Hi folks,

I was indeed concerned mostly about XP. A beta tester for Guide 8
had reported some problems on that platform... it turned out that it
was _not_ really XP-related at all, just something stupid I'd done in
the beta software. Then I did some reading about the CreateProcess
function that led me off on a wild goose chase that brought Win2000 and
WinNT into the picture.

Re Jan's comments about A2.0 data: The problem here is that A2.0
is now displayed in two very different ways, depending on whether
you get it via Internet or from CD-ROMs. I expect to "merge" the two
so that it'll make no difference what the data source is, but right
now, it means this:

When you click to "get A2.0 via Internet" or "get GSC-2.2 via
Internet", Guide requests data from a server, and receives it in
ASCII form. That data is appended to a text file (ESO_A2.DAT or
GSC22.DAT, respectively) and is displayed as a user-added dataset.

As with any other user-added dataset, you can control these by
clicking on "Extras... Toggle User Datasets", then selecting "USNO
A2.0 data (downloaded from Internet)" or "GSC-2.2 data (as ellipses)"
or "GSC-2.2 data (as stars)". The dialog box lets you set limiting
magnitudes, turn the data on/off, _and_ determine if labels are
shown.

Also, as with any other user-added dataset, you can right-click
on an example star and get data on it; then click on the "Display"
button, and get the same dialog box. This is a little quicker and
more convenient than going through the menu and the (increasingly
huge) list of user-added datasets, and can be a little more intuitive
("what's that? Let's right-click on it. Oh, it's a quasar... let's
go into 'Display' and turn those off.") Its only drawback is that
the dataset in question does have to already be displayed;
otherwise, you don't have anything to click on.

When you extract Ax.0 data from CD-ROMs, it's just extracted in
the original binary format, and Guide shows it much as it does Tycho
and GSC stars. Labelling is controlled in "Display... Star Display".
At some point, I'll switch this over so that data extracted from
CD-ROMs is turned into ASCII and shown as part of the user-added
dataset, and there will be one good system for all Ax.0 data
(instead of one good system for downloaded data and one mediocre
system for data extracted from Ax.0 CD-ROMs.)