Hi folks,

James, about multiple aperture rings: you were on the right track in
modifying STARTUP.MAR. If you change line 26 to read, say,

26 ap dia 1.000000 0.500000 0.666600 0.900000

then it will display four rings of diameter 1, .5, .66666, and .9
degrees, respectively.

Unfortunately, you can only control the first one through Guide's
user interface, and they all get the same color. That's the main reason
it's an unannounced feature.

Chris, you're right; it's a Good Idea to draw bright stars using
Tycho data at all levels, dropping back to the lower-quality GSC only if
necessary. Guide does exactly that, which ensures that the stars are
shown with consistent magnitudes and positions at all levels. As you
say, the consistent numbering scheme makes this reasonably simple to do.

It would therefore also be simple to do as you suggest, and show
a mix of colored stars from Tycho and "plain white" stars from GSC. I
figured that such a mix would be more annoyance than help, and rigged
Guide to show "all or nothing"... everything colored by spectral type
(or B-V, if there's no spectral type available), or shown in plain
white. Maybe I'll have to re-think that. Or at least provide an option
for those who don't mind mixing spectrally-colored Tycho with colorless
GSC stars.

Philippe, about .BMP problems: I've been hearing from several people
running into such problems. It seems to be becoming more common lately;
I'm starting to wonder if driver manufacturers are getting less careful
in this regard. Some comments about ways to work around this problem
are given at:

http://www.projectpluto.com/faq_curr.htm#bmp_failure

Denis, about the missing toolbar button: this _was_ a problem,
once upon a time, as described at

http://www.projectpluto.com/update7b.htm#toolbar_level_7_fix

However, if you've got a SET_07.BMP file, 1134 bytes, in your
Guide directory, you ought to be all set now. And it's provided as
part of the 'update' files, and has been for a while now. Perhaps
this has somehow eluded your Guide directory?

You would still have the large "Level 7" button, by the way,
because that's part of a separate file (BITMAP2.LMP).

-- Bill