[guide-user] Updated software/other features

Bill J. Gray Dec 22, 1999

Hi folks,

I've just updated the site a bit... the updates that were discussed on
NEW.HTM are now part of the 'real' updated software, so all the text in
NEW.HTM is now part of UPDATE7.HTM. I also updated the 'history' section
to tell the world about the pages for Guide 8 and the 'random comments'
on RANDOM.HTM.

Those of you who have been using the software from NEW.HTM will not
notice much of a change, except in a few particulars:

(1) In the 'help' system, the text that links to display of an event
in Guide is now shown in purple. The text that links to still more text
is shown in blue.

(2) In updating UPDATE7.HTM, I forgot to mention some new hotkeys.
Jan Manek pointed out that when you make a table of events (such as
satellite passes), you can click on such an event and view it... but
if you want to view yet another event, you have to rebuild the entire
table. This is annoying. It's especially annoying for satellite passes,
since creating such a table can take a long time.

If you hit Alt-D in the Windows version, Guide will show the
preceding table data. So you can tell Guide to build a table (of
lunar phases, or solar eclipses, or satellite passes), click on one
of the entries, and see that satellite (or lunar phase, etc.) Then
hit Alt-D, and Guide will immediately bring that table back on-screen.
You can even shut Guide down, come back to it later, hit Alt-D, and
see whatever table (or 'quick info', or 'more info') was last shown.

The other hotkeys involve display of geographic text. When showing
star charts, the '+' and '-' keys bring in fainter stars or drop out
fainter stars, respectively. They were previously unused when in
geographic mode.

But now, hitting '+' or '-' in geographic mode causes Guide to display
or omit less important cities, respectively. They can be used repeatedly
until you get the density of cities you happen to desire.

Jari suggested better controls over what data goes into mark files, so
one could (say) store only the sky location, or only lat/lon/time zone
data, and so forth. Right now, you can get that effect using a text
editor; if you look at some .MAR files supplied with Guide, you'll see
that many lines that aren't required to (say) show a particular solar
eclipse are omitted. But not many people bother to do this.

I have indeed considered it possible that, when you 'save a mark',
you could get a big dialog of check-boxes where you could specify exactly
which settings go into the file.

-- Bill