[ANN] Xearth-ACF vbeta 2

[REM]

I'm not sure if anyone else is interested in this or not, but playing
around with this program is my first brush with Windows GUI and
registry programming, so I thought I'd invite anyone interested to
check it out as long as I'm doing it.

This is a modified program derived from Greg Hewgill's, "Xearth for
Windows" program. Not overly clever, I dubbed it "Xearth-ACF," as the
original program and ideas came from here.

The original stored values in the registry. The ACF version uses two
..ini files to store data in.

The original had a set font and font color. The ACF font color can be
user defined by editing "settings.ini." In beta 2 I was able to
decrease the font size to allow for more labels in a small area. The
font resolution has been increased also for a sharper font.

The original had earth quake alerts. There seemed to be a bad bug in
that code, so I commented it all out.

I still have aways to go, but I'm understanding it a bit better each
day. The four others who contributed created a pretty impressive
program, given the various angles of point of view and the slew of
variables involved.

The idea I liked was watching the world of ACF spin around as a
desktop. I'm loading up everyone I can find the coordinates for. There
are quite a few more in this version than in the last, and still many
to go. The northern hemisphere is pretty crowded with ACFers.

The problem is clumpings of participants in a small area. The smaller
font helps, but I'm afraid that it's going to come to each user
'thinning' out the herds and keeping who they want to view.

http://www.woundedmoon.org/xearth/

Check it out if you like and report any bugs encountered here.

Thanks.

 

[Roger Johansson]

I'm not sure if anyone else is interested in this or not,

I am very interested, and probably several others too.
Great work, thanks.

The original had a set font and font color. The ACF font color can be
user defined by editing "settings.ini." In beta 2 I was able to
decrease the font size to allow for more labels in a small area. The
font resolution has been increased also for a sharper font.

Any possibility to change other colors? Like the sea and land, and
shadow?

The original had earth quake alerts. There seemed to be a bad bug in
that code, so I commented it all out.

I thought earlier that it was the quake information server which had
disappeared, but I found and checked that server and it is still in use,
so there must be something wrong in the code, just as you have found.

The idea I liked was watching the world of ACF spin around as a
Beautiful.

The problem is clumpings of participants in a small area. The smaller
font helps, but I'm afraid that it's going to come to each user
'thinning' out the herds and keeping who they want to view.

Using initials instead of whole names can reduce the clutter.

When you distribute the program in the future you could include several
different sets of ini files, for different purposes or simply for
different looks, and use a bat file to allow easy changing between the
ini files. Invite others to contribute possible ini file sets to include.

http://www.woundedmoon.org/xearth/

Wishlist, if you happen to find the possibilities:

The stars change every time the screen is repainted, it would look better
if the stars were preserved.

If the program allowed entering and using coordinates without any label,
showing just a dot, it would reduce the clutter even more, and it would
make it more useful for other purposes too.

The size of the dot, or more precisely, the ring, if that size could be
changed by a setting it would make the program more versatile.

Changing it from a wallpaper type of program into a more normal type of
program could be useful.

Saving the stars in an ini file, making it possible to create an even
more realistic night sky.

Break out the graphics data for land and sea into a separat ini file,
maybe allow more colors and more geographic details.

(Yes, I know most of these wishes are totally unrealistic and impossible,
but that's what wishlists are for. Maybe some day in the future some
wishes become possible.)

 

[REM]

Any possibility to change other colors? Like the sea and land, and
shadow?

I'm looking at that. It appears the screen is drawn by rows. The blue,
green or black colors start\end as the row goes from right to left.
The labels are applied over the finished .bmp.

When you distribute the program in the future you could include several
different sets of ini files, for different purposes or simply for
different looks, and use a bat file to allow easy changing between the
ini files. Invite others to contribute possible ini file sets to include.

Good idea. Hmmm. That's a really interesting idea. It might be
possible to use multiple sets of marker .ini files and have a
different one load each time the screen refreshes. I have mine set to
refresh every two minutes. In areas of high density the markers could
be distributed over, say three files. I'll give that a try.

Wishlist, if you happen to find the possibilities:

The stars change every time the screen is repainted, it would look better
if the stars were preserved.

I think that's possible. I'll look at it today.

If the program allowed entering and using coordinates without any label,
showing just a dot, it would reduce the clutter even more, and it would
make it more useful for other purposes too.

That is possible now. Just enter the coordinates without a name. That
was a registry glitch.

The size of the dot, or more precisely, the ring, if that size could be
changed by a setting it would make the program more versatile.

I'll keep an eye out for this.

Changing it from a wallpaper type of program into a more normal type of
program could be useful.

That's possible. It would be nice to zoom in on an area. The mag
setting doesn't seem useful, as changing it from 1 to 2 zooms in on
the center of the screen roughly the size of Africa. There is no
panning.

Saving the stars in an ini file, making it possible to create an even
more realistic night sky.

Seeing the Milky Way would be nice. A simple random function is used
to populate and repopulate the stars now.

Break out the graphics data for land and sea into a separat ini file,
maybe allow more colors and more geographic details.

I thought about this too. Putting in mountain ranges, deserts, and
forests would be great.

(Yes, I know most of these wishes are totally unrealistic and impossible,
but that's what wishlists are for. Maybe some day in the future some
wishes become possible.)

They are good ideas. I'll save the message and see if I can do them.

 

[BarryTone]

I'm not sure if anyone else is interested in this or not, but playing
around with this program is my first brush with Windows GUI and
registry programming, so I thought I'd invite anyone interested to
check it out as long as I'm doing it.

Since Silicon valley is not on your map, use this for me:
37.22 -122.02 BarryTone

Thanks

Yes, crowding is a bit of an issue. You might be able to do something
with mouse rollover effects.

Imagine though that you had thousands of entries all in the same
proximity, the map could be a mess.

A thought... You might want to let users click on a mark, then they get
a list of names of the people in that area. The list may need to be
scrollable and searchable.

 

[REM]

BarryTone <[email protected]> wrote:

Since Silicon valley is not on your map, use this for me:
37.22 -122.02 BarryTone

I had you down in San Jose. (37.20 -121.54) Not bad for a guess.

If anyone else would like to be more specific I'll be glad to change
my guess.

I finished looking everyone I could up and approximated those with
non-specific locations. My wife typed it up for me yesterday.

Yes, crowding is a bit of an issue. You might be able to do something
with mouse rollover effects.

I'm going to try splitting the crowded areas into 4 .ini files and
have a different one load each refresh cycle.

There still might be problems, depending on which viewpoint is
selected.

Imagine though that you had thousands of entries all in the same
proximity, the map could be a mess.

A thought... You might want to let users click on a mark, then they get
a list of names of the people in that area. The list may need to be
scrollable and searchable.

That's another good idea. I'm not sure how to do a rollover on a .bmp
image. I'll do some reading.

 

[REM]

I thought I would post what I have so far in coordinates. If anyone
would like to correct the coordinates, or if I made a typo in your
name point out the current line and your revision and I'll amend it.

I approximated any non-specific entries from the acf_where thread.

If anyone would rather not be listed in the program post here, or
remove the caps and email me and I'll remove the entry.

There are 108 entries. I'll complete the list asap.

18.58 72.5 Maria Alvares
21.17 -157.42 Jai Maharaj
27.09 -80.12 Mike555
27.58 -82.48 JimL
28.13 177.22 Midway
29.19 -100.25 seabat
-29.51 -51.11 Chaos Master
29.57 -90.05 <<Q>>
30.16 -97.45 Jan
30.16 -97.45 Christian
31.4 -94.38 REM
-31.57 115.51 Badger
32.32 -93.45 FadedGlory
32.47 -96.48 El Gee
32.51 -97.09 Ron May
33.27 -112.04 Cousin Stanley
33.27 -112.04 Wayne Boatwright
33.31 -86.48 Allan Higdon
33.4 -84.0 Alan
33.45 -84.23 Chrissy Cruiser
34.5 -87.18 Vic Dura
-33.52 151.13 Adrian Carter
-34.08 18.5 jad
-34.36 -58.27 majales
34.5 -87.19 Vic Dura
35.02 -95.41 ceg
35.03 -85.19 Duddits
-35.17 149.08 Trevor Frew
35.21 -80.12 ncSkeet
35.23 139.55 GR
35.36 -82.33 My Name
36.47 -121.4 Richard Faulkner
37.22 -121.54 BarryTone
-37.47 144.58 Mike Echo
-37.47 144.58 canetoad
-37.47 144.58 derek / nul
38.01 -77.31 Richard
39.02 -82.49 Ray
39.03 -94.43 Glenn
39.1 -86.32 Mark Warner
39.4 -82.7 David P. Cox
39.09 -94.43 Glenn
38.10 15.25 MLC
-39.26 175.17 Doc
39.44 -104.59 snidely
39.46 -86.09 Jim Daniel
39.54 -90.14 Chris L
39.58 -83.00 Anne
40.1 17 MLC
40.18 -74.44 S.Hicks
40.19 -84.51 Jaime Littlebeaver
40.35 -122.04 omega
-41.18 174.47 Nicolaas Hawkins
41.35 -72.2 John
41.43 -86.47 Auntie Em
41.43 -86.47 burnr
41.54 12.29 Beppe
41.56 -87.5 Syphus Sister
42.2 -83.03 Omar
42.24 -82.12 Rose Weir
42.30 -84.00 Old Hippy
42.58 -85.4 Susan Bugher
43.02 -87.54 John Hood
43.39 -79.23 xtort
43.42 7.16 Le Loup
43.44 -79.16 Ionizer
43.59 -75.37 Dewey Edwards
44.31 -80.01 vameo
44.48 -68.47 dszady
44.59 -93.16 Dan Goodman
45.25 -75.23 mister
45.56 -122.51 OhnO the Clown
45.56 -90.26 granpaw
-46.24 168.21 bambam
46.33 15.39 Frenki
47.15 -122.27 cathair
47.22 -68.2 Drummy
47.38 6.1 Ninou
48.08 11.34 Peter Seller
48.52 2.2 Antoine
49.11 -119.33 Tim
49.16 -123.07 John M.
49.16 -123.07 My Key
50.20 -105.33 GoodTime Barnie
50.27 30.30 alex
50.44 -0.48 Pete Laurence
50.5 4.2 Marc
50.53 4.42 Wald
51.27 5.29 Rod
51.29 0.0 zoo
51.3 5.1 Onno Voors
51.34 5.05 Sietse Fliege
51.42 5.19 Henk de jong
51.48 0.4 Jo
52.06 -4.40 Colin
53.23 -2.40 Ray Milne
53.2 -2.0 Roger Hunt
57.01 -3.23 Alastair Smeaton
56.56 -4.14 Semolina Pilchard
57.01 1.15 Harvey Van Sickle
57.5 0.1 Dan Glybitz
53.3 -1.33 dfrog
53.35 -2.26 D.G.
54.46 -101.51 Paul Johnson
54.46 -101.51 harsga godavari
56.09 10.12 Robert Larder
59.09 11.23 Bjorn Simonsen
59.09 11.23 Vegard Krog Petersen

 

[MLC]

_REM_, giovedì 30/dic/2004:

38.10 15.25 MLC

Hi REM,
AFAIK my coordinates are: 44.31 11.42

Thanks

 

[Roger Johansson]

I thought I would post what I have so far in coordinates. If anyone
would like to correct the coordinates, or if I made a typo in your
name point out the current line and your revision and I'll amend it.

I cannot find myself in that list.

My coordinates 62N 16E


By the way, I saw Vic Dura listed twice in that list.

 

[REM]

Hi REM,
AFAIK my coordinates are: 44.31 11.42

Thanks Maria. I have updated it!

 

[REM]

Roger Johansson <[email protected]> wrote:

I cannot find myself in that list.

My coordinates 62N 16E

Thanks Roger. Yours was a generic location that I had not done yet.

By the way, I saw Vic Dura listed twice in that list.

Thanks again. I imagine there might be many typos. My eyes have
tending to cross as I've looked each one up. Fixed!

 

[BarryTone]

That's another good idea. I'm not sure how to do a rollover on a .bmp
image. I'll do some reading.

I spent some time looking at Xplanet (http://xplanet.sourceforge.net/)
yesterday. Did you try it out? It pretty much took your markers.ini as
is. The windows version (http://xplanet.sourceforge.net/windows/) comes
with cygwin1.dll and sh.exe which are part of Cygwin. There a lots of
command line options including font settings. It looks very realistic
and clean.

But, as far as I could tell, you'd still have crowding issues although
xplanet seems to orient markers and names a bit better than xearth.
Plus, I do not think it has a user GUI interface.

As far as the rollover goes, one possible way is to output to a html
file and use javascript. But this could be a lot of work.

 

[BarryTone]

By the way, I saw Vic Dura listed twice in that list.

Yep. There are two MLC's also.

 

[REM]

BarryTone <[email protected]> wrote:

I spent some time looking at Xplanet (http://xplanet.sourceforge.net/)
yesterday. Did you try it out? It pretty much took your markers.ini as
is. The windows version (http://xplanet.sourceforge.net/windows/) comes
with cygwin1.dll and sh.exe which are part of Cygwin. There a lots of
command line options including font settings. It looks very realistic
and clean.

I have not seen that one yet.

But, as far as I could tell, you'd still have crowding issues although
xplanet seems to orient markers and names a bit better than xearth.
Plus, I do not think it has a user GUI interface.

Are you familiar with Windows font programming? I found the line that
sets the label font and I was able to change it to a better looking
font, even though I'm confused about what does what:

Was:

of = SelectObject(dc, CreateFont(-8, 0, 0, 0, FW_NORMAL, FALSE, FALSE,
FALSE, ANSI_CHARSET, OUT_DEFAULT_PRECIS, CLIP_DEFAULT_PRECIS,
DEFAULT_QUALITY, DEFAULT_PITCH, "MS Sans Serif"));

Now:

of = SelectObject(dc, CreateFont(-10, 0, 0, 0, FW_LIGHT, FALSE, FALSE,
FALSE, ANSI_CHARSET, OUT_TT_ONLY_PRECIS, CLIP_DEFAULT_PRECIS,
PROOF_QUALITY, DEFAULT_PITCH, ""));

As far as I can tell, it is the "-10" that made the font smaller. It
had been set to "-8." Any other value there skews far worse than -8
rendered. I did set it for true type fonts. It should match the
closest true type font installed with the above settings.

There isn't much documentation. The original Win author was much more
experienced than I am. I looked up the CreateFont routine in MS help
and I'm still dazed.

As far as the rollover goes, one possible way is to output to a html
file and use javascript. But this could be a lot of work.

eek! <G>

It's fun. As I get a better grip on what, when, where and why
concerning the original code I might just give that a try.

 

[REM]

I forgot this part.

The differing .ini files is going to work very nicely, thanks to
Roger. I hadn't even considered that until I read his post about
archiving different .ini files for differing reasons.

I have six .ini files going. People in uncrowded areas, like Chaos
Master® and majales will be on all six files. I'm divying up the more
crowded areas now, attempting to create an attractive view for each.

The program can be set to update position. My setting is 120 seconds.
Each update uses a different .ini file, so it's a 12 minute cycle to
go through everyone and start the cycle over.

BTW. It just occurred to me that there might be a problem if a system
has no true type fonts installed. Has anyone had a bad label font
display? It should be a small true type font of proof quality.

 

[Bill Day]

I thought I would post what I have so far in coordinates. If anyone
would like to correct the coordinates, or if I made a typo in your
name point out the current line and your revision and I'll amend it.

I approximated any non-specific entries from the acf_where thread.

If anyone would rather not be listed in the program post here, or
remove the caps and email me and I'll remove the entry.

39.19N 73.37W

(I tried the beta from last week, but could not enter my coordinates
and bring the globe to N. America...it put me over Russia instead.
Don't the directional letters NESW have to be specified/)

 

[Bill Day]

39.19N 73.37W

(I tried the beta from last week, but could not enter my coordinates
and bring the globe to N. America...it put me over Russia instead.
Don't the directional letters NESW have to be specified/)

BTW....I get my coordinates from the clock/mapping program WorldTime
at http://www.pawprint.net/wt/ .....it allows me to get direct
readings in miles or kilometers to or from any point and displays
latitude & longitude in any of several map projections....neat program
which goes way beyond clock settings.

 

[BarryTone]

I have not seen that one yet.

Here is a screen-shot that I made yesterday -
http://home.comcast.net/~atomhrt/images/acf.jpg

Are you familiar with Windows font programming?

Was:

of = SelectObject(dc, CreateFont(-8, 0, 0, 0, FW_NORMAL, FALSE, FALSE,
FALSE, ANSI_CHARSET, OUT_DEFAULT_PRECIS, CLIP_DEFAULT_PRECIS,
DEFAULT_QUALITY, DEFAULT_PITCH, "MS Sans Serif"));

Now:

of = SelectObject(dc, CreateFont(-10, 0, 0, 0, FW_LIGHT, FALSE, FALSE,
FALSE, ANSI_CHARSET, OUT_TT_ONLY_PRECIS, CLIP_DEFAULT_PRECIS,
PROOF_QUALITY, DEFAULT_PITCH, ""));

You'd have to look at the parameters for SelectObject and CreateFont.
Look here...
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/gdi/devcons_9v3o.asp

But it looks to me like you removed MS Sans Serif and the program would
then use your systems "default" font. Just a guess.

eek! <G>

Understood.

 

[REM]

Bill Day <[email protected]> wrote:

39.19N 73.37W

(I tried the beta from last week, but could not enter my coordinates
and bring the globe to N. America...it put me over Russia instead.
Don't the directional letters NESW have to be specified/)

Yes. The lookup I used gave North or South and East or West.

Any location in the southern hemisphere is a negative value.
Any location in the western hemisphere is a negative value.

It took me quite awhile to get straight on this. Geography was way too
long ago.

Try entering: "39.19" and "-73.37" and you should be correctly
positioned.

This is the way the original was setup and I just ran with it.

 

[Roger Johansson]

BTW....I get my coordinates from the clock/mapping program WorldTime
at http://www.pawprint.net/wt/ .....it allows me to get direct
readings in miles or kilometers to or from any point and displays
latitude & longitude in any of several map projections....neat program
which goes way beyond clock settings.

Good program, but I always have to search around the menues for minutes
before I find out how to turn the map on.

I found that I have to rightclick on an entry in the list, there is one
set as default, and choose the map from the right-click menues.

Is there a simpler way to turn on the map view?

If I can only turn on the map it is easy to use.

 

[Bill Day]

Good program, but I always have to search around the menues for minutes
before I find out how to turn the map on.

I found that I have to rightclick on an entry in the list, there is one
set as default, and choose the map from the right-click menues.

Is there a simpler way to turn on the map view?

If I can only turn on the map it is easy to use.

I click on the clock I want to see coordinates for, and the clock
settings ('time zone manager') come up, and one item in the top menu
is 'map'...There is a setting under preferences for 'map always
active', but sometimes I get a message that it needs to be activated.
I have no idea why. In any case, it only takes a couple seconds to
bring up the map...(which I don't use very often)