Bill,
Here is a summary of all of the suggestions I have made for Guide
8.0, with some comments and new ones.
A new one: INITIATION. When running Guide 7.0 from the original
CD, if the CD was not in the CD drive, I got a message telling me that
the Guide CD has to be in the drive. With the 2001 June 6 update, with
Guide7.exe on the C drive, I get no such message, but the behavior is
very queer. I like to have the warning.
TIME FORMAT. I prefer that the time format be y-m-d consistently,
rather than the 7.0 default d-m-y. To achieve this, I changed 19 julian
0 to 19 julian 24 in Startup.MAR, and in some of the other .MAR
files. Please make this the default in 8.0. (I still don't know what
.MAR stands for in Guide.)
COORDINATE DISPLAY IN LEGEND. I disliked the continuous updating
of the RA and DEC as the cursor moved in a field. I suggested the
following: Have the legend update position only when the left mouse key
is depressed, and the field center onto the cursor position only when it
is double-clicked.
Following your suggestion, I changed
< 60 2041 60 to
< 60 2041 60 2041
in Hotkey.dat. That works. I can toggle between updating and not by
entering <. However, I would prefer my suggestion, because the
coordinates following a Go to, Load Mark, etc., would always start at
the field center and stay there in spite of cursor movement until the
mouse key is depressed, and no keyboard entry would be needed. Take
your pick.
COMET ORBITAL ELEMENTS. The parameter G should be reserved for
asteroids. For comets, that should be replaced by a different symbol,
indicating that it is the negative exponent of the Sun-comet distance,
and the default value should be 4. (It is not a "slope parameter".)
LEGEND. Please add as an optional Legend line Star Magnitude Limit.
TRACK DATES. When the notations on the indices of a track are
dates, I think the start of the track should be dated with the name (or
abbreviation) of the month. Otherwise, the present method is fine.
POSITIONS OF COORDINATE LABELS. With the original CD version, the
RA and DEC side labels on hatches were inside the star field on both the
screen display and a printout (including Print Preview). With the 2001
June 6 version, however, the labels on the screen are still inside the
screen star field, but on a printout (or preview) they are outside. It
is necessary to adjust the margins to get them to show properly. I find
that setting the margins to
Left 1.2 [inch]
Top 0.8
Right 0.5
Bottom 0.5
results in printouts with the RA showing at the top and the DEC at the
left, on my printers (HP LaserJet 4MP and HP DeskJet 692C). If this is
the same for most printers, and you decide to keep the labels outside
the star field, perhaps the margins should default to these settings.
However, I like the old system, with labels always inside the star
field, better - it is never necessary to mess with margin settings.
Also, the printed charts are a little larger.
Even if you don't use any of my suggestions, I would still love
Guide! Keep up the good work.
Truman
Truman P. Kohman, Departments of Chemistry and Physics
Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213 USA
Phone: 412/268-8865, 412/561-8343 Fax: 412/681-0648
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