Update posted

Bill J Gray Dec 6, 2001

Hi folks,

I've just posted a minor update, sufficiently minor that the Web page
itself does not mention it. There are three small changes.

First, the problems people have seen with telescope control on
WinXP, 2000, and some NT boxes appear to be fixed.

Second, star colors now work as we discussed on this list, in that
Tycho stars are shown in color no matter what level you're on.

Third, there is a little submenu, under "Extras... Get Ax.0
data", for the major Ax.0 functions. No new Ax.0 functionality is
provided. But as I mentioned in a previous e-mail, when I tried to
document how Ax.0 worked, I realized just how user-abusive that part of
Guide had become. Fixing it makes it easier to explain, saving on "help"
text and perhaps letting me clip a page or two from the printed Guide 8 manual.

Actually, there are a few other small changes, but they are apparent
only to Guide 8 beta testers. I'll be e-mailing them separately.

Owen, thanks for the comment about the missing DSOL (Double Star
Observing List) file. I fixed this shortly after you mentioned it.

About the .BMP troubles: as best I can tell, they vary a lot
according to what card you have and what color resolution (16-bit, 256
color, 32-bit, etc.) you use, and with what program you use to load the
images. All of which strikes me as especially bizarre. Were I
Microsoft, I'd want solid device drivers to draw to in-memory bitmaps of
arbitrary size, for a variety of purposes.

Pierre, about clearing DSS images: there's no way to have this done
each time you close the program down. You'd have to manually go into
"Extras... DSS/RealSky images... Clear DSS/RealSky images."

-- Bill