.run from it with command line options for stellarium.run. I not guarantee that this hack will work correctly.

Possible we should thinking about creating some tool for customizing installable package for universities/colleges/schools/etc.

Thanks guys, this is a good start. What do you think of this as a rough sketch of two blueprints. I could help flesh these out further if you guys think these are good ideas:

(I)
When Stellarium launches, for both Mac and Windows, it currently reads configuration from a local INI file. What if we were to implement a new feature like this:

Upon launch, if Stellarium detects that the Alt (or Option) key is being held (very early in the initialization process) then it displays a modal dialog to the user asking them to input the address 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 old one. This would provide a generalized scheme for remote configuration of Stellarium and this would ensure it only needs to be done once and not every time Stellarium is launched.

Optionally, some basic error checking would be implemented. For example, this file would need to be less than, say, 100kb. Also, this file would be expected to be a text file and some basic checks to ensure this actually looks like a Stellarium INI file by ensuring it has a few of the expected keys. Anything outside of these parameters and Stellarium will just fall back to its local INI file.

This may sound a bit crazy, but this idea of holding Alt is a common scheme on Mac apps to reveal some power user initialization. For example, in iPhoto you can rebuild your database by holding Alt upon launch. Also, it's not important that this feature is discoverable by the average user. This would be something we would just let administrators of Stellarium know about (and have in the wiki, of course).

(II)

Currently, Stellarium defaults to your local computer time upon launch but it does not default to your present location. Instead, it uses the location specified in the init_location section of the INI file. Let's add an additional key to this section:

use_ip_geolocation_if_available = true | false

If this is set to "true", then upon launch, Stellarium attempts to ping a remote web service. Here is an example service (http://www.ipinfodb.com). It costs money for highly accurate location but there is a free version available with city-level location, which is all we need for Stellarium. Here is information on their API: http://www.ipinfodb.com/ip_location_api.php

If Stellarium receives a city response from this web service then it automatically uses this location. If not, it defaults to what the INI file specifies.

Please use https://blueprints.launchpad.net/stellarium for blueprints :)