SolarMap V2.0 10th November 1997 Installing You should install everything except the maps to a directory called SolarMap in System/Apps, this will need to be created the first time, it can be on the C or D drive. In the SolarMap directory you will need another sub-directory called Maps, put all the maps in this directory. SolarMap should now appear on your Extras list The Map screen and Maps The map screen is a 360x180 area which you can think of as a window to a larger map. The smallest map is in fact only 360x180 so you will see the whole thing without having to scroll around. As you zoom in to an are the maps get bigger and bigger to the stag where you can only see a small area at any one time. At the moment the largest map is the 3600x1800 map of the world, if you could see the whole thing at once on the Psion it would be about 75cm (30 inches) across. The maps are generated from a vector map of the world, they show rivers, lakes, shore lines and in some cases roads. To move across a map the best way is to click on the map on the side or direction you want to moving. For example if you want to scroll or move to the right then click on the right of the screen. The further you click from the centre, the further you will move. Each time you click on the map the point you click on becomes the centre. The cursor keys will have similar effect, they scroll the map as you would expect. Pressing "Fn" at the same time to get "Home", "PgUp" etc. will move the map a little quicker. If you have memory problems or simply don't need one of the maps then just delete it. Don't however delete a map you are currently using of used last time you used SolarMap. The Map database will reconfigure its-self. The World-3600x1800 map not only uses disk space but requires a lot of memory to load, if you are in Europe, North America or Australia then you will find more detailed maps that use less space. If you delete the MapList file it will regenerate its-self next time you run SolarMap. The same is true for SolarMap.ini. If you would like to add maps or have suggestions for others then please contact drop me an email. Maps must use a rectangular projection. The Info Screen The info screen displays the following: - The time (UT or Local) Dawn time (See below) The Current position Sunrise time The Local offset from UT Sunset time The Home City Dusk time (See below) Well, the time is simple, it is either UT (GMT) or Local time. Local time is the time set on your Psion, it doesn't change. UT is calculated be subtracting the offset you enter via the "set Time/Zone" option in the menu bar. If you change the city of select a new home city it will NOT change the time zone. You must set it manually with the "Set Time/Zone" option. Similarly if you change the time on the Psion or the summer times in Psion's "Time" you must update SolarMap manually. A pain? Yes, a little bit but you shouldn't need to change times too often. The reason I haven't linked SolarMap to the current Psion time zone or summer time offset is that Psion have not yet released information about interfacing to "Time". I will do it as soon as an OPX becomes available. The current position is the position of the cross-hair on the map. Local offset should give you an idea of the local verses UT time, it includes summer times. The home city is the last city you clicked on in the City screen or the last city you selected after a search, it will not change if you scroll around. Dawn and Dusk are calculated when you click on the Info Screen and if you set a new home city. This value also depends on the "Set Twilight" option in the menu. Twilight to must people is when the sun is below the horizon but it's still a little light. There are three definitions of Twilight, that I know of anyway. Civil twilight, when the sun is less than 6 degrees below the horizon, this is what you would see in the newspaper and term as twilight if you were outside. Nautical Twilight is when the sun is less than 12 degrees below the horizon, this is the same value used by radio hams when calculating the "grey line" where the Earth's F2-layer lifts and gives better reception. Astronomical Twilight is really dark and is used by astronomers this is when the sun is up to 18 degrees below the horizon. Sunrise and Sunset are defined by the times at which the sun's first and last edge appear to cross the horizon respectively. I stress appear because the sun's rays are actually refracted or "bent" by the Earth's atmosphere. In standard conditions i.e. about 20°C at normal pressure, the adopted value for refraction for an object on the horizon is 34'. Add this to half of the sun's diameter and the accepted value is 50 below the horizon. There is not much point in getting any more precise because a small change in temperature in the upper atmosphere can add as much as a minute. Calculating sunrise and sunset is rather complicated, it involves a lot of complex maths which is iterated several times. This is the reason the shadow is so slow to draw, it has to make 4 complex calculations per degree longitude or a total of 720 for the map. I hope to port these calculations to C++ very soon which should speed things up somewhat. Once you have calculated the curve for the small (360x180) map it is stored and doesn't need to be recalculated for that day. If you zoom or move around the map the "Show Shadow" option is cancelled, this is to speed things up otherwise it makes your commands too slow, you will need to turn it back on again. The City screen To activate anything on the empty space on the right (the city screen) you need to select "show cities" from either toolbar or the menus. It will then search through a database of cities for entries close to the current cursor position. This can take a few seconds but if at any time you want to abort just press a key during the search. It basically searches until it finds a number of near by cities, the search area gets bigger and bigger if nothing is found near by. Once you have a list of cities you can then click on the city to move to it. It will also set that city to your home city and show the local sunrise/set etc. in the info screen. If you find any of the city entries wrong then please let me know, you can edit, delete and add cities by using the third toolbar button (it's also a menu option). The city database is a mixture of several sources I found on the internet, you may find one or two cities that have two entries due to different spellings. I had to write several programs to merge the data, it you want to import data to the database then the format is as follows: - OPEN "CityList SELECT * FROM Cities", A, City$, Country$, Type$, Lat, Long, Zone I don't use zone yet but it's there for future expansion. Type$ for the moment is either "World City", "US City", "World Capital", "US Capital" or "Airport". Please try to stick to this format if you add things, if you add a list of data such as hotels then choose a name like "Hotel". There is one hotel as an example on the south west coast of Scotland. Any type with the word capital in it will display as bold when you list the cities. DO NOT use the ' character it cannot be used in SQL searches which I use in SolarMap, "John O'Groats" is an example. To enter Longitude ad Latitude you can either use any of the following methods: - For 12 degrees, 34 minutes and 56.78 seconds west use: -12,34,56.78 or -(12+34/60+56.78/3600) or -12-34/60-56.78/3600 etc. Ah, another thing, I have kept the cities in the UK as England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, I just liked the extra level of info. If you need to find a city in a country then use the "Find Cities in a Country" option. I have a problem with this and "Find City" in that I can only add 255 characters to the list, when Psion or someone else tells me how to get round this I'll fix it. SolarMap was written for fun, I originally wrote it in Java as a learning exercise about 2 years ago when it first came out. I then wrote it on the Psion 3a and called it GeoClock. SolarMap is Freeware, there are no nag screens and you get a full version without coughing up any money. However, the only reason I bothered to put so much effort into this Psion 5 version is because so many people "registered" the older GeoClock. That too was freeware but I offered people the option of sending contributions. I would like to offer you the same chance now, Call it beer money if you like, you get nothing for it except a personal email "thank you", peace of mind and updates about any new releases. I will of course take any change requests more seriously. I suggest £25, or about US$30, again even $1 will get you registered but there again so will $100! You can use http://www.swregnet.com/1496p.htm with a credit card, "GO SWREG" on Compuserve with ID #13827 (Please send me an email to tell me it was for SolarMap and not GeoClock) or you can send plain old cash or cheque. The cash/cheque goes to my mother to put toward good food when I visit some weekends, her address is: Mrs A J Davies Bury Barn Church Lane Bury West Sussex RH20 1PB Lastly I must thank my wife, Rachel, for putting up with my Psion programming for the last two months or so. The good part was done on several return flights to Hong Kong (good ol' Virgin Atlantic) but a lot was written when I should have been spending a little more time with Rachel. Any contributions will also make Rachel feel it was all worth while. SolarMap is Copyright © 1997 John Davies, you are free to distribute it and add it to internet sites, you can email me at John_Davies@Compuserve.com. Please drop into my web page at http://www.compulink.co.uk/~bonzo/ there is a Psion page with regular updates at http://www.compulink.co.uk/~bonzo/Psion/