The next version of Astrolog:
Astrolog 5.40 was released at this site on December 23, 1998. I've been
working on other projects lately, both online and offline, so haven't worked on
Astrolog as much lately. However there will still be an Astrolog 5.50. :-) The main feature in it is support for the
Swiss Ephemeris.
Bugs in Astrolog 5.40:
- In the sidebar of the graphics Gauquelin sector chart, the planet and
house positions are wrong.
The "now" time problem:
- What it is: You display a chart for "now", either
by looking at the default chart that comes up in the Windows version,
or by using the -n command switch, and the result is that the
"now" chart is always off by a few hours. (And it's
still off even when you've made sure Astrolog's default time zone
setting is correct and have double checked your system time.)
- The correction (short version): Open your "astrolog.dat"
default settings file (in your Astrolog directory) in a text editor.
Go to line 7, and change the line "-Yz 0" by replacing
the "0" with the number of minutes the "now"
chart is off by. For example, if the "now" chart always
seems to be two hours ahead, change it to "-Yz -120"
(minus the quotes of course).
- The correction (long version): The problem is simply due
to Astrolog thinking the current time on your machine is different
from what you think it is. The problem isn't a bug or inaccuracy
on Astrolog's part, as once it gets a time, it casts the chart
for that time perfectly. It's just a matter of getting the right
time in the first place. The way Astrolog gets its "now"
time, is that first it queries your system for its local time.
Then it translates that local time to GMT, by querying your system
for what time zone your system time is in. Once the GMT time is
obtained, and the chart is cast, the GMT time is translated back
into your local time using Astrolog's default time zone, and that
time is displayed as the time for the chart. The system time zone
and Astrolog's default time zone are two different things, so
if they're different, then the result of the "now" time
and your system time differing happens. Note that Astrolog's default
time zone only affects how "now" times are displayed
in the program; changing it won't affect the absolute "now"
time or cause planets to move. The case for most people is they
don't have any system time zone variable set, so Astrolog always
thinks their local time is in GMT or Pacific time. The most correct
fix is to set your TZ environment variable, so your machine has
a correct system time zone setting. See the Helpfile.540 documentation
for the -n command switch for how to do this. The alternative
way is to just give Astrolog a correction factor of some amount
of time to add to all its "now" charts, using the -Yz
switch described above. See the Helpfile.540 documentation for
the -Yz switch for more details.
Have you found a bug in Astrolog? Tell me!
This site produced by Walter D. Pullen
(see my homepage), hosted on Magitech
and astrolog.org, created
using Microsoft FrontPage,
page last updated August 19, 2003.