Sunny night?

[srvanrell]

I just get the following forecast:

                                                       ┌─────────────┐                                                       
┌──────────────────────────────┬───────────────────────┤ Wed 05. Oct ├───────────────────────┬──────────────────────────────┐
│           Morning            │             Noon      └──────┬──────┘    Evening            │            Night             │
├──────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────┤
│      .-.      Light rain     │      .-.      Light drizzle  │  _`/"".-.     Patchy rain po…│     \   /     Clear          │
│     (   ).    15 °C          │     (   ).    17 °C          │   ,\_(   ).   18 °C          │      .-.      13 – 14 °C     │
│    (___(__)   ↗ 32 – 43 km/h │    (___(__)   ↑ 40 – 51 km/h │    /(___(__)  ↑ 26 – 37 km/h │   ― (   ) ―   ↑ 15 – 29 km/h │
│     ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘   9 km           │     ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘   2 km           │      ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘  9 km           │      `-’      10 km          │
│    ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘    0.8 mm | 84%   │    ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘    0.3 mm | 85%   │     ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘   0.2 mm | 71%   │     /   \     0.0 mm | 1%    │
└──────────────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────┘

If the night will be "clear", shouldn't it show a moon instead of a sun?

[antmak]

I'm against a moon. One weather condition - one notation. Sun, moon, stars - what else? No. Sun only.

[chubin]

@antmak I understand your arguments. But should we use "Sunny" or "Clear" in this case?
Probably, we should make it configurable

[jonsafari]

The intuitive thing is to use "Clear" for night and show the current phase of the moon. Everyone eventually notices "Sunny Night" and thinks "huh?"

[srvanrell]

I've just realized that the name already makes a distinction, "Clear" is different from "Sunny". Why should that distinction be lost in the picture?

[jonsafari]

@srvanrell For current conditions it uses "Clear" at night, and for the forecast it uses "Sunny" at night. In both cases a sun picture is used.

[srvanrell]

I don't remember what it uses for current conditions but I'm pretty sure that it uses "Clear" at night for the forecast.

[jonsafari]

@srvanrell

[srvanrell]

@jonsafari Well, it seems that depends on the user, lol.

I'm not trying to start a discussion. Check if you see "Sunny" with this link http://wttr.in/Santa_Fe?lang=en

[jonsafari]

@srvanrell Very strange. Compare with http://wttr.in/Madrid

[m1guelpf]

It could be an issue with the translations...

[chubin]

It's not a translation issue, it is a datasource/caching issue. We probably should force either sunny or clear here.

@srvanrell @jonsafari @m1guelpf @antmak
What do you think about an additional option for the Moon/stars for the night (Sun by default)
(or conversely)

[srvanrell]

+1 on Moon/stars for the night

[jonsafari]

+1 for current-phase moon + stars for night, as default. Night is by definition not sunny.

[dhouck]

What if I ask for the weather in Svalbard, where the night often is sunny?

What if it’s partly cloudy; do we need to draw a cloud ASCII art over every potential moon phase?

[msikma]

This is a bit old discussion, but I'm wondering if maybe it can be brought up again? I would love to have a moon in the output.

It's a good idea to have the phase of the moon in the output as well, although that also means we'd need to determine the angle of the shadow using the user's latitude.

Some tests I've done (I tried to add a moon surface because it makes the shadow more visible):

[chubin]

@msikma Wow, Michel! Congratulations, it looks freaking awesome!!

Probably we should add more shades of gray (almost all modern terminal support them anyway)
to make it more voluminous, and maybe replace the ---- at the top with - ' ' - and with -__- at the bottom, to make it more round ans so hexagonal (but I am not sure).

What you say?

Regarding the user latitude, in my opinion shadow difference is infinitesimal in this case, and it can't be displayed. The only important data is whether the user is in the northern hemisphere or in the southern, because in this case the difference can become visible.

[msikma]

@msikma Wow, Michel! Congratulations, it looks freaking awesome!!

Thank you, but it's Michiel 😅

I did some more experimenting, but I don't think it looks any better than before. It's starting to look too complicated. Here's the link to my test script: https://gist.github.com/msikma/e253da8f89f2d4a9748aa5aa85d2baa5

[srvanrell]

Great job! @msikma That shadow looks absolutely fantastic!

+1 for the moon and +10 for the shadow

What about the size of the moon? Should it be similar to clouds or the sun?

An ascii version of the phases of the moon can be found in https://www.oocities.org/spunk1111/celestal.htm . Maybe it helps to create further designs.

[chubin]

@msikma Michiel (and please excuse for the typo in my last message),
I think that the new moons look better the original one (at least the first one of the two).
I think if we would combine them together it will be just perfect.

@srvanrell Sebastián, actually the pyphoon project (https://github.com/chubin/pyphoon) supports the size of the moon, check it out; but I suppose the range there is not big enough. The smallest moon is still too big.

I think I will make an experimental output format with moon based on the artwork of @msikma, so you could check it live.

[msikma]

I don't think the first of the two new ones looks bad, but the extra height makes it look a bit too oval. Anyway I'm sure we'll figure that out, it's just a matter of some fine tuning. 🙂

Looking forward to seeing a first test in the program!