Greetings! and welcome to V1.0 of SkyGlobe for Windows.  I'd like
to take this opportunity to tell you a little about some of the
more interesting new features in the program.

First, of course, is the main reason for the mad rush to get this
into your hands as soon as possible, Shoemaker/Levy-9.  You can use
both SkyGlobe for Windows and the special 386 DOS version to see the
path of this interesting object since Jan 1.  It shows up in both the
the bird's eye and normal sky views, and you can also access images
for SL9 as you normally would for a planet.  (Depending on your exact
disk package, we have enclosed a few for your perusal, and there are
and will be many more online.)

By the way, in the mad rush to get this version out to you registered
users in time, I wasn't able to put together all the necessary
distribution files needed for an upload .ZIP, so please don't post
the .EXE on any BBSes, although you are welcome and encouraged to pass
it around to friends who may be interested.  I'll get to that next,
but you were more important to me first. :-)

The local horizon feature is perhaps the one of which I am most proud.
It seems to add a lot to the viewing experience, yet it hardly slows
down the display at all.  Contained within the program are some sample
horizons for Ann Arbor and Roscommon, and you can use DAYTON.TXT to
practice loading a file for when you decide to create your own.

The Ann Arbor display shows a little of what will be possible as I
continue to improve this feature.  There are 16 sightings from around
the house where your upgrade package came from.  You can use Turbo F12,
or double-right-click on the local horizon bitmap, to simulate a quick
walk around the yard.  My thanks to Lyle, Lynne, Dennis, and Eric for
taking all the sightings in time for this upgrade!

John Gallant, a fellow shareware author from Ohio, was kind enough to
provide me with DAYTON.TXT to practice with.  You can examine it with
any text editor to see it is simply a list of 360 integer elevation
numbers, starting from North equals 0 and going clockwise, and
corresponding to the measured heights of a secret location near
Dayton.  Use the menu to load this file into the program, and see
if you can guess where it is!

The ground horizon is now a filled region, which also contributes to
the visual illusion of actually looking at the sky.  You can, of course,
turn this off with a mouse click, but since it hardly slows things down
either you may well decide just to leave it on.

There are several new and improved methods for adjusting your sky view,
many of which involve the mouse.  Click on the arrow keys, double-click
on them (and click once more to stop Turbo), try the elevator and
direction bars, use the direction and elevation display buttons to see
where you are or to launch the menus, OR, zoom in a ways, or right-
click on the over-view inset toggle, and use this fun new feature to
help orient yourself and to navigate.  You can click anywhere on the
displayed hemisphere to instantly choose a new centering spot, now
without regard to whether it is below the horizon.

Instead of consigning half of the screen to "worthless" below horizon
territory when viewing elevations near zero, the horizon now "floats"
to give the best possible sky view at those particular elevations.
Just try right-clicking on the Ground Horizon or Horizon Line toggles
to turn this off, and see how much it helps!

Five meteor shower radiants are now displayed at the approximate
appropriate dates.  This can help as you plan vacations or just quiet
nights outside; especially with some big showers coming up in the
very near future!

The sizes of the Sun and Moon are now more accurate, which is helpful
for seeing why some eclipses are total and some annular.

The mouse now constantly identifies the name of the constellation in
which it lies.

There are more RA-Dec lines, and the extra lines come on automatically
as you zoom in.  Stars also come on as you zoom, to keep the screen
filled with about the same number at all times.  When zoomed far in or
when viewing distant past or future dates, a set of "shadowed" J2000.0
RA-Dec lines will appear alongside the current lines.  Or maybe not right
alongside if you are really far afield!  Zooms have now been increased
from 26 times to 64 times; a big help when watching for a Jupiter-SL9
collision or something similar.

The SG4WIN.EXE file itself now has almost 32,000 stars, and the program
will work seamlessly with the previous .DT1 and .DT2 files to increase
the number displayed to 140,000 standard and over 250,000 with them all.

**************************************************************************
In order to pack the distribution disk as full as possible, I decided
not to have separate files for data that was essentially the same in
both the Windows and DOS versions.  Instead, there is a menu feature
in the Windows version that will save the .DAT file SG4DOS requires
in order to display the full range of stars and star names, and the
constellation guidelines.  Choose File and Save SG4DOS.DAT, and the
file will be created.
**************************************************************************

Day of week and a Week increment command are now supported.  There are
in general many more flexible methods for adjusting time and date,
including the Enter or E command, which sends you right to an edit menu.
You need to include the colon in the 24 hour time format, but the date
format will recognize a BC at the end of its MMM DD,YYYY display, and
I'll be making this more and more flexible as time (and dates!) go on.

Finding the planets is easier than ever; now all you have to do click on
an appropriate bitmap to either re-center or display an image set.  And
since finding now allows "below-the-horizon" centering, it works more
predictably than before.

Speaking of displaying images, that feature has been beefed up in the
Windows version with the addition of .DIB, .BMP, and 24-bit .TGA file
support.  The image display engine itself is packaged in such a way as
to make a handy drag and drop slide show viewer for all your image
display needs, but of course it was designed first and foremost with
SkyGlobe in mind.  When I think of how much I've paid for fancy conversion
programs, when all I really wanted was a simple image viewer!  And now
you get one as a part of the complete SkyGlobe package.

The last little item on my agenda for this note is Shift-R, which auto-
increments the time at Real-Time speeds, but without tying your display
to the system date and time as R itself does.  It just picks up where
the time and date are when you start it.

Well, I've been up for about 36 hours straight now, trying to get this
into your hands as soon as possible before the SL9 collision.  It has
always been a real joy sharing the discerning of our universe with you,
and I look forward to ever more interesting and educational journeys to
the virtual stars together.

Peace and Clear Skies,

---Mark