SOLAR SPARK - VERSION 2 ======================= CHANGES FROM V2.1.7 to v2.1.8 (23 Jun 2006) ----------------------------- * ACS Atlas - if user has ACS atlas installed, then it was being accessed via ACSATLAS.OCX, which is an ACS supplied file. However, some versions of ACSATLAS.OCX were not self-registering correctly and thus preventing Solar Spark from running. This OCX file has now been replaced by DLL files which do not require registering, and thus do not prevent Solar Spark from running even if the ACS Atlas installation is problematic. * Minor text updates - updated online oracle text and help file to add reference to Lynda Hill's new book and website address. * Multiple instances of Solar Spark - if these were being started all very rapidly, then some instances started with incorrect default locations, because buffer was not flushed quickly enough between each instance startup. This has now been fixed. CHANGES FROM V2.1.6 to v2.1.7 (08 Jun 2006) ----------------------------- * Splash screen - minor layout changes. * Font - now uses own screen font "SS Astro Screen" instead of sharing font with other applications. This reduces likelihood of font installation and uninstallation conflicts with other applications. CHANGES FROM V2.1.5 to v2.1.6 (31 May 2006) ----------------------------- * Added splash screen - appears for 4 seconds at startup prior to main screen display. However, user may click on it or use any key to close it immediately. It may also be prevented from being shown altogether by toggling the menu item Options / Show Splash Screen on Startup. (Double click anywhere on the blank background of the main Solar Spark screen to make the menus visible). This new screen also replaces the About screen which is selectable from Help menu. * Places - new list of 3571 places will replace any existing places file which has not been updated by the user since 1st Jan 2005. * New Chart Entry - autocompletes based on places in list. * Preferences - places list is now sorted into alphabetical order, and auto- completes based on places in list. * Font scaling - Minor adjustment to font scaling to improve apearance at small dialog sizes. * Grid & Dignities dialogs - crashed when resized too small. Now fixed. Slightly increased font sizes on grid. * Font check on startup - now prompts user to either reboot, or reinstall program if required font was not found. * Printing problem - sign glyphs in zodiac ring are slightly out of position when printed, but OK when wheel viewed on screen. (Doesn't affect most printers - only one case reported). This may be due to offset being calculated for font width and height on screen, even when output sent to printer. Now fixed. CHANGES FROM V2.1.4 to v2.1.5 (30 Jun 2005) ----------------------------- * Multiple instances of Solar Spark can now be started. Each instance remembers its own default chart location, and alarm events. * Astro-Clock - now automatically adjusts time for timezone of displayed chart. Hence if the default chart location is in a different timezone from your computer's system clock, the chart time will show the correct current time for it own given timezone. * New Chart - now displays current chart data, making it easier to save after stepping a chart, for example. CHANGES FROM V2.1.3 to v2.1.4 (20 Aug 2004) ----------------------------- * Printing - may be black and white even on some color printers. Now fixed. CHANGES FROM V2.1.2 to v2.1.3 (21 Mar 2003) ----------------------------- * ACS Atlas - if was not present on your computer, but the file ACSATLAS.OCX was present, then Solar Spark assumed that the atlas was installed, and produced an error message when you attempted to do a place lookup. Now fixed. CHANGES FROM V2.1 to v2.1.2 ---------------------------- 1. Entering dates - when user entered one or two digit years, this was always assumed to be in the 20th century. This has now been altered to assume that such dates are within a window from 95 years prior to 5 years after the current year. 2. ACS Atlas - after ACS atlas lookup in the Preferences dialog, the details were not saved as the new place default. Now fixed. 3. Default Place - after clicking on the ACS button, the time zone was sometimes just an abbreviation without a time. However, this did not cause any actaul error - it was just a cosmetic problem. Now fixed. 4. Saving charts - it was not possible to create a new chart file name, so save would only work to an existing chart file. Now, if the user enters a new chart file name, then it will be created automatically before the chart is saved into it. 5. European Locales - due to the use of different decimal point specifiers (eg. a comma in Europe) the default latitude and longitude may have been truncated to a whole numer of degrees with any minutes value removed. Now fixed. 6. Screen Glyphs - when resizing the screen, occasionally the minutes text size became larger than the degrees text size. Now fixed. CHANGES FROM V2.05 to V2.1 -------------------------- 1. Converted from 16 bit to 32 bit program - now requires Win95 or higher. 2. Added essential dignities and house almutens screen and button. 3. Chart files are now displayed with charts in alphabetic order. 4. Chart file to save to is now user-selectable 5. Chart and tabulation windows are now sizeable, with scaling glyphs 6. Links to ACS Atlas, if installed on your computer CHANGES FROM V2.04 to V2.05 --------------------------- 1. Using NOW button resulted in date shown in user's locale. When this was non-English, that date was not recognised correctly. The date is now always shown in English. CHANGES FROM V2.03 to V2.04 --------------------------- 1. Included ability to read Solar Fire v5 chart files. However note that only natal types charts can be read. Other chart types are ignored. CHANGES FROM V2.02 to V2.03 --------------------------- 1. The Solfire font has been replaced by ET Astro to fix a problem which prevents the Aries glyph from printing under Windows 98. 2. The VBX files have been replaced with tailored versions to avoid the possiblity of any version conflicts. CHANGES FROM V2.01 to V2.02 --------------------------- 1. When entering a new alarm event with a user defined position, that position reverted to 0 Aries when saved. This is now fixed. CHANGES FROM V2.0 to V2.01 -------------------------- 1. In some cases the interpretations text for one planet in aspect to another planet was incorrect. This has now been remedied. CHANGES FROM V1.2 to V2.0 ------------------------- 1. Interpretation reports may be generated for any displayed chart. 2. Planetary day and hour have been added to the chart display. 3. Defaults screen now allows selection of place from drop-down list. 4. The TimeStep window and Chart Open window no longer cause the main window to jump to the bottom left of screen, unless there is insufficient space. 5. There is no longer any confirmation of exit required - the program terminates immediately the Exit button is clicked. 6. 30 Degree modulus sort strip has been added below aspect grid. 7. Alarm event editing screen has been modified to avoid confusion when editing events. Clicking on the NEW button now adds an event to the list. Clicking on the edit boxes now alters the current highlighted event. CHANGES FROM V1.1 to V1.2 ------------------------- 1. It is now possible to read charts transparently from both Solar Fire v2 and Solar Fire v3. 2. The Sabian Oracle has been added. 3. Visual Basic supporting files have been updated from VB2.0 to VB3.0. 4. The font files and calculation DLLs have been updated with the latest versions from Solar Fire v3. CHANGES FROM V1.02 to V1.1 -------------------------- 1. It is now possible to save charts calculated in Solar Spark. They are saved in Solar Fire compatible format into a chart file "spark.cht" which resides in the Solar Spark directory. These charts may also subsequently be deleted, if desired. 2. There is now a place database which may be added to or edited. The place database is a Solar Fire compatible place database, which holds place names, time zones, latitudes and longitudes. The place database file is called "places.fil", and it resides in the Solar Spark directory. When first installed, it contains over 200 places from around the world. Note that any Solar Fire place database may be copied to "places.fil" if you wish. For example, to give Solar Spark the entire Australian places database of Solar Fire, simply copy "australi.plc" in the Solar Fire USERDATA directory to "places.fil" in the Solar Spark directory. 3. There is now a timezone database. This cannot be edited from the Solar Spark program, but items may be added to it with a text editor provided that the existing format of the file is properly respected (i.e. that any new lines added to the "timezone.fil" file follow the same column layout as the existing lines.) 4. The Part of Fortune has been added as a chart point. Its calculation is The Ascendant + The Moon - The Sun for daytime charts, and The Ascendant - The Moon + The Sun for nighttime charts. (A daytime chart is when the sun is above the horizon i.e. in the the top half of the chart.) 5. Longitudes of 90E and 90W were not being accepted as valid longitudes. This has now been fixed. 6. Whole Sign Houses were not being calculated, and an error message occurred if this system was saved as the default system. This has now been fixed. 7. It was not possible to see chart details text when the Windows default text color was set to white. Similarly, it was not possible to see the help file text in this case. This has now been fixed. 8. Dates in the first century were being converted to the 20th century e.g. year 0010 was being converted to 1910. This has now been fixed. 9. When a planet retrograded into a sign, the alarm showed it in the correct time period, but assigned it a spurious time and date. This has been fixed. 10. If the Windows color scheme was set to give a white foreground text color then chart details text and the help file text were not visible. This has now been fixed. 11. Attempting to enter a date in the 1st century AD resulted in a 20th century date appearing. This has been fixed. CHANGES FROM V1.01 to V1.02 --------------------------- 1. It is now possible to print the chart in color if you have a color printer. Fixed in v1.02. 2. The layout of the printed chart and grid have been modified slightly to prevent overlap on unusual page sizes. Fixed in v1.02. 3. Closing the TimeStep window when time stepping was in progress caused a crash. In v1.02 attempting to close this window when timestepping is in progress will simply stop the time stepping. When time stepping is not in progress, then the window may be closed as usual. CHANGES FROM V1.0 to V1.01 -------------------------- 1. In v1.0 BC dates were all 1 year out i.e. a chart for year 7 BC was actually displaying the planetary positions for the year 8 BC. This was due to the fact that the program assumed that year 0 AD existed, whereas in fact the year immediately before 1 AD is 1 BC. Fixed in v1.01 2. The displayed lunar node position was always the mean node, regardless of the user had chosen. Fixed in v1.01 3. The cursor would occasionally get "stuck" as an hourglass when the astro clock updated if you were working in another application such as a word processor at the time. In v1.01 the cursor is no longer changed into an hourglass when the clock is being updated, thus preventing this problem. 4. Nova charts with times from 1 PM onwards were incorrectly attributed with AM times. Fixed in v1.01 5. The aspect grid now shows applying and separating orbs. 6. A date format option has been added to the Defaults screen. This allows the choice of either International or US date formats for entry and display. 7. Blue*Star chart time zones were being ignored. Fixed in v1.01 8. Nova charts with more than 88 charts produced an error which made it impossible to view charts beyond the 88th. Fixed in v1.01 9. Alarm events in the alarm notification window are now sorted into time and date order, instead of into planetary order. 10. Alarm events involving zodiacal positions can now be given a user assigned name e.g. "My Sun", instead of their zodiacal position only. This makes it much easier to identify which point is being transited. 11. Installing Solar Spark into the same directory as Solar Fire v1.x caused an ephemeris file to be overwritten, causing Solar Fire to give incorrect outer planetary positions. A new version of the installation program has been created which detects whether this problem might occur, and if so, prevents Solar Spark being installed into the Solar Fire directory. The file concerned is OP19AD.EPH. If for any reason you do experience this problem, then copy the OP19AD.EPH from the Solar Fire installation disks back into the SOLFIRE directory, and reinstall Solar Spark onto another directory.