Re: Time zone fix/scope xtrol

ginovh2002 <ginovh2002@yahoo.com> Dec 19, 2002

Hello Bill,

I checked them out ... and they both are working perfect :)

Thanks a lot :)

Gino

--- In guide-user@yahoogroups.com, Bill J Gray <pluto@p...> wrote:
> Hi folks,
>
> I mentioned previously that I'd heard from two people, both
> in Japan, running into trouble with time zones in the latest
> update. I've since heard from Steve Renshaw, also in Japan but
> running US Windows 2000, also encountering this problem.
>
> That led me to do some Internet searching, and I found out
> that the function I'm using has an oddity, for Win2000/NT/XP,
> if the current time zone does not use daylight savings time.
> And Japan, apparently having more sense than the US in such
> matters, does not change its clocks twice a year for no
> logical reason.
>
> I'd expect the same bug to occur to Guide users in
> similarly enlightened time zones (Arizona, part of Indiana,
> Saskatchewan... several places around the world) using those
> operating systems. To fix it, download this file and unZIP
> it in your Guide directory (about 480 KBytes):
>
> http://www.gwi.net/~pluto/time_fix.zip
>
> (Basically, this just replaces the 'guide8.exe' file.)
> This also includes the fix Gino asked for, in that you can
> click on a line in the "Tables... List Stars" function, and
> have Guide center on that star. Also, you can click on
> some of the title lines in More Info-type boxes to sort text
> on that subject ("RA", "dec", "elong", etc.)
>
> Joe, Guide _can_ control Gemini mounts. I learned
> recently of a timing issue, though, that can cause Guide
> to emit meaningless complaints (i.e., tells you there was
> an error when there really _wasn't_ an error). I've just
> written up a few paragraphs about how to fix this on the
> "RAQ" ("Rarely Asked Questions"):
>
> http://www.projectpluto.com/rare_q.htm#gemini
>
> Jeff, about ACL and ASCOM: I would _really_ like to
> support the latter (and thereby, indirectly, the former).
> It would save me a lot of time if, instead of having to
> write fresh code to support each bizarre variation in scope
> control, I could tell people: "Just get the ASCOM driver
> for that scope." I'd hate to tell you how much time I've
> spent puzzling out the idiosyncracies of the protocols
> of various mounts (especially ones to which I lacked direct
> access, and therefore had to do "remote debugging"). I'm
> doing things now so that I ought to be able to add in ASCOM
> as painlessly as possible.
>
> I would have added it long ago... except that handling COM
> from C/C++ is, strangely enough, _very_ tricky. I really
> don't know why this is so; I've seen ASCOM used from other
> languages with just a few lines of easily-understandable code.
> Examples I've seen from C/C++ run to hundreds of lines of
> gibberish. (Incidentally, I'm only using WATCOM for the DOS
> software; the Windows version uses Microsoft Visual C++.)
>
> Some recent comments on the ASCOM list have suggested
> that the situation may no longer be quite so bad. When the
> time comes, I'll ask around again and see if I can get a more
> positive answer than I have previously.
>
> -- Bill