Update posted/bright mag limit/Linux

Bill J Gray Sep 22, 2002

Hi folks,

I've moved the 'test' version, formerly found on the 'new.htm' page,
to the regular update location (the one accessed from the main
http://www.projectpluto.com page.) It hasn't changed greatly from
that test version, but it does include three new features: a
"full screen" mode, the ability to add more than one aperture
circle, and the ability to make color PostScript files.

Actually, there is one other small change. In the past, you
could go into "Display... Star Display" and set a "mag range".
This specified the range of magnitudes between the smallest
and largest star dot shown; set it to, say, 9, and at a limiting
magnitude of 14, stars brighter than mag 5 would get no larger.
This is still the default behavior.

But the inquiries about having a bright limit, as well as a faint
one, prompted me to make a little change possible. If you edit
GUIDE.DAT and add the line

BRIGHT_LIMIT=y

then the brighter stars will simply be omitted. Thus, in the above
example, only stars brighter than mag 5 and fainter than 14 would
be shown.

So far, only stars have this capability. Asteroids, galaxies, etc.
will have to wait a little while. (As will some method of controlling
this that's less ugly than having to edit GUIDE.DAT!)

Glenn, you're probably referring to this page:

http://www.projectpluto.com/future.htm#Linux

which I updated a couple of days ago, after a long period of neglect.
The idea of writing a Linux version is still appealing to me, and the
tools for doing so continue to improve. However, as with so many
projects, there has been a gulf between "gee, that would be nifty"
and "I've got time to work on that". Aside from reading a bit about
TrollTech's Qt toolkit, and porting certain pieces of source code to
Linux, I can't say that I've made much progress.

-- Bill