Hello,

I need to produce high quality star charts, which I produce with
Adobe Illustrator. I generate a Postscript file for each item (e.g.
for the milky way, the grids, constellation names etc.), import
these files into Illustrator and layer them. So I have complete
control over the appearance of every object type. This works
perfect except for the stars layer, which Illustrator cannot handle.

When I examined the Postscript files I found out, that Guide 8
composes each star from a number of lines rather than using
circles. This results in zillions of drawing objects which are too
many too handle, especially when producing 60 degree charts
with a limiting magnitude of 6.5.. The problem gets worse, if I
use outlined stars (the outlines are made from tiny rectangles).

The problem exists regardlessly of the printing method, i.e.
whether I use Guide's "Generate Postscript" function or whether I
print to a file with a virtual Postscript printer.

Another aspect is that due to the lines, stars appear with little
steps, which makes it hard to scale a star chart.

Is there a way to make Guide generate circles rather than lines?
Or is there any other way to work around this problem?

Thanks for your help.

Ernst.

P.S.: Besides that, I can't praise Bill enough for the tremedous
job he has done. I love Guide for its extreme flexibility.