Hi folks,
I've been getting some reports of crashes with the latest update
to Guide 8. They happen when you go to a one-degree or smaller field
of view, and I've tracked it down to a bug in the plotting of orbital
binaries. (I somewhat arbitrarily decided that Guide wouldn't attempt
to split orbital binaries unless you zoomed past that one-degree limit.)
Larry Wood, this _probably_ is where your crashes are coming from.
(Dunno about the aperture clicking problem... that's another e-mail.)
In much of the sky, there's actually no problem due to this,
because no orbital binaries happen to be in the field of view. The
bug also doesn't necessarily happen to everyone all the time. (It's
been lurking in the code ever since orbital binaries were added in
April 2002; it may be the source of some of the "inexplicable"
crashes reported from time to time.) If Guide crashes when you go
from level 7 to level 8, you've probably found the bug.
If this has happened to you, visit
http://www.projectpluto.com/new.htm
and download the "in testing" update. BE WARNED that I'd not be
posting this update were it not for this bug. There are a couple of
new features listed at the above URL, and they've not really been
tested as thoroughly as I'd like. (I _think_ they're stable... but
I've been proven wrong in such beliefs before. Pretty often, too.)
While the "orbital binary" bug has been quashed, new and interesting
bugs may have erupted. If Guide isn't giving you trouble, and you
don't have an urgent need to try out the features listed at 'new.htm',
I'd recommend you hold off on getting this update.
With any luck, such bugs will tumble out over the next few days,
I'll fix them, and then make an "official" stable update post.
-- Bill