Hi folks,

I've just updated the Guide software on the Web site to fix three
bugs.

Dario is correct about the JPL ephemeris problem. This is a truly
weird one: it looks to be the first time in a very long while that
I've seen the Microsoft Visual C++ compiler make a mistake. It's
hard for me to believe it, but it looks as if it happened... only
good news is that I figured out a way around it, by turning off
some optimizations.

Larry, I've fixed that "fourth bitmap" problem for the moon.
But with Guide 8, you don't need to use 'clem_bmp.exe'; all you
need do is put the second Guide CD into the drive and use "Extras...
Install to Hard Drive" to get the "lunar hi-res bitmap (86 MBytes)".
(Not that it's a big deal. As long as you've gone ahead and used
'clem_bmp.exe', you might as well keep things that way. 'clem_bmp'
was posted for Guide 7 users. The bitmap you got is the same; you
just had a more awkward process to go through to get at it.)

The third bug is one I heard about off-list: planets showed up
correctly if you had the Inversion menu set to "normal" or "inverted",
but they could appear quite dark (or totally black) if set to "mirror
N/S" or "mirror E/W".

And there's one really small improvement: the Toolbar dialog
now has options to include "slew telescope" and "slew scope" toolbar
buttons. You can also now reset the hotkeys associated with those
functions. I got an inquiry from a gent who found that the Scope
Pad was somewhat obtrusive, consuming valuable screen real estate;
he wanted to leave the Scope Pad off, just controlling the scope
via these two toolbar buttons (or hotkeys). You can now do that.
(Be warned that the buttons show up as "22" and "23". I haven't
created specific bitmaps for them yet.)

-- Bill