Suggestion: Add more time setting user controls

In short I'd like more control of the time settings in Stellarium in the configuration window without manually going and finding and changing the login.ini file. I use Stellarium in at our college with students for various astronomy projects and this is not a viable option. First students do not have that kind of permission on school machines and they are not likely to get that sort of edit access as it is a security issue. It would be a nightmare explaining to each student how to do this even if they could access the files. Also we do not want permanent changes, but the ability to change temporarily and in multiple ways for various purposes. In other words, give an easy way inside the Stellarium program to break free of the system time conventions. I also think users outside of education may find this useful.

First the program uses the system time and it will set the time as what your computer would. For example, if I pick a date in December the time is standard time, but if I pick a date in August the time is daylight savings time. This is great if what I want to do is look at the sky because it matches my clock. This is great for my students because they can verify observations from past nights and add details or make plans for future nights without too much confusion. It would be even better if there was an easy way inside the configuration window of Stellarium to switch between 24h and 12h formats.

However, there needs to be a way (if there is let me know; it not please add) to turn off daylight savings time and force Stellarium to use standard time regardless of the date. Maybe a box in the configuration window that allows you to check DST on or DST off. (Being able to stay in DST might be nice, but it is less important than staying in standard time.) Another way to do this would be to have an option to set how many hours off of universal time you want the program to be and let that option override any system conventions. When students are doing a project to see how the night sky changes night to night and month to month twice a year you get an artificial shift because of this hour. Even if I'm using Stellarium in December when standard time is active; if I choose a date in August the program remembers that was daylight savings time and automatically does the correction for me whether I want it or not. This isn't always a good thing and since every year the shift occurs on a different date it can be a challenge sometimes remembering when to add/subtract the extra hour and its easy to forget to do this. Computers can do this stuff automatically so well, so why not let the program do it. Yes, students can do math to make these changes, but it takes time, they often forget, and it's another distraction from what is often the major goal of project.

Even if you have your location set for a particular place it would be nice to pick the time zone of your choice temporarily and separately. I'd especially like the option to pick universal time on occasion. This could easily be done with a time counter asking you to input how many hours off of universal time you are. Many programs have used this. For use with a telescope and illustrating different time conventions, having the option of sidereal time versus solar time, would be helpful. I haven't found this program to easily handle that, so we don't even try with this. These last two are more minor points.