Answers to problems with "Hallo northern sky". version 2.0 for windows 95 till XP

Problem: The other problem I commented to you two months ago, related to the Bayer letters that appear on the screen when I have activated the star names option, remains unsolved. Once more I ask for your help (if it is available).

To summarize it I'll explain what happens when I see the constellations:

Greek letter 'eta' appears instead of 'gamma'

" " 'lambda' " " " 'kappa'

" " ' xi' " " " 'omega'

" " ' ro' " " " 'theta'

" " ' chi' " " " 'xi'

" " ' mu' " " " 'lambda'

" " 'gamma' " " " 'chi'

" " 'omega' " " " 'zeta'

and so on.

I think that this problem is originated by the font or character set invoked by the program. For the greek alphabet, my default charset or font probably may be the 'Symbol.ttf' from Monotype Co., which has a strange greek alphabetical order. Several letters are placed out of the typical position in the classical Greek alphabet. So, if it is dealt as an array, the corresponding number of the wrong ordered alphabet returns the wrong letter.

The thing that is astonishing for me is that this problem only occurs to me. I don't know if other Spanish users have the same misleading Bayer identification.

After a lot of trials changing the computer language, hiding the suspected fonts, and another silly tests, I haven't got any success. So I ask you if you can point which is the cause of my trouble, or better give me a hint about how to solve it. Which must be the right font?

Solution found a few month's later:

After a million trials I've found the cause of the bad use of the Greek letters and, as a consequence, the solution came alone.

The problem was very strange. In other computer the letters were only in the latin alphabet. In a third computer only small empty squares but no symbols or letters appeared on the screen. After such a complicate situation I came back to my computer, turned out almost all the ttf fonts and little by little I was increasing the fonts quantity until I found one which was suspected to have relation with the problem. This font was the 'matha__.ttf' , and in fact it was the responsible of the bad representing on the screen. Then I suppresed it via DOS, because Windows didn't allow me to eliminate it. Afterwards I renamed a copy of the symbol.ttf as matha___.ttf and installed it in the fonts directory. When all this was made the screen shew the right Greek letters on every star.

All that has been as a bad dream, but luckily is all correct now and I can enjoy much better HNSKY.

Excuse me for the confuse explanation, but I promised to tell you about it when I found a solution.

4) Activating new supplements:

HNSKY can display two supplements simultaneously. First place the supplement in the same directory/map as the program. Then activate it by going to menu "OBJECTS". Double click on one the supplement names. Select the desired supplement. The new short name will be shown. Then finally activate the supplement by clicking on the checkbox .

To make these settings permanent select "SAVE SETTINGS" in the file menu.

In case you still can't display the SUPLEMENT files, try this:

1) Download this demosup1.zip (updated 2004) which will show the WDSC, milky way and worldmap.

2) Unzip this file in the same directory as HNSKY. Override you own default.hns file.

3) Start HNSKY and wait and see... (For worldmap load the demo_worldmap.hns file in FILE menu)

You have to set your location and time zone again since your original default.hns file is overwritten.

5) Printing problems with HP 2100 Laserjet

>Hello, (March 2001)

>I'm enjoying "hallo northern sky" (2.07a) but am having a problem printing. My printer is a fairly new HP 2100 Laserjet that appears to be loading the >file, but then flashes the red error light after about 30 seconds. My workaround is to capture a GIF then print it from inside Paintshop Pro. Is this a >buffer overrun of some type? Thanks again for the wonderful astronomy program.

>Gary Schilling

>Santa Cruz CA

Hello Gary,

All printers work fine except one HP type. I can remeber at this moment which one but I could never solve that problem. Can you try it at an other computer + printer. If it works there, I don't think I can solve it unfortunally. I have no HP printer to test here. You could maybe try with an other printer driver or maybe an other printer setup. That's all I can do for you.

Succes, Han

Hello Han,

Instead of printing directly to my HP 2100 Laserjet (a red error light comes

on after about 30 seconds on the printer), I copy and paste it to Paint Shop

Pro and that works fine with the Laserjet. And this makes me think that

there is something in HNSKY that sends a larger file to the printer than

does the pasted version sent by Paint Shop Pro. Maybe Paint Shop Pro limits

the resolution from inside it's options or preferences. If there was a print

command inside the File menu of HNSKY that could adjust either the image

size or resolution, maybe this would work. Let me know if you discover

anything and thanks again for the magnificent planitarium program.

take care,

Gary Schilling

Hello Gary,

Just before you give the okay in HNSKY to print, you can change the settings of your printer. You could try to select a lower resolution. I hope you find something. 99% of the people including me, have no problems. I have used 4 of 5 different printers and computers. Never any problem.

p.s using a copy of the screen results in a much lower resolution. Direct from HNSKY you get raser sharp 600 dpi.

Succes, Han

Han,

You solved my problem. The printer resolution was set to "high quality" (see

the attached GIF) and I changed it to "faster printing" and it works! This

is a 1200x1200 dpi laserjet with 2mb buffer, but with that resolution, the

file must have been quite large. What country do you live in Hans? I'm in

central California USA near San Jose.

thanks again,

Gary Schilling

6) GSC_ACT CD's not working.

The GSC_ACT is similar but improved GSC 1.1 star database. It is provided on two CD's in the same standard FITS format as the original GSC 1.1. These can be ordered from: http://www.projectpluto.com/gsc_act2.htm.

HNSKY can access the disks directly, if you set the path in HNSKY settings (Cntrl-E) correctly.

Go to menu settings (Cntrl -E). Set in GSC settings format to "FITS" and then double click on the path and set the path correctly. It should point to the path where directories N0000, N0730, N1500... are located. So it could be something like E:\ or E:\GSC_ACT. Just double click and browse till you see N0000 and so on.

Then finally switch the GSC "on" in the object menu. (Cntrl-B).

Do not forget to save you settings for next time.

It is also possible to copy the regions subdirectories N0000, N0730..... to the hard disk under \GSC or \GSC_ACT, but is not required.

To reduce size it is possible to convert the the GSC_ACT or GSC 1.1 CD's to the compact GSC binary format (as GSC 1.2) using the HNSKY utility EXPORT.EXE. For this the program requires the regions.tbl file in directory .\TABLES. After the conversion process you have in HNSKY set the GSC format setting to binary.

Note 1: If you have the GSC 1.2, format should be set on binary.

Note 2: Directories are also called Maps.

7) FITS files (deepsky images) not working:

1) You should have version 2.1.0 or later.

2) First you should unpack the ZIP file and put the FITS images (extension FIT, FITS or FIT8) in the HNSKY directory or in a different one. e.g. c:\hnsky\fits

3) Go to menu SETTINGS (CNTRL-E) and set the path to these FITS correctly. The easiest way is to double click on the existing path and browse to your FITS directory for example c:\hnsky\fits

4) Enable these FITS files in main menu SCREEN, INSERT FITS PICTURES. Shortcut CNTRL-F

5) Then zoom-in far enough till you see them.

6) The FITS image colors (default RED) can be adjusted in menu SETTINGS and tab to the COLOR menu (CNTRL-E).

In case you still can't display the FITS files, try this:

1) Download this demo_fit.zip (updated 2004) file containing a prepared DEFAULT.HNS file and M81 and M81 FITS files.

2) Unzip this file in the same directory as HNSKY. Override your own default.hns file.

3) Start HNSKY and wait and see...

You have to set your location and time zone again since your original default.hns file is overwritten.

8) Error can not insert line.

It looks like that not all Window versions can handle the 25.000 objects in the "list box". In that case you will get an error "Unable to insert a line". One other user reported problems with the Leda supplement containing 71500 objects. He is also using Windows 98. My Windows NT 4.0 can handle at least 71500 objects without problems. Maybe you can influence this by Windows virtual memory settings. What you can do if this disturbs you (text search will always work and all objects are always plotted) is remove part of the database or download the following file hnssac25.zip (version 2003) containing a modified HNS_SAC3.DAT as described below (17000 objects instead of the 25000).

The database file HNS_SAC3.DAT is sorted from bright to faint. The first lines are:

201600,-3600,4,Cr70,OC/[II3mn];Orion's_belt_stars,,1500 194160,-251100,4,LMC/ESO056-G115,GX/[SBm]/eB/eeL/mBM/mE/rrr;Local_Group_Memb;Many_Cl+NB_invl;SN_1987A,141,4200,3000,120

Each line contains the info for an object. The magnitude for objects "Cr285" and "LMC" is 0.4 and stored 10 x 0.4 = 4. If you load the database in a word processor such as MSword, you could remove the faintest part. At the end of the file you will find objects with a magnitude .....153, 154, 155..165,799 and then empty entries for which the magnitude is unknown or difficult to define such as open clusters. 799 is for dark nebulas.

I suggest you remove entries for example 143......165 and leave the dark nebula and unknown magnitude objects. The result will be an database with about 17000 objects to magnitude 142 or 14.2. Please mark this modification in the first two lines.

Later, I have tested this with my old Windows 95. This can handle about 17000 lines. Since each object has 2 names, I guess the limit is 32k names.

9) Video card problems with G-Force 4

The new machine a real powerful system. It is a Pentium 4 rated at 1.8 Gigahertz with 1 Gig of ram on the motherboard. It has a main hard drive of just 20 Gig and two auxilary hard drives of 80 Gig each, plenty of space for a lot of work. The video card is a very new G-Force 4 with 128 Meg of ram on it. It is supposed to be a very powerful board with a lot of very powerful features much in demand by a number of people interested in simulations. The US Army is getting a bunch of these boards for use in their simulators. There are a lot of other major features with the new computer including a high powered CD burner, DVD reader, and so on.

It has taken all of my time just in getting it to have the things on it that I wanted it to have. Then I found something that really caused me a lot of concern. About 5 of my top programs either did not load up or gave error messages I couldn't figure out. HNSKY, SPAD, WORKS and Random House Unabridged Dictionary were in the group of programs that did not run right. This caused me a lot of concern and thought as to what was wrong.

I was given a program by a good friend that is a simulator of an aquarium with up to 7 tropical fish in it. They swim around most realistically and are quite relaxing. (Someone had a lot of spare time available!) The program ran very well on my new computer, but some other programs I mentioned did not run so well or did not run at all. Finally, I found out the problem. In "DISPLAY" in the CONTROL PANEL in SETTINGS/ADVANCED/PERFORMANCE was a slider that is called HARDWARE ACCELERATOR. The default setting for it was to the far right as high acceleration. That was the problem. When I set it back to the left, all the programs I had problems with worked fine. There was no problem with HNSKY any more or SPAD or WORKS or whatever, except the fish in my aquarium program swim with very jerky movements. Well, if it comes down to either the fish in the aquarium or HNSKY, HNSKY will win out every time. So much for the fish. Poor fish!

10) Black cursor

2008, some cards have still problems. You can use the partly opaque cursor as set in the SETTINGS menu:

Nivada graphic card:

2002-12-212, Han, solution is NEW DRIVER for nVIDIA 41.09_win9x !!!

link is:http://www.nvidia.com/content/drivers/drivers.asp

Clear sky ...

2002-8-24 Not solution yet. All due to Nivada graphic card: Subject: Re: hnsksy cursor problem Hello Han, Thanks for the diagnosis; it’s an Elsa-card indeed, which carries the same chip. So I’ll start a quest for some other driver. See you Carel Kremer

Hello Carel, Most likely you have on the desktop computer an Nivada graphic card. There have been 2 or 3 report with simular problems. I looks like there is a small bug in the video driver. Maybe a newer or older driver helps. Han

Carel Kremer wrote: Hello, After putting the program on three different machines (1 recent desktop, two laptops old and new all running win98SE) the normal cursor appears black on black sky on the desktop computer whereas on both laptops it is white on black. Is there a way to change the colour of the cursor? The only way I found was to change the default colour of the sky do a lighter shade of blue or grey, but a black sky would definitely be the better option. Thanks and clear skies Carel Kremer

11) Night vision not working in XP

The standard color schema for windows XP does not allow to change all the colors in the night vision mode. With the standard color schema the task bar stays blue.

If you download HNSKY 2.2.2j or later and select in Windows XP settings the color schema "Windows classic".

12) Download error, repeated download does not fix the problem

Some internet connections use a local cache. If you download fails, a retrial give the everytime the same corrupted file.

Solution, wait one day or change the download address to www. hnsky.com or www. hnsky.de

13) All catalogues displays in vertical bands of stars, interspaced with vertical bands of dark

I' am having display problems with Hnsky (latest and other builds) on my Acer 7720. All catalogues displays in vertical bands of stars, interspaced with vertical bands of dark.

Driver Version: ATI Catalyst 8.493 Operating System: Windows Vista (TM) Ultimate* , (6.0.6001 SP1) Default Language: Russian DirectX* Version: 10.0 Physical Memory: 2037 MBVideoCard: Radeon Mobility HD 2600 Graphics Memory: 512+ MBProcessor: Intel Core 2 Duo T7300 2.00 GHz Current Graphics Mode: 1400x900 True Color (60 Hz)

How can I solve this problem?

Answer:

Han, I found the solution!

It`s necessary to SWITCH ON Vista Aero mode (I worked in Standart)! Everything looks fine after that. In every other mode (except safe mode) the problem remains the same.

Egor.

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