Advanced Preference to disable falling stars

[ika-chan!]

Is there a way to disable the falling stars from r14578 with an Advanced Preference entry? It can get annoying after a while.

[stoecker]

What about: Do something with josm instead of staring at the start screen.

[stoecker]

Ticket #18432 has been marked as a duplicate of this ticket.

[maarten]

What about: don't even spend your time coding something like this but spend time working on all the other open tickets.

[GerdP]

I'd be happy to invest my time to remove it.
My first thought when I saw it last year: Shit, a virus :(
Next thought: No, very unlikely. I looked the svn log and found that it was intended.
Next thought: I don't like this because it is some kind of religious statement and I am kind of against all religions.

[stoecker]

Sorry, but falling snow is in no way a religious statement. Are the walking Lemmings on the boot screen of openSUSE a religious statement also?

[GerdP]

The religios statement is in the source code and in the svn log message:
"It's Christmas time! Animate our "Getting Started" page with shining stars."

[maarten]

And in the source
"The gui/animation Christmas GPL code is from Jiri Vanek (Red Hat):"

It's not snowflakes.

[stoecker]

Please don't start such hairsplitting.

JOSM is used and probably developed by people of different opinion. For me these things always have been snowflakes (I've never seen stars falling down). Anyway beside this I personally never believed in any deity and nevertheless Christmas is a time to celebrate for me.

Christmas and this animation is only a religious statement when you want it to be a religious statement.

This is a harmless animation and not a statement to fight the pagans and whoever sees this different should try to readjust his view.

BTW I would fight for it especially as atheist and somebody who does not really care for it, because nothing can be more wrong than not doing something because SOMEBODY could misunderstand it.

[skyper]

+1 for an option to disable it.

• it is distracting when reading the news.
• it is power consuming.
• snow falls are only appropriate for the northern part of the norther hemisphere.
• the time span shows that the background (Christmas) is religious/cultural not winter.

Replying to stoecker:

What about: Do something with josm instead of staring at the start screen.

Not a nice answer for a simply question.

Replying to GerdP:

I'd be happy to invest my time to remove it.

This would be welcome. Thanks in advance.

[GerdP]

add expert option gui.start.animation. If set to false JOSM will not show an animation after next start or restart

[GerdP]

In 15602/josm:

fix #18431: add expert option gui.start.animation. If set to false JOSM will not show an animation after next start or restart

[stoecker]

Ticket #18446 has been marked as a duplicate of this ticket.

[stoecker]

I really have the feeling the world is going down the drain. 3 bug reports complaining about a harmless animation in 3 days. I expect that people like it or not, but who the hell opens a bug-report to complain about an obviously temporary funny animation?

And it should be obvious that JOSM developers are aware of the fact that the world is round, has a northern and a southern hemisphere, different regions, religions and traditions.

Nevertheless this software is developed by a few people only and these people have the right to add any funny jokes or animations to the software. In the 90ies it was even expected that each software has such things. The spirit of freedom and tolerance seems getting lost faster and faster each year since the millenium. Very sad!

[mario@…]

how do I switch it off?
I find it distracting, in particular while I'm perspiring like a pig in 30°C.
I am from the previous millennium, and I was used to this kind of funny shit.
so my first guess was to click on a star and smash it on the screen, like on xroaches,
but no, they keep falling.

[GerdP]

The easiest way is to press Crtl+N to start a new edit layer.

[stoecker]

Replying to mario@…:

so my first guess was to click on a star and smash it on the screen, like on xroaches,

Ah, that would be a nice extension...

[Don-vip]

Replying to stoecker:

I really have the feeling the world is going down the drain. 3 bug reports complaining about a harmless animation in 3 days. I expect that people like it or not, but who the hell opens a bug-report to complain about an obviously temporary funny animation?

And it should be obvious that JOSM developers are aware of the fact that the world is round, has a northern and a southern hemisphere, different regions, religions and traditions.

Nevertheless this software is developed by a few people only and these people have the right to add any funny jokes or animations to the software. In the 90ies it was even expected that each software has such things. The spirit of freedom and tolerance seems getting lost faster and faster each year since the millenium. Very sad!

+1. Seeing all these incredibly negative/hostile comments for a funny feature I made one year ago just want make me stop coding for JOSM for the holidays. Well done guys. Seriously, seeing some harmless stars for a few days should suddenly be the most important matter we need to discuss and focus on?

@Gerd: I propose to rename the property to no.fun.allowed. This way we could disable every fun feature Dirk or I would like to add to JOSM, so that angry people remain happy.

[anonymous]

Well said Don-vip. We are really surrounded by embittered idiots. I wish you all a Merry Christmas

[anonymous]

hey, lower the tone please. we're not calling anybody names, and we don't like to be called names.

I enjoyed, in the old times, when I could start xsnow and ask for -santa …
but that was something we would do conscientiously, willingly, and expecting to have some company on the screen.

xsnow and xroaches would stay in the area *outside* the windows where we worked.
this occupies much more space, flies in front of the letters I am trying to read, and we're not in control.

[mario@…]

you know what? maybe, if one line in the news would mention something like:

happy Christmas you all, these flying stars will stop on the 26th of December at 12:00 UTC

you would not have received a single bug report. at least: you would not have received mine.

[stoecker]

Replying to mario@…:

you know what? maybe, if one line in the news would mention something like:

happy Christmas you all, these flying stars will stop on the 26th of December at 12:00 UTC

you would not have received a single bug report. at least: you would not have received mine.

Yes that's so true and one must note that fun and jokes should never be made without a disclaimer and be explained afterwards.

[ika-chan!]

Guys, your arrogance and excessive political "war on Christmas" and "no fun" arguments about a simple request to manually disable the falling stars is really alarming.

Where did I ever say that it must be turned off by default?

[Klumbumbus]

Replying to Don-vip:

all these incredibly negative/hostile comments

Here is some positive feedback for you :) starting from this post: ​https://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewtopic.php?pid=772698#p772698

[anonymous]

Don't worry. The actual name in English is "Yule".
That is where the Santas and snow is from.

Merry Yuletide to you all :)