Conference hydra::amiga_v1

even if it doesn't, there are several pd programs that will capture the top 
screen and save it to an iff file.

john

    Any chance of a bit of background ( quick summary ) of what this
    package does ??
    
    Regards,
         Chris

    
    I uploaded a working demo of the program to TAPE a while back.  I
    believe it's called DSDEMO.LZH.
    
    Ed.

    Distant Suns is an astronomy program which will let you view areas of
    the night sky on your Amiga.  It will show different magnifications,
    names of different celestial objects, and progression of the stars
    across the sky as time passes.  You set it up for any date, time and
    location.  There are a number of other features that make it look
    useful for learning astronomy and for planning viewing sessions with
    your telescope (non-astronomer speaking here).
    
    The demo version is restricted to one year that's already past.
    
    Wes

Will it allow you to provide an ephemeris table then plot an object? 

This would allow tracking new observations like Comet Levy...

john

	I'll post a review here after it arrives and I've played with
	it for awhile.

	~art

I loaded DEDEMO on to a disk & tried it. It started, but that's all it ever
did - what am i doing wrong??

 mark

    "Starting" is all it may ever do.  I got a DSDEMO with one of the disk
    based magazines and that's what it does.
    
    

    Well, I downloaded it yesterday and it works fine ! The only
    restrictions I see are that it's restricted to 1988 and a couple of the
    menu items are ghosted. I did have one problem though, every time it
    read one of it's data files I'd get a "Volume WorkB: has a read/write
    error" requestor (even though there was nothing wrong with the files) -
    simply clicking on the "retry" gadget fixed it every time. I suspect
    that this was something to do with being a demo version.
    Oh!, one other thing, I was using it from the Shell rather than the WB.
    
    				Alan T.

    
    I'm glad that someone was able to get it to work; I was beginning to
    think that I had uploaded a bad archive.
    
    It seems to be important to preserve the directory structure in the
    archive to get the program to run correctly.
    
    Ed.

Re: .9

I'm having trouble preserving the directory structure when I un-lharc
the demo.  I've tried:

lharc x dsdemo dh2:download/
lharc //x dsdemo dh2:download/
lharc x// dsdemo dh2:download/

None of the above rebuilds the correct directory structure.  Is there
any reason I can't un-lharc into a sub-directory?
Could someone remind me what the correct syntax is?

Thanks,
Sam

    try
    1> makedir DSDemo
    1> cd DSDemo
    1> lharc -x -m x df0:dsdemo
    
    the -x preserves the directory structure
    the -m stops it asking you if you want to create all the
    subdirectories.
    
    				Alan T.

Re .12:

Thanks!  The lharc -x -m x syntax worked perfectly.  Beautiful demo!

Important point:  you must copy the FONTS directory to your system
FONTS directory for the demo to work beyond the title screen. 
This is described in the file "original.list" which is part of the archive.
Those of you who were disappointed in the demo because it didn't seem to
do anything--this should fix things for you.  Try it again--you won't
be disappointed.

Sam

    I bought Distant Suns 3.0 last year (largely on the recommendation of
    Arthur C. Clarke) and was pleased with what I got.  My previous
    planetarium program was Sky Travel on the C=64, so I fully expected
    dramatic improvements in both speed and resolution but I didn't know
    what else to expect.
    
    Where Sky Travel was targeted at people who have a general interest in
    astronomy, Distant Suns was written by and for amateur astronomers. 
    Sky Travel refused to take itself seriously (witness the "feet"
    displayed when one looks straight down or the polar bear at the north
    pole and assorted buildings at various points on the globe).
    
    Distant Suns is more concerned with providing an accurate rendering of
    the night sky, assuming one has er� Amiga set up next to er telescope. 
    DS3 does that job quite well, but it didn't go as far as I would have
    liked in a couple of regards.  One glaring omission was the inability
    to add newly-described comet/satellite orbits to its ephemeris.  For a
    serious astronomer, that would be a boon.
    
    I was impressed with Distant Suns 3.0, but now that I've installed
    Distant Suns 4.0, I'm REALLY impressed.  While upgrading, I bought a
    couple of Virtual Realities' add-on kits to provide 20,000 stars (to
    magnitude 7.3 or thereabouts, but DS4 allows one to limit the magnitude
    to which one is interested) and deep-sky objects, which come with
    descriptive text and (on yet another kit) scanned images that are just
    a mouse-click away.  DS4 can now produce ephemeris tables for use by
    those who can't shlep their Amigas outdoors at night.  It also allows
    input and editing of additional comets/asteroids using orbital data.
    
    Distant Suns 4 is impressive, but it uses a lot of system resources. 
    My 3MB A500 has more than enough Fast RAM, but its 512KB CHIP RAM is
    too little to permit high resolution output.  Likewise, a faster CPU
    (and a floating point chip) would be very helpful.  The basic program
    will work acceptably from floppies, but the add-on kits DO expect
    to be installed on hard disk.  Virtual Realities does a good job of
    identifying the amount of disk required for each kit.  I'm using about
    5MB for the kits I installed.
    
    � For the "politically correct", this is from one (of MANY) proposed
      gender-neutral 3rd person singular pronoun sets.
      "E" = (s)he; "em" = him/her; "er" = her/his.

Bill,

I saw DS4.0 at the memory location, but didn;trun it on a system. I noticed
they offer an upgrade. Do you know what it costs?

It looked like 4.0 was quite a significant improvement. 

joh

    Re .15:
    
>   I saw DS4.0 at the memory location, but didn't run it on a system. I
>   noticed they offer an upgrade.  Do you know what it costs?
    
    I don't remember, exactly.  I think the upgrade from DS3.0 to DS4.0 is
    about $30 (upgrades from Galileo and other earlier versions are more
    expensive).  Distant Suns 4.0 actually comes in four sub-versions,
    depending upon CPU type and presence of a Floating Point Unit.  The
    same offer gives a significant price break for each of the add-on kits
    (which are NOT compatible between DS3 & DS4) and for the rest of their
    product line, most notably Vista Pro.

>   It looked like 4.0 was quite a significant improvement. 
    
    Indeed it was.

    
    > � For the "politically correct", this is from one (of MANY) proposed
    >  gender-neutral 3rd person singular pronoun sets.
    >  "E" = (s)he; "em" = him/her; "er" = her/his.
    
    I sincerely hope that Bill is being facetious here... I for one will not
    participate in the systematic destruction of the language.
                
    Remember what Orwell warned us of... the way to control our thoughts is
    to control our language!
    
    A serious warning from a tired old grouch who is wondering if he may in
    fact be on the wrong planet - Ed.
               

>    A serious warning from a tired old grouch who is wondering if he may in
>    fact be on the wrong planet - Ed.
 

Aw come on Ed, you've only had ONE kid so far :-)

john

   >the night sky, assuming one has er� Amiga set up next to er telescope. 
    
   >� For the "politically correct", this is from one (of MANY) proposed
   >  gender-neutral 3rd person singular pronoun sets.
   >  "E" = (s)he; "em" = him/her; "er" = her/his.
    
    Why bother with all this crap anyway?  Why not write the sentence as 
    "the night sky, assuming one has an Amiga set up next to a telescope"?
    
    Phil Gill.
    

    Re .last few:
    
.16 � For the "politically correct", this is from one (of MANY) proposed
.16   gender-neutral 3rd person singular pronoun sets.
.16   "E" = (s)he; "em" = him/her; "er" = her/his.
    
    I was wondering what response would come from this, but would rather it
    didn't become a rat-hole.  While browsing through the library one day,
    I actually found a whole book of suggested sets of 3rd person singular
    pronouns (other than "it" and "its").  To my surprise, this battle has
    raged for CENTURIES!  Some sets have even made it into dictionaries.
    
.19 Why bother with all this crap anyway?  Why not write the sentence as 
.19 "the night sky, assuming one has an Amiga set up next to a telescope"?
    
    That works okay here, but not always.  Personally, I couldn't care less
    about being "politically correct", but it wouldn't hurt the English
    language to add three simple pronouns to solve a long-standing problem. 
    Since prior agreement seems not to work, it looks like the only way to
    have that happen is to USE them (compare "Ms." as a title).  This set
    sounds Cockney when spoken, but at least "fits" with common usage.

I ordered my upgrade last night. $30.00.

Thinking about it this morning, I remembered her asking if I was running
1.3 or 2.0. I said 1.3 for now until 2.0 comes out.

I wonder if there is really a difference or they are just curious?

john

I like it, Bill. Let's use "'is," in the fine old Cockney tradition.

FWIW, I too deplore the redefinition of a *language* as a pale replacement for
what *should* be a replacement of *concepts.*

For example, I have no problem with the concept of a female mailman, since I
don't think the term is conceptually gender-specific; however, the term
"mailperson," or the use of the deliberately gender-specific "mailwoman,"
annoys me at a low (but continuous) level. It *causes* a problem, rather than
solving one. Why not have separate nouns for black/white, blue-/brown-eyed,
blond/redheaded/brunette, left-/right-handed?

Faugh! Yuck! A pox on both your houses!
(You get the idea.)

What? Oh, Distant Suns? Well, this *is* a galactic problem, isn't it?

Bob_who_can_digress_with_the_best_of_them

I just bought a copy (being an old galileo owner), and was surprised to
discover that the 1.3/non-fpu version was the only one they shipped. They
promised to send me the 2.0-fpu version ASAP.

In answer to your question of whether there's a difference, the 1.3 version
uses the YAFR file requester. The 2.0 vesion almost certainly uses the ASL
file requester. Likewise, while I have my philosophical problems with
GadTools, this seems to be the perfect application for it; gadtools is
marvelous for doing requester-like things (except it can't create requester
gadgets), and DS is full of them.

Just FYI, I'd been thinking about buying a copy of DS for quite a while
now. The review here pushed me over the edge. It didn't mention what I think
is probably the most valuable feature, the ability to create IFF ANIM
files of it's displays. I picked up the copy at HT Electronics just before
the BADGE meeting their (SLAC being unavailable this month), and bumped into
Mike Smithwick at the meeting.

	<mike

> now. The review here pushed me over the edge. It didn't mention what I think
> is probably the most valuable feature, the ability to create IFF ANIM
> files of it's displays. I picked up the copy at HT Electronics just before

Me also. Roy at memory location was talking about the animation ability
and it got my interest. I should have mentioned it here...

john

Article: 1704
From: [email protected] (Mike Smithwick)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.applications
Subject: BUG WARNING about Distant Suns 4.0
Date: 11 Aug 91 01:06:10 GMT
Organization: SF-Bay Public-Access Unix
 
[]
 
We interrupt this newsgroup to bring you the following special report :
 
WARNING! WARNING! WARNING WILL ROBINSON!
 
We discovered a bug in DS 4.0 that can cause severe headaches so I felt
it necessary to report it here to save some friendships.
 
DO NOT use the "SHOW" function on the New orbit window when your eyepoint
is on the earth. It's ok if you've moved off of the earth, but when on
the earth it could crash the machine (under some circumstances a pointer
is not allocated). Also, don't attempt to save the object while the
eyepoint is on the earth. Same results, except this time it will write
some stuff out to the disk then crash. And we know what happens then 
don't we?
 
This warning is in effect for versions 4.0b and earlier. I've fixed the
bug and will be issuing 4.0c this next week. Call VRLI for upgrade
details.
 
Fortunately it is in one of the more arcane options so I hope no one
discovers it like we did ("DISK CORRUPT! USE DISKDOCTOR...").
 
We now return you to your normal programming.
 
 
 
-- 
"There is no problem too big that can't be solved with high explosives"-Rush
 
Mike Smithwick - ames!zorch!mike

I got the 2.0 FPU version of DS 4.0 over the weekend.

First, the FPU support is a wonderfull thing to have if you're doing
planetary orbits. The rexxanim.ds script runs _much_ faster.

The new 2.0 facilities are used throughout the program. Gadtools gadgets,
the ASL file/font requesters, the 2.0 pattern matching facilities. While
the basic program hasn't changed, it makes for a much more consistent
interface. If you've got 2.0, you probably want this.

	<mike

A simple question.

Does the package allow you to specify your location on the planet?

And if so (I assume it would), will it let you specify your location as
being in the more civilised latitudes such as Australia (you know the one in the
southern hemispere nowhere nears Germany!)

Stan.

> Does the package allow you to specify your location on the planet?

Sure does. You can even specify another planet. The view from Pluto is
quite interesting...

> And if so (I assume it would), will it let you specify your location as
> being in the more civilised latitudes such as Australia (you know the one in the
> southern hemispere nowhere nears Germany!)

Of course, but I think you meant The United States, didn't you? :-)

john

    Now that I've had a chance to play with Distant Suns 4.0 for a while,
    I've tripped on a couple of things (including a bug) that might be
    worth mentioning.
    
    I have the 1.3-FPU version (even though my A500 has no FPU).  I *do*
    have the IEEE floating point routines installed, so all is well.  On my
    3MB A500 (with 512KB Fat Agnus), I don't have enough CHIP RAM to run
    the interlaced version, but I have been able to use ARexx to create the
    110-frame Halley's Comet animation (as it passes through the inner
    solar system -- viewed from above the orbit of Jupiter or thereabouts)
    and I have enough Fast RAM to load about 91 frames for display by
    Deluxe Paint III.
    
    I've also installed the main module on Bruce Moore's A3000, running
    AmigaDOS 2.0 (that's just temporary).  For the most part it works, and
    I've been impressed both by the quality of the high-res image and the
    speed with which the 68030 can calculate subsequent screens.
    
    I was NOT able to create the Halley's Comet animation (Bruce has lots
    of memory and CPU, so it should have been EXTRA nice) because of what I
    suspect is an ARexx incompatibility between 1.3 to 2.0.  The Distant
    Suns port is being found (RX returns an error if it hasn't been
    enabled), but the script hangs and no actions are taken on the DS4
    screen.  Sigh!
    
    I found an actual bug, though it's not a biggie.  If one sets the date
    earlier than 1 A.D. (I was looking for a planetary conjunction that
    might correspond to the Star of Bethlehem) and sets the update interval
    to more than 1 day, the actual updates bump the year in addition to the
    requested interval.  As soon as the date is again A.D., the updates
    increment correctly.
    
    In spite of these minor problems, I'm still GREATLY IMPRESSED by DS4. 
    I particularly like being able to set the point of view off the surface
    of the earth in order to see planetary orbits (and those of selected
    other bodies) in perspective.  The "What's Up?" feature is also nice,
    in which a single screen gives current information for what one might
    expect to see tonight.  (It's helpful for idle hackers like me. 8^)

You can specify your location to anywhere within 400 AU of the Sun.

If you want to stay on the surface of the earth, you can specify a
latitude and longitude. But the default (and fastest) mode is "planetarium"
mode, in which your location doesn't matter much - you specify an RA and
declination, and your field of view points that way. There are various
features you can turn on (like horizon) that will vary depending on
your location.

In the other mode (I forget it's name), you specify an altitude and asimuth,
and your location is cricital. You can also specify a horizon line for use
in this mode.

	<mike

Related question - animating twilight effects doesn't work, because DS
does twilight by changing the color registers. I nudged the author, and
he asked if there was a non-proprietary anim format that allows this?

I had no trouble creating the halley's commet animation on the 3000 running
2.0, using either the stock 1.3 version, or the 2.0 FPU version. What version
of 2.0 is Bruce running?

	<mike

Re back a few....

I downloaded DSDEMO last night and it worked fine.

The reason I was asking about the location, is so I can actually pinpoint
things from my back yard!

I have ascertained that it will allow you to specify your co-ordinates, and
indeed it knows about the southern cross (Crux).

Perhaps some advise from you guys out there who were not asleep during geography
class at school.

I am tring to find the lat and long of Sydney. Latitude is easy its something
South (Cant remember exactly but read it off my atlas). Now the longtutude is
where I am becoming stuck. Sydney is Slightly west of the international date line
so what would I specify for the longtitude?

Also what is the unit of time used in distant suns? 

Regards

Stan.

P.S What is the best price for DS in States, and what are the mem restrictions
I have a 2mb (.5 chip 1.5 fast) A1000 with basic 68000 running 1.3

I answered my own question by ringing the Binolular and telescope shop.

For anyone who is interested in the view from my back yard, the co-ordinates
are:

Lat: 34 degrees 13 mins South
Long: 151 degrees 4 mins East

Still don't know about the time tho!

Stan.

P.S Those with pocket ICBM's forget the above info!

    Re .32:
    
>   I am tring to find the lat and long of Sydney. Latitude is easy its
>   something South (Cant remember exactly but read it off my atlas). Now
>   the longtutude is where I am becoming stuck. Sydney is Slightly west of
>   the international date line so what would I specify for the longtitude?
    
    The DS4 book claims that Sydney is at 33 55 S & 151 10 E (time zone -10),
    though I trust the Australian government publishes detailed maps that you
    could peruse to pinpoint your backyard to the nearest minute.
    
>   Also what is the unit of time used in distant suns? 
    
    Local time is to the minute (UTC is used throughout and converted to
    local time using the time zone specified in the environment window). 
    Screen updates may be "frozen", "real time", or advanced by 1 to 100
    minutes/hours/days/years per update (at 30 second intervals).

I have also created the Halley animation, although not via AREXX. I just let
it crank out as screen updates in accelerated time.

28MHZ A2500/30 7MB ram, 1MEG CHIP.

john

    re: .31
    My 3000 is running version 2.03 (KS 36.209, WB 36.102).

    re -1 FWIW you are not current on 2.0. CBM just shipped a later rev
    with instructions to upgrade all 2.0 users. I don't know any numbers
    but am pretty sure it is .04 at least. Contact your dealer.
    							bill

I just received V4.0 from Able.

(It was dispatched from the US on Saturday and arrived on wednesday!

So far it looks 'wonderfull'

Stan.