OS/2 Shareware BBS: 7 Games/07-Games.zip/astrolog.zip/helpfile.txt

Text File | 1999-08-27 | 294KB | 5,144 lines

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                            F O R  O S / 2


     This file contains a complete list of all the features available
in Astrolog for OS/2, and documentation on how to use each option. The
file is divided into seven sections:

1) A summary of all the main features which are accessed via command
line switches and parameters, along with the single key press
commands that can be given to an X Window or PC graphics screen to
change the display in various ways (assuming graphics are compiled
in) is listed.

2) The list of command switches and keys is repeated, but after each
option is given a full description of the details of the feature.

3) Details of default settings, in compile time options, and in the
default configuration file, are described, along with using Astrolog
files in general.

4) Descriptions of things that appear in Astrolog text displays are
described. This consists of describing how to enter chart information
into the program, and how to interpret what is seen in the standard
main display.

5) Next is a description of the different graphic chart displays and
how they are organized, and the X Windows features in general.
(Looking for a quick display to prove Astrolog was worth downloading
and/or compiling? With graphics try: "astrolog -Xn -XG"!)

6) Then are discussed the program's graphics features for PC's, how
to use them, the ways they are different from X Windows, and the best
way to use them if running the DOS version under Microsoft Windows.

7) Then is discussed Astrolog for OS/2, and a description of the
easy to use menu and dialog interface it offers.

     Note that not all information is relevant to the OS/2 version.
Wherever windows is mentioned with regard to program functionality
this will in general apply to the OS/2 version as well.


************************
LIST OF COMMAND SWITCHES
************************

Astrolog for OS/2 command switches:
 -H: Display this help list.
 -Hc: Display program credits and copyrights.
 -HC: Display names of zodiac signs and houses.
 -HO: Display available planets and other celestial objects.
 -HA: Display available aspects, their angles, and present orbs.
 -HF: Display names of astronomical constellations.
 -HS: Display information about planets in the solar system.
 -HI: Display meanings of signs, houses, planets, and aspects.
 -He: Display all info tables together (-Hc-H-Y-HX-HC-HO-HA-HF-HS-HI).
 -Q: Prompt for more command switches after display finished.
 -Q0: Like -Q but prompt for additional switches on startup.
 -M <1-48>: Run the specified command switch macro.
 -M0 <1-48> <string>: Define the specified command switch macro.
 -Y: Display help list of less commonly used command switches.

Switches which determine the type of chart to display:
 -v: Display list of object positions (chosen by default).
 -v0: Like -v but express velocities relative to average speed.
 -w [<rows>]: Display chart in a graphic house wheel format.
 -w0 [..]: Like -w but reverse order of objects in houses 4..9.
 -g: Display aspect and midpoint grid among planets.
 -g0: Like -g but flag aspect configurations (e.g. Yod's) too.
 -g0: For comparison charts, show midpoints instead of aspects.
 -ga: Like -g but indicate applying instead of difference orbs.
 -gp: Like -g but generate parallel and contraparallel aspects.
 -a: Display list of all aspects ordered by influence.
 -a0: Like -a but display aspect summary too.
 -a[0]a: Like -a but indicate applying and separating orbs.
 -a[0]p: Like -a but do parallel and contraparallel aspects.
 -m: Display all object midpoints in sorted zodiac order.
 -m0: Like -m but display midpoint summary too.
 -ma: Like -m but show aspects from midpoints to planets as well.
 -Z: Display planet locations with respect to the local horizon.
 -Z0: Like -Z but express coordinates relative to polar center.
 -Zd: Search day for object local rising and setting times.
 -S: Display x,y,z coordinate positions of planets in space.
 -l: Display Gauquelin sectors for each planet in chart.
 -l0: Like -l but approximate sectors using Placidus cusps.
 -j: Display astrological influences of each object in chart.
 -j0: Like -j but include influences of each zodiac sign as well.
 -L [<step>]: Display astro-graph locations of planetary angles.
 -L0 [..]: Like -L but display list of latitude crossings too.
 -K: Display a calendar for given month.
 -Ky: Like -K but display a calendar for the entire year.
 -d [<step>]: Print all aspects and changes occurring in a day.
 -dm: Like -d but print all aspects for the entire month.
 -dy: Like -d but print all aspects for the entire year.
 -dY <years>: Like -d but search within a number of years.
 -dp <month> <year>: Print aspects within progressed chart.
 -dpy <year>: Like -dp but search for aspects within entire year.
 -dpY <year> <years>: Like -dp but search within number of years.
 -dp[y]n: Search for progressed aspects in current month/year.
 -D: Like -d but display aspects by influence instead of time.
 -E: Display planetary ephemeris for given month.
 -Ey: Display planetary ephemeris for the entire year.
 -EY <years>: Display planetary ephemeris for a number of years.
 -e: Print all charts together (i.e. -v-w-g0-a-m-Z-S-j0-L0-K-d-D-E).
 -t <month> <year>: Compute all transits to natal planets in month.
 -tp <month> <year>: Compute progressions to natal in month for chart.
 -tr <month> <year>: Compute all returns in month for chart.
 -t[p]y: <year>: Compute transits/progressions for entire year.
 -t[p]Y: <year> <years>: Compute transits for a number of years.
 -t[py]n: Compute transits to natal planets for current time now.
 -T <month> <day> <year>: Display transits ordered by influence.
 -Tp <month> <day> <year>: Print progressions instead of transits.
 -T[p]n: Display transits ordered by influence for current date.

Switches which affect how the chart parameters are obtained:
 -n: Compute chart for this exact moment using current time.
 -n[d,m,y]: Compute chart for start of current day, month, year.
 -z [<zone>]: Change the default time zone (for -d-E-t-q options).
 -z0 [<offset>]: Change the default daylight time setting.
 -zl <long> <lat>: Change the default longitude & latitude.
 -zt <time>: Set only the time of current chart.
 -zd <date>: Set only the day of current chart.
 -zi <name> <place>: Set name and place strings of current chart.
 -q <month> <date> <year> <time>: Compute chart with defaults.
 -qd <month> <date> <year>: Compute chart for noon on date.
 -qm <month> <year>: Compute chart for first of month.
 -qy <year>: Compute chart for first day of year.
 -qa <month> <date> <year> <time> <zone> <long> <lat>:
     Compute chart automatically given specified data.
 -qb <month> <date> <year> <time> <daylight> <zone> <long> <lat>:
     Like -qa but takes additional parameter for daylight offset.
 -qj <day>: Compute chart for time of specified Julian day.
 -i <file>: Compute chart based on info in file.
 -i[2,3,4] <file>: Load chart info into chart slots 2, 3, or 4.
 -o <file> [..]: Write parameters of current chart to file.
 -o0 <file> [..]: Like -o but output planet/house positions.
 -os <file>, > <file>: Redirect output of text charts to file.

Switches which affect what information is used in a chart:
 -R [<obj1> [<obj2> ..]]: Restrict specific bodies from displays.
 -R0 [<obj1> ..]: Like -R but restrict everything first.
 -R1 [<obj1> ..]: Like -R0 but unrestrict and show all objects.
 -R[C,u,U]: Restrict all minor cusps, all uranians, or stars.
 -RT[0,1,C,u,U] [..]: Restrict transiting planets in -t lists.
 -RA [<asp1> ..]: Restrict aspects by giving them negative orbs.
 -C: Include angular and non-angular house cusps in charts.
 -u: Include transneptunian/uranian bodies in charts.
 -U: Include locations of fixed background stars in charts.
 -U[z,l,n,b]: Order by azimuth, altitude, name, or brightness.
 -A <0-18>: Specify the number of aspects to use in charts.
 -Ao <aspect> <orb>: Specify maximum orb for an aspect.
 -Am <planet> <orb>: Specify maximum orb allowed to a planet.
 -Ad <planet> <orb>: Specify orb addition given to a planet.
 -Aa <aspect> <angle>: Change the actual angle of an aspect.

Switches which affect how a chart is computed:
 -b: Use ephemeris files for more accurate location computations.
 -b0: Like -b but display locations to the nearest second too.
 -c <value>: Select a different default system of houses.
     (0 = Placidus, 1 = Koch, 2 = Equal, 3 = Campanus,
     4 = Meridian, 5 = Regiomontanus, 6 = Porphyry, 7 = Morinus,
     8 = Topocentric, 9 = Alcabitius, 10 = Equal (MC),
     11 = Neo-Porphyry, 12 = Whole, 13 = Jyotish, 14 = None.)
 -s [..]: Compute a sidereal instead of the normal tropical chart.
 -sr: Compute right ascension locations relative to equator.
 -s[z,h,d]: Display locations as in zodiac, hours/minutes, or degrees.
 -h [<objnum>]: Compute positions centered on specified object.
 -p <month> <day> <year>: Cast 2ndary progressed chart for date.
 -p0 <month> <day> <year>: Cast solar arc chart for date.
 -p[0]n: Cast progressed chart based on current date now.
 -pd <days>: Set no. of days to progress / day (default 365.25).
 -x <1-360>: Cast harmonic chart based on specified factor.
 -1 [<objnum>]: Cast chart with specified object on Ascendant.
 -2 [<objnum>]: Cast chart with specified object on Midheaven.
 -3: Display objects in their zodiac decan positions.
 -4: Display objects in their zodiac dwad positions.
 -f: Display houses as sign positions (flip them).
 -G: Compute houses based on geographic location only.
 -F <objnum> <sign> <deg>: Force object's position to be value.
 -+ [<days>]: Cast chart for specified no. of days in the future.
 -- [<days>]: Cast chart for specified no. of days in the past.
 -+[m,y] [<value>]: Cast chart for no. of months/years in future.

Switches for relationship and comparison charts:
 -r <file1> <file2>: Compute a relationship synastry chart.
 -rc <file1> <file2>: Compute a composite chart.
 -rm <file1> <file2>: Compute a time space midpoint chart.
 -r[c,m]0 <file1> <file2> <ratio1> <ratio2>: Weighted chart.
 -rd <file1> <file2>: Print time span between files' dates.
 -r0 <file1> <file2>: Keep the charts separate in comparison.
 -rp[0] <file1> <file2>: Like -r0 but do file1 progr. to file2.
 -rt <file1> <file2>: Like -r0 but treat file2 as transiting.
 -r[3,4]: Make graphics wheel chart tri-wheel or quad-wheel.
 -y <file>: Display current house transits for particular chart.
 -y[b,d,p,t] <file>: Like -r0 but compare to current time now.

Switches to access graphics options:
 -k: Display text charts using Ansi characters and color.
 -k0: Like -k but only use special characters, not Ansi color.
 -V <25,43,50>: Start up with text mode set to number of rows.
 -X: Create a graphics chart instead of displaying it as text.
 -Xb: Create bitmap file instead of putting graphics on screen.
 -Xb[n,c,v,a,b]: Set bitmap file output mode to X11 normal,
     compacted, very compact, Ascii (bmtoa), or Windows bmp.
 -Xp: Create PostScript stroke graphic instead of bitmap file.
 -Xp0: Like -Xp but create complete instead of encapsulated file.
 -Xo <file>: Write output bitmap or graphic to specified file.
 -XB: Display X chart on root instead of in a separate window.
 -Xm: Create monochrome graphic instead of one in color.
 -Xr: Create chart graphic in reversed colors (white background).
 -Xw <hor> [<ver>], -ge[..]: Change the size of chart graphic.
 -Xs <100,200,300,400>: Change the size of map or characters by %.
 -Xi: Create chart graphic in slightly modified form.
 -Xt: Inhibit display of chart info at bottom of graphic.
 -Xu: Inhibit display of a border around graphic.
 -Xl: Inhibit labeling of object points in chart graphic.
 -Xj: Don't clear screen between chart updates, drawing trails.
 -X1 <object>: Rotate wheel charts so object is at left edge.
 -X2 <object>: Rotate wheel charts so object is at top edge.
 -Xd <name>, -di[..] <name>: Open X window on specified display.
 -XW: Simply create an image of the world map.
 -XW0: Like -XW but do a non-rectangular Mollewide projection.
 -XG [<degrees>]: Display the image of the world as a globe.
 -XP: Like -XG but create the globe from a polar projection.
 -XF: Display maps as constellations on the celestial sphere.
 -Xn [<mode>]: Start up chart or globe display in animation mode.
 -HX: Display list of key press options for screen graphics.
 -W <value>: Run given menu command internally.
 -WN <1-32000>: Set animation update delay in milliseconds.
 -WM <1-48> <text>: Set menu text for macro command.
 -Wn: Don't redraw screen until user forces update.

--

Astrolog for OS/2 obscure command switches:
 -Y: Display this help list.
 -Yn: Compute location of true instead of mean node.
 -Yd: Display dates in D/M/Y instead of M/D/Y format.
 -Yt: Display times in 24 hour instead of am/pm format.
 -YC: Automatically ignore insignificant house cusp aspects.
 -Y8: Clip text charts at the rightmost (e.g. 80th) column.
 -YQ <rows>: Pause text scrolling after a page full has printed.
 -Yo: Output chart info and position files in old style format.
 -Yc: Angular cusp objects are house positions instead of angles.
 -Yz <min>: Forward clock by amount for current moment charts.
 -Yl <1-36>: Toggle plus zone status of sector for sector chart.
 -YE <obj> <semi-major axis> <eccentricity (3)> <inclination (3)>
     <perihelion (3)> <ascending node (3)> <time offset (3)>
     Change orbit of object to be the given elements.
 -YR <obj1> <obj2> <flag1>..<flag2>: Set restrictions for object range.
 -YRT <obj1> <obj2> <flag1>..<flag2>: Transit restrictions for range.
 -YR0 <flag1> <flag2>: Set restrictions for sign, direction changes.
 -YRZ <rise> <zenith> <set> <nadir>: Set restrictions for -Zd chart.
 -YAo <asp1> <asp2> <orb1>..<orb2>: Set aspect orbs for range.
 -YAm <obj1> <obj2> <orb1>..<orb2>: Set max planet orbs for range.
 -YAd <obj1> <obj2> <orb1>..<orb2>: Set planet orb additions for range.
 -YAa <asp1> <asp2> <ang1>..<ang2>: Set planet aspect angles for range.
 -Yj <obj1> <obj2> <inf1>..<inf2>: Set influences for object range.
 -YjC <cusp1> <cusp2> <inf1>..<inf2>: Set influences for house cusps.
 -YjA <asp1> <asp2> <inf1>..<inf2>: Set influences for aspect range.
 -YjT <obj1> <obj2> <inf1>..<inf2>: Set transit influences for range.
 -Yj0 <inf1> <inf2> <inf3> <inf4>: Set influences given to planets
     in ruling sign, exalted sign, ruling house, exalted house.
 -YJ <obj> <sign> <cosign>: Set sign planet rules and co-rules.
 -YJ0 <obj> <sign>: Set zodiac sign given planet exalts in.
 -YkC <fir> <ear> <air> <wat>: Customize element colors.
 -YkA <asp1> <asp2> <col1>..<col2>: Customize aspect colors.
 -Yk0 <1..7> <1..7> <col1>..<col2>: Customize 'rainbow' colors.
 -Yk <0..8> <0..8> <col1>..<col2>: Customize 'general' colors.
 -YXG <0-2><0-2><0-2><0-3>: Select among different graphic glyphs
     for Capricorn, Uranus, Pluto, and Lilith.
 -YXg <cells>: Set number of cells for graphic aspect grid.
 -YXf <val>: Set usage of actual system fonts in graphic file.
 -YXp <-1,0,1>: Set paper orientation for PostScript files.
 -YXp0 <hor> <ver>: Set paper size for PostScript files.
 -YX <hi-res> <lo-res>: Set modes to use for PC screen graphics.
 -0[o,i,q,X]: Disallow file output, input, exiting, and graphics.
 -;: Ignore rest of command line and treat it as a comment.

--

Astrolog graphics screen key press options:
 Press 'H' or '?' to display this list of key options.
 Press 'p' to toggle pause status on or off.
 Press 'x' to toggle fg/bg colors on screen.
 Press 'm' to toggle color/monochrome display on screen.
 Press 'i' to toggle status of the minor chart modification.
 Press 't' to toggle header info on current chart on screen.
 Press 'b' to toggle drawing of a border around the chart.
 Press 'l' to toggle labeling of object points in chart.
 Press 'j' to toggle not clearing screen between chart updates.
 Press 'v' to display current chart positions on text screen.
 Press 'R', 'C', 'u', 'U' to toggle restriction status of minor
       objects, minor house cusps, uranian planets, and stars.
 Press 'c' to toggle relationship comparison chart mode.
 Press 's', 'h', 'f', 'g' to toggle status of sidereal zodiac,
       heliocentric charts, domal charts, and decan charts.
 Press 'O' and 'o' to recall/store a previous chart from memory.
 Press 'B' to dump current window contents to root background.
 Press 'B' to resize chart display to full size of screen.
 Press 'Q' to resize chart display to a square.
 Press '<' and '>' to decrease/increase the scale size of the
       glyphs and the size of world map.
 Press '[' and ']' to decrease/increase tilt in globe display.
 Press '+' and '-' to add/subtract a day from current chart.
 Press 'n' to set chart information to current time now.
 Press 'N' to toggle animation status on or off. Charts will
       be updated to current status and globe will rotate.
 Press '!'-'(' to begin updating current chart by adding times.
       !: seconds, @: minutes, #: hours, $: days, %: months,
       ^: years, &: years*10, *: years*100, (: years*1000.
 Press 'r' to reverse direction of time-lapse or animation.
 Press '1'-'9' to set rate of animation to 'n' degrees, etc.
 Press '1'-'9' to determine section of chart to show if clipped.
 Press 'V','A','Z','S','M','K','J','L','E','W','G','P' to switch to
       normal (-v), grid (-g), local (-Z), space (-S), sector (-l),
       calendar (-K), dispositor (-j), astro-graph (-L), ephemeris
       (-E), world map (-XW), globe (-XG), and polar (-XP) modes.
 Press '0' to toggle between -Z,-Z0 & -XW,-XW0 & -E,-Ey modes.
 Press 'F' to toggle between world and constellation map modes.
 Press 'F1'..'F12' [plus Shift,Ctrl,Alt] to run macros 1..48.
 Press 'space' to force redraw of current graphics display.
 Press 'del' to clear the graphics screen and not redraw.
 Press 'tab' to toggle between graphics resolutions.
 Press 'enter' to input a command line of general switches.
 Press 'q' to terminate graphics and the program.

 Left   mouse button: Draw line strokes on chart in window.
 Middle mouse button: Print coordinates of pointer on world map.
 Right  mouse button: Terminate the window and program.


**********************************
DESCRIPTION OF EACH COMMAND SWITCH
**********************************

     Astrolog allows command line switches to be invoked with either
the leading dash ("-") standard to Unix users, or a leading slash
("/") that PC users are more accustomed to. Not only that, but the
leading character is actually optional. For example, the command
"astrolog -i chartfile -R -u -U -Z -Xs 300 -Xi -XB" can be done as
"astrolog /i chartfile /r /u /U /Z /Xs 300", or can be abbreviated as
just "astrolog i chartfile R u U Z Xs 300 Xi XB". (This is subject to
a couple of minor limitations, in that one can't have the -1 or -3
option follow a -R restriction list of numbers, since the "-1" will
be considered a number.)

     Many switches in their standard form are technically a "toggle"
instead of a "set" for the particular feature in question. For
example, "astrolog -v -g -g" will only result in the -v chart being
printed; an aspect grid won't, because the first -g turned it on
while the second -g turned it off again. This can be useful, in say
the -e everything switch. If you want all of Astrolog's charts except
the astro-graph, you can do "astrolog -e -L", where the -e turns
everything on and the -L turns the astro-graph chart, already on
because of -e, off. In another example, to get a chart with only the
stars in it, one can do "astrolog -R0 -RU", where the -R0 restricts
everything, and the -RU unrestricts all the stars. The various -X
switches which set a mode in graphics are also toggles - a
combination like "-Xr -Xr" which with one instance will just go into
reverse video mode, will remain out of it because the first -Xr put
you in and the second toggled you back out.

     Command switch flags may actually be forced on or off regardless
of their current setting with special character prefixes. Many
switches (such as -s) represent on/off flags and their setting is
toggled when the switch is encountered. However this alone doesn't
allow one to force the setting to be a value, as we don't know if it
needs to be toggled or not. Prefixing any flag switch with '_' will
reset its state even if already off, while prefixing with '=' will
always make it on. For example, putting "_s" on a command line will
always set tropical zodiac, while "=s" will always set sidereal. The
standard '-' and '/' prefixes, along with no prefix at all, always
toggle the current setting. This is useful for configuration files
where we want to set various flags to particular values. There's one
more obscure switch prefix which is ':', which doesn't affect the
setting at all, but still affects any subsetting parameters. For
example, ":I 80" won't affect the interpretation setting at all, but
will still set the default screen width to 80 columns. This is
slightly simpler than the "-I 80 -I" double toggle hack that would
have to be done to do such a thing otherwise.

     The various static help listings that may be generated, such as
the lists from -H, -HO, -HI, and so on, may be combined with each
other and even the actual charts. For convenience the program will
terminate right away and not prompt for chart info if the only thing
specified is one of the tables, e.g. just "-H" will print the help
list and exit, but "-H -i file -g" will print the help list followed
by an aspect grid chart.

     In the command list below, greater than/less than symbols ('<'
and '>') are used to denote a command switch parameter to be replaced
by the appropriate value, brackets ('[' and ']') are used to denote
an optional parameter, and commas are used to separate either/or
choices. For example, the specification of the -I switch is "-I
[<columns>]", meaning that one can specify the -I switch, followed a
parameter for the number of screen columns, but that this extra
parameter is optional. The specification of the -Xs switch is "-Xs
<100,200,300,400>", meaning it can be used as either "-Xs 100", "-Xs
200", "-Xs 300", or "-Xs 400". An ellipsis ('..') generally refers to
a variable length list of values or an abbreviation for something
already indicated in related switches.

     Correct parsing of strings is done on the command line (and in
files since they are technically command lines) in addition to when
the user is being prompted for data within the program. For example,
to do the natal chart for the alt.astrology newsgroup using the -qa
switch, one may enter the intuitive "-qa Jul 29 1991ad 6:23pm -10
151e13 33s52". The items may be entered in other standard and
simpler forms as well, such as just "-qa 7 29 1991 18.23 -10 -151.13
-33.52".

     Any command switch that takes an index number as a parameter may
have it specified by its actual name instead of a hard to remember
value. For example, the switch sequence "-c 1 -R 6 -A 5 -F 7 10 0"
may also be entered as the more understandable "-c Koch -R Jupiter -A
Sextile -F Saturn Capricorn 0". Any string may be abbreviated to its
first three characters. Aspects should be based on their formal
abbreviations, e.g. "ssx" instead of "sem" for Semisextile.
(Presently only the first three characters are ever looked at, so
some star objects may still need to be specified as a number since
they have the same first three letters.)

--

Astrolog for OS/2 command switches:

-H: Display this help list.

  This option displays a list exactly like the one given above on the
  screen. Note: Concerning the list itself, PC users are accustomed to
  seeing command switches with a leading slash "/" instead of a dash
  "-". To accommodate this, this list of options available does, if the
  program has been compiled for a PC, display all the switches with a
  leading "/" instead of a "-". (On Unix and other systems they will
  be displayed with the standard leading "-".)

-Hc: Display program credits and copyrights.

  This help switch displays a full page of credits, listing the names
  of those who programmed Astrolog or parts of it, and important
  copyright information and other legal items. Every time the program
  is invoked, the -Hc switch is mentioned to use to see this info.

-HC: Display names of zodiac signs and houses.

  The -HC switch will display a list of the 12 signs of the zodiac, and
  the 12 houses, listing their standard and traditional names. This is
  similar to switches like -HO or -HA below, in that it displays lists
  of things (objects, aspects, or in this case the signs) that Astrolog
  uses in its charts.

-HO: Display available planets and other celestial objects.

  Similar to the -HA option below, the -HO option will list the planets
  and other celestial objects used by the program, and their numbers as
  recognized by the -R restrictions (mentioned later). This list will
  also show the zodiac signs that planets rule, fall in, are exalted
  in, and debilitated in. Stars are printed in the list along with
  their azimuth, altitude, and brightness values. Note that this list
  shows only those items that aren't restricted when its displayed; if
  you want to show all 87 objects regardless of restriction status,
  just use the -R1 switch to activate them all and combine it with -HO.

  Concerning objects the program can do, Astrolog can do the position
  of Lilith, often called the "Dark Moon". This Lilith is the point in
  space of one focus of the Moon's elliptical orbit around the Earth
  (Earth itself being in the other of the two), and not the asteroid or
  hypothetical planet by the same name. Lilith is object number 17 in
  Astrolog, and in graphics charts its glyph is a small circle with a
  forward slash through it. If preferred, one can use the -YXG glyph
  selection switch (described later) to choose the "European" version
  of the glyph which is like the glyph for the Moon but smaller and
  flipped horizontally.

  Astrolog computes the position of Lilith as provided by the accurate
  Placalc formula set. This means that the -b ephemeris switch (covered
  later) needs to be in effect to get Lilith's positions. When the -b
  setting is off, Astrolog will display the position of the South Node
  for object 17 instead. We tweak the name of the object to be
  "S.Node", change its rulerships and the graphics glyph to be the
  standard "upside down horseshoe" (a third glyph selectable via -YXG),
  although we won't automatically update everything again if you toggle
  the -b flag while the program is running.

  Astrolog can do the position of the East Point as well, which is
  technically the same as the position of the Ascendant at the equator
  for whatever time. This is object number 20 in Astrolog, and its
  graphics glyph is a simple "EP" abbreviation.

-HA: Display available aspects, their angles, and present orbs.

  The -HA command switch gives a list of all 18 supported aspects,
  their abbreviations as used in the aspect grids, their angles, and
  their orbs. It will list the number of each aspect in addition to all
  the other info (e.g. conjunct = 1, opposition = 2, etc.) so one can
  see what number to pass to the -A switch when changing the number of
  aspects used (see later). Finally, it will print a brief description
  of what each aspect glyph looks like. This is in case one doesn't
  know what aspects the weird symbols in the -g -X graphic displays are
  referring to.

-HF: Display names of astronomical constellations.

  This will display a text table of all the constellations, listing
  their traditional names, their astronomical abbreviations as used in
  the graphics above, their English meanings, and even their genitive
  or possessive form (e.g. "Lyra" is the name of the constellation, but
  the star Vega in it is called Alpha "Lyrae").

-HS: Display information about planets in the solar system.

  This is a another static table which will display some astronomical
  information about the main planets (and Earth's Moon) in a simple
  form. For each planet is shown its distance from the Sun (or Earth)
  in Astronomical Units (AU), its orbital period in Earth years, its
  diameter relative to the Earth (Earth being 1), its rotational period
  (i.e. day) in hours, its mass relative to the Earth (Earth being 1),
  its average density with respect to water (water being 1), the tilt
  of its axis with respect to its orbit, and finally the number of
  known moons or satellites it has. This table also includes Chiron
  and the four asteroids, at least for the distance from Sun, length of
  year, and diameter fields.

-He: Display all info tables together (-Hc-H-Y-HX-HC-HO-HA-HF-HS).

  This switch will print out all ten of Astrolog's static table help
  listings, like what -e does for actual charts. Specifically, this
  will show the -Hc copyright screen, the -H switch list, the -Y
  obscure switch list, the -HX graphics key press list, the -HC sign
  and house list, the -HO object list, the -HA aspect list, the -HF
  constellation list, and the -HS planet information list.

-Q: Prompt for more command switches after display finished.

  Usually when Astrolog finishes printing the specified chart or
  charts, or when we leave a graphics screen mode, the program will
  terminate. However, sometimes one wants to display or work with lots
  of charts or options, which would normally cause them to have to
  invoke the program over and over again from their shell, using many
  processes, and can be slow loading over and over from a slow disk.
  Auto-termination is also bad when automatically starting up the
  program in an X window or DOS box - once the program finishes, the
  container will exit right away too, not allowing reading of the text
  charts. The -Q switch causes the program to enter a looping mode
  environment where (after the first chart is displayed) the user will
  automatically be prompted to enter a new set of command switches
  (using the no SWITCHES interface described later) which will be
  processed. This will go on and the program will run until you enter
  "." on a line for the switches to really terminate it.

  Program errors which normally cause Astrolog to exit right away, will
  (unless "fatal" errors) return the user back to this outer loop.
  What's more is that being in the loop doesn't cause all the minor
  program variables to be reset every time. The main things like what
  info to use and what charts to display must be specified each time,
  but minor modes (such as the present -x harmonic factor) won't, so
  say specify -x 5 once, and you will be casting fifth harmonic charts
  until you specify otherwise or exit the loop, not having to include
  -x each time.

-Q0: Like -Q but prompt for additional switches on startup.

  This is just like -Q above except that the user will first be
  prompted for command switches right upon entering the program. Note
  that these will be in addition to whatever else was on the command
  line where the -Q0 itself was specified. This is mostly useful when
  running on a Windows system (see later) where one can have -Q0 as a
  default switch to pass to the program. Upon activation, the user will
  be in a loop with Astrolog asking for switches right away before
  proceeding to generate or prompt for any chart information.

-M <1-48>: Run the specified command switch macro.
-M0 <1-48> <string>: Define the specified command switch macro.

  Astrolog has a feature to run "switch macros", or a whole command
  line with one small switch. The -M switch takes one parameter, which
  is the number of the macro to run. When encountered, the switches it
  represents will be processed. This is similar to loading in a generic
  command file with -i, except macros are limited to one command line.
  Macros however don't require separate files, and may even call
  command files themselves with -i.

  The switch -M0 is the option that defines a macro. It takes two
  parameters: the index of the macro to define, and a string
  representing the command line to assign to it. (The command string
  probably needs to be in quotes to ensure it's treated as one
  parameter to -M0, instead of many items which will get processed
  right away.) There are 48 macro slots available to define or run.
  Macros may do anything and even call or define other macros. It's
  possible to get in a infinite loop if you make a macro (or command
  file) call or load itself; such cases aren't detected and will make
  the program terminate with some unusual error.

  Macros are very powerful and their uses are nearly endless. A bunch
  can be defined in the astrolog.cfg config file for your most common
  switch sequences, hopefully preventing things such as batch files
  that would have to be created otherwise. Suppose you often want to
  see the transits of outer planets only to the house cusps in your
  natal chart for the current month. The command line for this is "-i
  yourchart -tn -RT0 6 7 8 9 10 -R0 -RC -C". You can assign this to the
  tenth macro slot with: -M0 10 "-i yourchart -tn -RT0 jup sat ura nep
  plu -R0 -RC -C". That line can be put in your astrolog.cfg and you
  can do this month's transits by just typing "astrolog -M 10". Here's
  another example: Suppose you want a feature to bring up the chart of
  the spouse of whoever's chart you are viewing at any time. You can
  define a special macro, say in slot 5, in each of your chart info
  files which does a -i on the file of their spouse, or does nothing if
  they're unmarried. Now when in graphics mode, you can press 'F5'
  anytime and Astrolog will bring up the spouse's chart! You could
  define a bunch of macros to set various color sets or aspect orbs and
  switch among them quickly using the function keys. You could even
  make a simple chart database by having each chart file load the next
  one in sequence in some macro, and then cycle through your charts by
  running that macro in a -Q loop or from the graphics screen.

-Y: Display help list of less commonly used command switches.

  This displays a list of available command switches, like the -H
  option but showing only "less common" switches that would clutter
  things up if they were in the main list, and are usually only
  specified in configuration files. Hence almost all of those switches
  begin with 'Y'.

--

Switches which determine the type of chart to display:

-v: Display list of object positions (chosen by default).

  This is just a formal specification for the standard chart listing of
  the planetary positions. One will get this chart by default if they
  don't specify any other chart types, and they will get it along with
  everything else in the -e option (see below). Although it isn't
  necessary, it must be included if one wants this type of chart to be
  displayed along with some of the other chart types described below.

-v0: Like -v but express velocities relative to average speed.

  This switch is just like -v except that it modifies the planet
  velocities fields slightly. (See later for a description of these
  velocity fields.) The -v switch normally expresses velocity values
  as an *absolute* quantity in degrees per day that the object appears
  to have moved through the zodiac. This means that outer planets will
  generally always have lower values, e.g. although a velocity of 0.010
  degrees/day for fast moving Mercury means it's about to turn
  retrograde, the same velocity value is normal for slow moving Pluto.
  As it is useful to know when a planet is about to change direction,
  the -v0 switch will divide the actual velocity values by how fast
  each planet moves with respect to the Sun, meaning that all planets
  will have an average *relative* velocity value of 1.000, and in all
  cases, a velocity of 2.000 means the planet is moving twice as fast
  as normal, and one of 0.010 means the planet is about to turn
  retrograde.

  Note: The -v0 switch which expresses planetary velocities relative to
  average speed has a known incompatibility will cause some applying
  vs. separating aspect orbs to be inverted, i.e. displayed as
  applying when the reverse is true or vice versa. This affects app/sep
  aspect grids and aspect lists (-ga, -ma, and -D charts, but not the
  -T transit influence charts). This is because the velocities are used
  to determine applying vs. separating to see if one planet is
  overtaking another. The bug comes with the program thinking that, for
  example, Pluto moving 2 times faster than normal, will soon overtake
  Mars, slightly ahead of it in the zodiac, moving half normal speed.
  When the values are expressed as absolute speed, it's apparent that
  the outer planet Pluto always moves much slower than the more inner
  planet Mars even when Mars is moving half normal speed. This problem
  is at least not likely to come up much since only explicitly
  combining -v0 with -ga, -ma, or -D will cause a problem.

-w [<rows>]: Display chart in a graphic house wheel format.

  Display of the chart in a nice wheel format is supported using the -w
  switch. (If one of the houses gets too "full" of planets, the planet
  will be put at the beginning of the next house.) The same chart
  header information as is at the top of the standard -v chart is
  printed in the middle of the wheel. Some information in addition to
  this is shown, which is: (1) the day of the week that the date falls
  on, (2) the Universal Time (UT) of the time of the chart being cast
  (like GMT in the 24 hour clock), (3) the sidereal time for the chart
  cast, where sidereal time is vaguely similar to UT except 0:00 for it
  is approximately when 0 Aries crosses the meridian, as opposed to
  when the Sun crosses the Nadir for UT, (4) whether the zodiac system
  is set to tropical or sidereal, and whether the planetary positions
  are geocentric, heliocentric, or centered around some other body, and
  (5) the Julian day corresponding to the date and time of the chart.
  This chart will automatically exclude a house object from being
  listed if its position is the same as the cusp composing the wheel.

  Note that this switch takes an optional parameter to specify the size
  in text rows of each house printed. By default this is four, but one
  may increase (realize this will make the chart require more than 24
  lines to print) or decrease (don't know why you would want to, but
  you can) this value to their preference. The parameter may range from
  1 to 10, and with this you can nicely generate a text wheel chart
  with all 87 objects in it, without overflowing all the houses.

-w0 [..]: Like -w but reverse order of objects in houses 4..9.

  In the -w text wheel option, the objects in each house are printed
  from top to bottom in order from earliest in the house to latest. This
  looks good except for in houses 5..8 where this would appear backwards
  (e.g. a planet having just entered the 6th house from the 5th would be
  displayed right under the Descendant.) Therefore the objects from
  houses 4 through 9 are reversed and printed in order from bottom to
  top, making a more flowing looking wheel chart. If however, one always
  wants each house to be filled from its top to bottom regardless of
  which house, replace the -w with the -w0 switch

-g: Display aspect and midpoint grid among planets.

  Aspects and midpoint display are supported: Invoke as astrolog -g and
  a rectangular grid showing the midpoint locations for each planet,
  and showing if any aspects are present and how accurate they are, is
  displayed. The planets are labeled down the main diagonal of the
  grid, with the aspects to the lower left and the midpoints in the
  upper right. This is of course often used along with the -A*
  switches. Both the aspect orbs and midpoints are displayed to the
  nearest minute, and on the main diagonal (or edges if a relationship
  aspect grid) is displayed the sign and degree of the planet in
  question in addition to the planet name itself.

-g0: Like -g but flag aspect configurations (e.g. Yod's) too.

  Search through the aspect grid for major aspect configurations,
  including Grand Trines, T-Squares, Grand Crosses, Yod's, Cradles, and
  Stelliums, with the -g0 option. (In a Stellium, three objects must all
  be conjunct with each other; while in a Cradle, four objects form
  three sextiles forming a chain of sextiles half way around the
  zodiac.) This option will produce the same aspect grid that -g
  displays, but afterwards will go through the grid and list any of
  these aspect configurations and what objects are forming them. (Of
  course, to see any Yod's, one has to -A 6 or more so that Inconjuncts
  will be included in the aspect grid.)

-g0: For comparison charts, show midpoints instead of aspects.

  For relationship aspect grids, the -g0 switch will display a midpoint
  grid instead of an aspect grid between the planets in the two charts
  e.g. "-r0 chart1 chart2 -g0". (See later for descriptions of the
  relationship charts.)

-ga: Like -g but indicate applying instead of difference orbs.

  Ability to determine whether an aspect is applying or separating (is
  about to happen or just happened) is included in the -g option.
  Normally the aspect orbs are flagged as being '+' or '-' based on
  whether they are greater or less than the exact amount (e.g. a 91
  degree Square has a +1 degree orb while a 89 degree one a -1 orb.) If
  one, however, invokes the -g option as -ga instead, an orb printed as
  'a' will indicate an applying aspect while an orb with 's' a
  separating one. (To estimate applying vs. separating, the program
  examines the planetary positions and their relative velocities at the
  time in question.)

-gp: Like -g but generate parallel and contraparallel aspects.

  Astrolog can do parallel and contraparallel aspects. Two planets are
  parallel when they have the same declination with respect to the
  equator, and are contraparallel when their declinations are the same
  amount but on opposite sides of the equatorial plane. The -gp switch
  will turn on the aspect grid just like the -g option, but will also
  set it so the grid contains parallel and contraparallel instead of
  normal aspects. This feature works for the -g aspect and relationship
  aspect grids, and the graphics versions of them. The graphic glyph
  for the parallel aspect is two vertical parallel lines, while the
  glyph for contraparallel are two sets of two lines crossing each
  other, like a tic-tac-toe grid. In -gp affected charts, the parallel
  takes the place of conjunction, and contraparallel the place of
  opposition; all aspect orb settings affecting conjunction and
  opposition will affect the -gp aspects in the same way. (Note that
  the best orb for parallel aspects is only a degree or so, hence the
  default conjunction orb will likely be too high, and should be
  decreased with the -Ao switch for -gp grids.) The -A and -RA aspect
  selection switches will also affect -gp, but all aspects beyond the
  first two are ignored as only the parallel and the contraparallel
  aspect are considered.

-a: Display list of all aspects ordered by influence.

  Aspects may be displayed in a nice ordered list, instead of only in
  the -g aspect grid. Use the -a switch and get a list of every aspect
  from the aspect grid printed out one per line. The order in which
  they are printed is based on the total "power" in the aspect, i.e.
  the influence of the two planets in question, the aspect in question,
  and the orb. The same info and data from the -j influence charts (see
  later) are used here, so changing any default influences there will
  affect this ordering. The two planets are printed, the aspect they
  make, their orb, and then the power of the aspect used in ordering.
  Any power number more than 10 is a very major aspect. An exact Sun
  Moon conjunction can exceed 25. So, if you want to know, say, if that
  exact Mars Jupiter conjunction is more powerful than that wide Sun
  Moon sextile, try a -a chart and find out what Astrolog's opinion is.

-a0: Like -a but display aspect summary too.

  This is just like the -a aspect list ordered by influence chart,
  except that summary information will be displayed afterward. The sum
  of all the aspect powers and their average is printed, the total
  number of aspects of each type is printed, and the total number of
  aspects to each planet is printed.

-a[0]a: Like -a but indicate applying and separating orbs.

  This is a shorthand way to bring up the -a or -a0 sorted aspect
  chart, with the aspect orbs shown as applying or separating, instead
  of positive or negative offsets to the exact aspect size. This is
  like how -ga does the same thing with the -g aspect grid switch. (To
  get the functionality of -aa without this, one can use the -ga switch
  itself along with -a, and then include -g by itself again, e.g. "-a
  -ga -g", to toggle the aspect grid back off but leave the applying
  vs. separating setting on!)

-a[0]p: Like -a but do parallel and contraparallel aspects.

  The -a aspect list can be made to list all parallel and
  contraparallel aspects if invoked as -ap or -a0p, turning on the same
  flag as the -gp switch above. When in effect, the parallel aspect
  setting will also affect -D and -T transit influence charts, having
  them show their aspects in parallel too.

-m: Display all object midpoints in sorted zodiac order.

  True midpoint charts are supported in addition to the midpoints that
  can be seen in the -g aspect grid. Use the -m switch and get a list
  of all midpoints printed out sorted in zodiac order. This will show
  both the actual midpoint location, as well as the angular difference
  between the two objects displayed to the nearest minute. So if you
  want to see, say, if any important midpoint is close to your Sun,
  this is a much easier chart to use than scrutinizing the
  midpoint/aspect grid.

-m0: Like -m but display midpoint summary too.

  This is just like the -m midpoint list ordered by zodiac position
  chart, except that summary information for it will be displayed
  afterward. The average number of degrees spanned between each planet
  pair is printed, and the total number of midpoints in each zodiac
  sign is printed.

-ma: Like -m but show aspects from midpoints to planets as well.

  Aspects to midpoints are supported with the -ma switch. This feature
  will do the same as the -m midpoint list chart, except in addition to
  listing each midpoint, a sublist of each aspect in effect from a
  natal planet to the position of that midpoint, will be shown after
  it. The orb of the aspect will be printed too, where the orb will be
  shown as either wide or narrow, or applying or separating, based on
  the value of the -ga or -aa applying aspects setting.

-Z: Display planet locations with respect to the local horizon.

  The text display switch -Z prints out where each object is on the
  local horizon in terms of altitude and azimuth. For each object, the
  following is displayed: Its altitude on the local horizon from +90
  degrees (straight up) to -90 degrees (straight down), and its azimuth
  from 0..360 degrees, where 0 = due east, 90 = north, 180 = west, 270 =
  south. To make visualizing the azimuth easier, an "azimuth vector"
  with a N/S component and a W/E component is displayed, e.g. (1.00s
  0.33w) means that the object is mainly south, with its true angle
  being formed by an vector component west that's 1/3 the strength of
  the south component, i.e. the object is about 18 degrees west of
  south. This along with the altitude should make it easy to physically
  point to where any planet is at any moment, making it easy to locate
  planets in the night sky. This feature can also be used to determine
  the times that a planet rises and sets. Also displayed are altitude
  and azimuth differences between each object and the Sun and Moon,
  first showing the number of degrees that the Sun/Moon is "ahead" (or
  farther east in the zodiac) of the object in question, and then the
  number of degrees that the Sun/Moon is above the object in question.
  This feature can be used to roughly predict eclipses! Both the Sun and
  Moon span about 0.5 degrees in the sky, therefore if both the azimuth
  and altitude differences are < 0.5 (or 1.0 if the difference is
  between the Sun and Moon themselves) then the object in question is
  probably being occulted somewhat by the Sun/Moon. Note that there are
  three types of planetary position displays: Right ascension and
  declination showing the object's position with respect to the stars,
  longitude and latitude showing where on the Earth the object is
  straight up (as in the astro-graph zenith locations), and finally
  azimuth and altitude showing the positions of the object relative to
  the local horizon.

-Z0: Like -Z but express coordinates relative to polar center.

  This will do a text chart just like the -Z local horizon switch above
  except that it will print the location of each planet in prime
  vertical coordinates, instead of altitude and azimuth. Prime vertical
  coordinates are measured with its "azimuth" around the 360 degree
  circle, with 0 degrees due east on the local horizon, going down with
  90 degrees straight down, 180 degrees due west and so on; declination
  "altitudes" are measured with positive values toward the north and
  negative toward the south.

-Zd: Search day for object local rising and setting times.

  One can display the rising and setting times of the Sun, Moon, and
  planets with this feature. Specifically, when this switch is
  included, the program will, for the entire day specified in the chart
  information, display whenever a planet rises (specifically conjuncts
  the local horizon while in the eastern hemisphere), sets (conjuncts
  horizon in west), reaches its zenith point (or specifically conjuncts
  the meridian while in the southern hemisphere, i.e. is due south from
  the observer), and reaches its nadir point (conjuncts meridian in
  north). Note that some stars may be high or low enough that they will
  never rise or set, but instead will just "zenith" or "nadir" twice in
  a day as they spin around the pole.

-S: Display x,y,z coordinate positions of planets in space.

  Solar system space based charts are available with the -S switch,
  which give the astronomical positions of each planet in terms of x, y,
  and z coordinates. Although not directly useful astrologically, it
  does give one a good view of how the planets actually were positioned
  at the time in question. For example, normal astrology doesn't make
  the distinction between the four different "forms" of say, a Mercury
  Venus Conjunction, i.e. they can either be Conjunct on the near side
  of the Sun, Conjunct on the far side of the Sun, or one can be on one
  side and the other on the other side. When the chart is actually
  displayed, for each body the following information is printed: The
  relative angle of the planet with respect to the central body, i.e.
  its zodiac position converted to the appropriate number from 0..360.
  This is followed by the x, y, and z coordinate positions of the
  object, in astronomical units from the central body. The x-axis
  increases in the direction of 0 degrees Aries (tropical zodiac), the
  y-axis increases in the direction of 0 degrees Cancer, and the z-axis
  is with respect to the Earth's orbit (meaning that the Sun and Earth
  always have a z-axis value of 0.0). Finally the overall length from
  the central body in AU is printed, which is just the diagonal as
  indicated by the x, y, z vectors. (The Earth and Sun are of course
  always about 1.0 AU from each other.) The Moon circles the Earth and
  isn't a part of the solar system proper; therefore, it is never in
  these charts. The -e everything option will include this chart in its
  listing of all the chart displays. (Note that the Earth doesn't have
  a formal object index of its own. Hence there's no real way to
  directly restrict it from these -S space charts either in text or
  graphics format. Only the -R0 (and -R1) restrict everything switches
  will affect this body, as they do all the others.)

-l: Display Gauquelin sectors for each planet in chart.

  Astrolog supports Gauquelin sector charts. These are based on the
  work of Michael Gauquelin, with a sector chart basically a type of
  wheel chart where the planets are placed in their appropriate
  Gauquelin sector instead of zodiac sign at a given time. Sectors are
  numbered from 1 to 36, and indicate proportions of time between
  rising and setting. Sectors 1 through 18 are above the horizon, and
  19 through 36 are below. When a planet rises it goes from sector 36
  to 1, when 1/18th of the time until the moment it sets has passed it
  enters sector 2, and so on. A sector chart can be thought of as
  somewhat related to a standard wheel chart, except that it's "time
  based" instead of "location based". In interpretation, certain
  sectors are known to be powerful. These sectors are called plus zones
  and are the sectors immediately before and a bit after the four
  angles. For a more detailed account on interpretation, see books such
  as Gauquelin's "Cosmic Influences on Human Behavior". To bring up a
  sector chart, use the -l command switch.

  The text mode version of this chart is similar to the standard -v
  listing. The chart info time and place will be displayed, after
  which, for each planet, the sector it's in will be displayed, with a
  "+" indicating a plus zone, and a "-" indicating such is not the case
  (where with colored text active plus zones will be in red and minus
  dark green). Then as in the standard listing, the planet's house,
  zodiac location, retrogradation status, equatorial latitude, and
  velocity will be printed. Finally will be displayed two alternative
  sector locations assuming systems where sectors go from 1 to 18, and
  from 1 to 12 (where for example the beginning of sector 36 will map
  to sector location 18.5, and 12.75, respectively). After this,
  summary information will be displayed. The number and percentage of
  planets that fall in plus zones (as well as the number and percentage
  of plus zones period) will be printed, and for each of the 36
  sectors, the number of planets that fall in it and whether it's a
  plus zone will be indicated.

-l0: Like -l but approximate sectors using Placidus cusps.

  Calculating correct Gauquelin sector positions is based on rising and
  setting times, which require searches, hence computing the chart
  takes quite a bit longer than regular wheels. It's like the -Zd
  rising and setting list, where increasing the -d searching divisions
  value increases the accuracy and calculation time here too. To cut
  calculation time down to that of ordinary charts, one may do a
  reasonable approximation of sector positions based on how far each
  planet has progressed through a corresponding house (specifically
  house cusps divided using Placidus). To compute charts in this fast
  manner, invoke the -l switch as -l0.

-j: Display astrological influences of each object in chart.

  Another chart type is available - interpretation of influences. This
  is the simplest part of the general interpretation ability of the
  program. What this part does is calculate the relative "power" of each
  planet's placement, giving a general idea of the prominent areas of a
  chart. When such a chart is printed, each planet is given a point
  value, larger numbers indicating more strength. Each planet's strength
  is divided between two fields: the positioning in and of itself, and
  the power of the aspects it makes with the other planets. In addition
  to each field, the total of these two areas is printed, as well as the
  relative percentage of the planet in question with respect to all the
  planets combined. Each planet gets a ranking for its positioning,
  aspects, and total power as well, with the strongest getting #1, the
  next strongest #2, etc. The -e option will include this chart along
  with all the others as well in it's listing of all the chart displays.

  To determine the strength of the positioning of a planet, various
  things are taken into account: 1) The power of a planet in and of
  itself, e.g. the Sun and Moon are more powerful then the other
  planets. 2) The house placement of a planet, e.g. a planet in the 1st
  house is more powerful than one in the 2nd. 3) Whether a planet is in
  the sign it rules or is exalted in, e.g. Jupiter in Sag results in
  more power to Jupiter. 4) Whether a planet is in the house
  corresponding to the sign it rules or is exalted in, e.g. Jupiter in
  the 9th house. 5) Planets get more power if the signs they rule are
  occupied, e.g. a bunch of stuff in Aquarius gives more power to
  Uranus. 6) Planets get more power if the houses they rule are
  occupied, e.g. a bunch of stuff in the 11th house gives power to
  Uranus. 7) Finally, planets get power according to what houses the
  cusps of which fall in the signs they rule, i.e. the ruler of the
  Ascendant (and to less extent the Midheaven, and so on) gets lots of
  influence. Determining the strength of a planet's aspects is much
  easier, and is basically composed of the sum of the strength of each
  aspect the planet makes. Taken into account are: 1) The influence of
  the planet being aspected to, e.g. Sun conjunct Jupiter gives more
  influence to Jupiter than Mercury conjunct Jupiter would. The
  planet's placement as described above plays a role, too, e.g. Venus
  opposition Mars in Aries gives more influence to Venus that it would
  be if Mars were in Taurus. 2) The influence of the aspect itself,
  e.g. Oppositions are more powerful then Sextiles. 3) Finally the orb
  of the aspect, i.e. exact aspects are more powerful than wide ones.
  (The influence of the orb varies linearly from max power at exact to
  zero power at the limit of the orb - sorry Maggie M. and Mark K. - no
  complex aspect wave functions, at least for this version :)

  Special thanks goes to Mark K. who initially presented this idea of
  interpreting overall influences to me. I basically just took his
  ideas, polished them a bit, and put it into the code. Interestingly,
  while programming this feature, I had a dream about him, in which he
  elaborated upon some of the ideas and even gave me suggestions for
  some of the planets' default power values (astral visitation?) And,
  while on the subject, I've had a couple of other Astrolog dreams; I
  had one neat one while working on the -h feature (described later)
  about a far distant future version of Astrolog that could actually
  teleport one to the places which they cast charts for :)

-j0: Like -j but include influences of each zodiac sign as well.

  The -j planet influences in a chart feature can be expanded to
  include signs as well. Invoke it as -j0 instead of just -j, and in
  addition to getting the influence of each planet in a chart, one will
  get the influence of each sign in the chart as well. To determine
  sign influence, we use the planet powers already determined; a sign
  gets influence if: (1) There is a planet in it, (2) there is a planet
  in the house it corresponds to, and (3) if any planet that rules or
  co-rules it is in the chart. For example, with my 11th house Venus in
  Sagittarius, for me: (1) Sagittarius gets more power because Venus is
  in it, (2) Aquarius gets more power because Venus is in the 11th, and
  (3) Libra and Taurus get power because Venus itself rules these
  signs. The exact power given is based on the total influence of Venus
  already determined. Any sign that has over about 175 points or 20% of
  the total is a really powerful and a fundamental part of the psyche.
  We also sum up the influences of all the signs (which will logically
  total up to the sum of all the planets), and display the influence of
  each element as well, and each mode as well, all this being perhaps a
  more accurate version of the element table in the -v chart.

-L [<step>]: Display astro-graph locations of planetary angles.

  The '-L' option will take the standard chart information and generate
  the astro-graph positions of the planets. In other words, this does
  the exact same thing that Jim Lewis' Astro*Carto*Graphy maps do. It
  will display the longitude of where on the Earth at the time in
  question each object was on the midheaven and on the nadir, and the
  latitude of where the planets actually appeared at zenith. Also, for
  latitude increments of 5 degrees, the longitude of where the objects
  appeared on the ascendant and descendant is displayed. For text
  screens, one can pass an optional parameter to this -L (or -L0) option
  to change the default latitude step rate at which the Ascendant and
  Descendant lines are computed. Again, this value is by default 5
  degrees, although one can may increase or decrease it to any integer
  (subject to the restriction that the number 160 is divisible by it.)

-L0 [..]: Like -L but display list of latitude crossings too.

  Determination of latitude crossing points is included in the
  astro-graph routines! The -L0 option will do the same thing as the -L
  option, except that after displaying the longitude and latitude
  locations of the Asc/Desc/MC/IC lines, it will then search among the
  lines and display (in order from farthest North to farthest South) the
  latitude of any points where lines cross each other. This includes the
  curvy Asc/Desc lines crossing the straight MC/IC lines as well as
  cases where different Asc/Desc lines cross themselves. And unlike Jim
  Lewis' Astro*Carto*Graphy, Astrolog will also display the longitude of
  the crossing (useful for Asc/Desc crossings) in addition to the
  latitude (as well allowing more planetary bodies to be included in the
  scan, and going farther North and South than Jim Lewis' printouts go.)
  Note however, that there is presently a small (very rare) minor
  omission glitch in the code, where if a crossing is within a couple of
  degrees of 180 deg W/E, it may not be displayed.

-K: Display a calendar for given month.

  The -K switch generates a simple calendar for the month specified in
  the current chart. This is a standard type of chart generatable from
  a date so the -e everything switch includes this -K chart along with
  all the others. Note that this is technically a non-astrological
  chart, but generic calendars are useful and easy to generate with all
  of Astrolog's date determination features, so the option to create
  them using Astrolog is included. The calendars are compact, with one
  text row per week. The day specified in the current chart will be
  highlighted in green assuming -k Ansi color is active, e.g. "-n -K"
  will generate a chart for this month, with the number of today's date
  highlighted.

-Ky: Like -K but display a calendar for the entire year.

  The -Ky switch is just like -K except that it will generate a
  calendar for the whole year. All twelve months will be displayed on
  the screen, each just like the individual monthly calendars above but
  printed in four rows of three months each.

-d [<step>]: Print all aspects and changes occurring in a day.

  The -d option will take the standard chart information, and for the
  day in question, display the exact times of all aspects that occur.
  This is just like the aspects-per-day as displayed in Jim Maynard's
  Celestial Guide books. (Displayed in local time as defined by the
  default zone, with accuracy based on the searching divisions setting,
  described below.) This will tell any time two planets make aspects
  with each other, a planet changes its sign, or a planet goes
  retrograde or direct. Both the -d (and -t listed later) options will
  display the signs that any planets aspecting each other are in, in
  addition to the aspect itself (e.g. instead of just "Jupiter Trine
  Uranus", we have "Jupiter (Vir) Tri (Cap) Uranus". If a particular
  object is going retrograde, then its sign will be displayed in
  brackets instead of parentheses, and if an object is about to or has
  just gone retrograde or direct, then its sign will be in <>'s.

  This switch accepts an optional accuracy parameter, a value which
  tells how many "segments" we should divide each day or whatever, when
  doing these aspect searches. More segments is slower but can be more
  accurate by a few minutes. This command line change of the step rate
  can also be done for other charts such as the -t transit search by
  using the switch toggle feature to turn -d off but still leave the
  divisions value set, e.g. "-d 100 -d -t" will set the value to 100
  but not actually display the -d chart. Or better yet just use the
  colon switch prefix to not affect the -d setting at all, e.g. ":d 100
  -t". In general, I suggest this value be set to 24 for Unix systems
  and 8 for PC's, but it is easy to experiment to see what is best for
  the speed of your computer. One may increase this value up to 2880
  (if they don't mind the wait) which will mean a chart every 30
  seconds for -d aspect in day charts and one every 15 minutes for -t
  transit search charts.

-dm: Like -d but print all aspects for the entire month.

  The -d option can search the entire month for aspects between planets
  if one so desires. Specifying it as -dm instead of just -d will go
  through the entire month instead of just the current day. (Combining
  this one with -R allows searching for important aspects, sign
  changes, etc.)

-dy: Like -d but print all aspects for the entire year.

  The -d option can search the entire given year for events as well, if
  it's specified as -dy instead of just -d or -dm.

-dY <years>: Like -d but search within a number of years.

  The -d search may also do a range of years all at once. Invoke the
  switch as -dY, and give a parameter indicating the number of years to
  span, and it will be done, starting with the year in the current
  chart. For example, to display the times of all New and Full moons
  for the rest of the century (1996 through 2000), do "astrolog -n -dY
  5 -R0 sun moo -A opp". (This is similar to the -EY and -tY features
  which also allow doing a range of years in addition to a single year
  or month.)

-dp <month> <year>: Print aspects within progressed chart.

  Another progression feature allows determining aspect times of
  progressed planets among themselves. The -dp <month> <year> switch
  will, like the -d option, display times of aspects and sign changes,
  for the time around the chart in question, except that they will be
  progressed throughout the month specified. Progressed planets move
  very slowly ("year for a day") so therefore there will usually be, if
  any, only a couple of aspects in a given month. Also, since they move
  so slow, the accuracy is cut down, so the dates given are probably
  only accurate about to the nearest day, in spite of the times given
  to the minute. Note that Astrolog can scan for aspects of: transiting
  planets among themselves (-d switch), transiting planets to natal
  planets (-T switch), progressed planets to natal planets (-Tp), and
  progressed planets among themselves (-dp). Only thing Astrolog can't
  directly do is do progressed planets to transiting planets, although
  that may change in a future version :)

-dpy <year>: Like -dp but search for aspects within entire year.

  Since progressed planets move so slow and only a few aspects in a
  progressed chart will appear each month, one might want to instead
  scan the whole year. To do this, use the -dpy switch, which takes
  only one parameter for the year. This switch is consistent in format
  to how with the -T and -E switches one specifies an entire year.

-dpY <year> <years>: Like -dp but search within number of years.

  Related to above, the -dp option may also be done for a range of
  years. Invoke the switch as -dpY, and pass in not only the year to
  search within as with -dpy, but the number of years to scan from
  then. For example, do display the times of all aspects within your
  progressed chart for the next decade, do "astrolog -i yourchartfile
  -dpY 1996 10".

-dp[y]n: Search for progressed aspects in current month/year.

  The -dp progression event search option can be invoked as -dpn to
  search the current month, or -dpyn to search the entire current year.
  For example, if I want to search for the exact times of all aspects
  in my natal chart, progressed to any time this month, I simply do "-i
  mychartfile -dpn".

-D: Like -d but display aspects by influence instead of time.

  This switch will display a chart listing all aspects in effect within
  the chart in question, in order by influence based on their power
  when transiting. This chart focuses upon and gives precedence to
  aspects of outer planets with each other, as opposed to common inner
  planet configurations. For example, at the time in early January
  1994 the most influential aspects in effect were the Uranus Neptune
  conjunction and the Saturn Pluto square. This chart is very much like
  the format of the -a aspect list chart, except that we are using the
  transit as opposed to natal influences of the planets. The -a chart
  is most appropriate for a person's natal chart, in that the inner
  planets are focused upon, such as a Sun Moon square will be near the
  top of the list. This -D chart is more appropriate for times as
  opposed to people, since it focuses upon rare outer planet
  configurations. This chart is also very similar to the -T transit
  influence chart, in that it shows the aspect, applying or separating
  orb, and power of the event with its present orb, except that this
  does influences of transiting planets among themselves as opposed to
  aspects to a natal chart. If you want to see what major events are
  coming up, and don't want things such as Uranus Neptune conjunctions
  to "sneak by", use this chart and watch the configuration gradually
  rise to the top of the list as its orb narrows over time. This chart
  may be combined with others and is included in the -e everything switch.

-E: Display planetary ephemeris for given month.

  The -E option will generate a quick ephemeris of the planet positions
  each day for the month indicated in the given chart, as taken from
  the standard interface. This is useful if you just want to see an
  overview of what's happening some month in the sky. Any dots after a
  planet location in the list indicate the planet was retrograde at the
  time that day. For example, to see the ephemeris for someone's birth
  month, one can do the convenient "-i chartfile -E", or to see the
  ephemeris for this month, do "-n -E" (see -i and -n options later).
  The -E text ephemeris switch may be combined with the -gp or -ap
  parallel aspects feature to generate an ephemeris of ecliptic
  latitudes (or equatorial declinations if the -sr flag is in effect)
  instead of the normal zodiac longitudes.

  Note: The ephemeris listings obtain the time (and time zone) to cast
  each day's chart for (e.g. noon, midnight) from the chart information
  given it, instead of always defaulting to something like midnight in
  the default time zone. This is a bit more flexible since one may want
  to specify a noon or 6:00am or whatever ephemeris which wouldn't be
  possible otherwise. The -qm <month> <year> switch (see later) always
  uses midnight for the time and the default for the time zone, so when
  using this switch with -E, the results will be a midnight ephemeris
  in this default zone. However, something like -i yourchart -E to do
  an ephemeris for your birth month will display the positions each day
  at your birthtime instead of at midnight.

-Ey: Display planetary ephemeris for the entire year.

  To display an ephemeris for all twelve months in an entire year,
  invoke the -E switch as -Ey. For example, to get an ephemeris for
  all of last year, one can do "-qy 1995 -Ey" (see -qy and -qm options
  below).

-EY <years>: Display planetary ephemeris for a number of years.

  The -E ephemeris list feature may also do an ephemeris for a range of
  years all at once. Invoke the switch as -EY, and pass a parameter
  indicating the number of years to span with the ephemeris, and it
  will be done, starting with the year in the current chart. For
  example, to do an ephemeris for all this century from 1900 through
  1999, do "astrolog -qy 1900 -EY 100".

-e: Print all charts together (i.e. -v-w-g0-a-m-Z-S-j0-L0-K-d-D-E).

  There are thirteen main different formats of chart display available:
  The standard listing of planet positions which you get without any
  switches or with the -v option, the house wheel you get with -w, the
  aspect/midpoint grid you get with -g, and the charts generated with
  the -a, -m, -Z, -S, -j, -L, -K, -d, -D, and -E switches. The -e
  "everything" option will display the chart in all thirteen of these
  formats for about 1200 lines and 75K bytes of text! Note that one can
  even include the -t and/or -T transit options below and include yet a
  couple more chart formats in the list (however transits require a
  time parameter to do transits for so they aren't really a single
  chart display and hence aren't included in -e by default).

-t <month> <year>: Compute all transits to natal planets in month.

  The '-t <month> <year>' option will scan the entire month specified,
  and print out any transits that happen, in that month, to the planet
  positions as listed in the current chart as taken from the standard
  interface. There will be often be quite a few events, even though
  fast moving objects like the Moon aren't looked at by default (unless
  specified in the default parameter file or with the -RT switch), so
  you might want to use this with the -R option to limit this to just
  certain planets. The times are displayed in the local time zone, and
  are generally accurate to within a half hour or so, where accuracy
  can be increased by upping the value in the -d searching divisions
  setting; try doing it for your birth month and your own chart - all
  planets should conjunct their natal positions at about the time of
  your birth. To determine transits to natal house cusps other than the
  Asc and MC, i.e. when does a planet change house in your natal chart,
  include the -C switch described elsewhere. See the -RT option, as
  well as the -YC "smart cusps" default, described later, for options
  which directly affect this feature.

  Note that even transiting house cusps (and other fast moving objects
  like the Part of Fortune, Vertex, and East Point) may be included in
  these transit to natal searches. (To activate transiting cusp objects
  use the -RT switch.) This allows one to determine the time of events
  such as when the Ascendant today conjuncts your natal Sun. Note that
  as the house cusps travel through all 360 degrees of the zodiac
  during the day, a cusp will make a transit roughly 30 times as often
  as even the fast moving Moon, the Moon itself making transits 12
  times as often as planets like the Sun. So realize you may get a
  flood of information, and hence probably do want to restrict all
  planets and aspects you're not interested in. Note also that to get
  accurate times for transiting cusp events, you probably want a high
  value for the -d searching divisions setting (I recommend at least
  200) which means longer calculations.

-tp <month> <year>: Compute progressions to natal in month for chart.

  Determining dates of transits of progressed planets to natal planets
  can be done with the -tp <month> <year> option. This is just like the
  -t option, except that the exact aspects of progressed planets
  (rather than transiting planets) to the planets in the chart are
  displayed. Progressions occur much less often than transits, and
  there will only be a few, if any, in a given month, so one might to
  invoke this as -Tpy, as described below.

-tr <month> <year>: Compute all returns in month for chart.

  This switch is a quick and convenient way to compute solar, lunar,
  and other returns. As a return is when a transiting object conjuncts
  its natal position, returns are findable using the generic -t transit
  to natal search. However to only display returns with it and not
  every transit, one has to restrict aspects to just the conjunction,
  and restrict objects to just the one you're interested in. (But even
  that will still show things in addition to returns if more than one
  object is unrestricted, e.g. with just Sun and Moon you'll still get
  Sun to Moon conjunctions and vice-versa.) The solution is this return
  feature, which (without altering your aspect or object restrictions
  any) works just like the -t switch, but displays only returns in the
  transit list, i.e. conjunctions between a transiting planet and that
  same planet in the natal chart.

-t[p]y: <year>: Compute transits/progressions for entire year.

  To display transits for an entire year, invoke the -t switch as -ty
  (-tpy for progressions), which only takes one parameter, the year.
  For example, "-i chartfile -ty 1996".

-t[p]Y: <year> <years>: Compute transits for a number of years.

  One may also search an arbitrary number of years at once for
  transits. One uses the -tY <year> <years> switch like the -ty <year>
  switch above, except that -tY takes an extra parameter for how many
  years to search. For example, -tY 1996 10 will search the ten years
  from 1996 through 2005 for whatever transits. With a negative value
  for the years to scan, it will start that many years before the given
  year, e.g. -tY 1996 -10000 will scan the previous 100 centuries for
  transits, starting with 8003 B.C.! Note that this switch may also be
  invoked as "-tYn <years>", in which case it will start from the
  current year and be an equivalent shorthand to "-tY 1996 <years>" for
  this year at least.

-t[py]n: Compute transits to natal planets for current time now.

  This feature is a quick shorthand way to generate transits for the
  current month. For example, instead of "astrolog -i chartfile -t 3
  1996", one can do "astrolog -i chartfile -tn". To do transits for the
  entire current year, invoke it as "-tyn".

-T <month> <day> <year>: Display transits ordered by influence.

  The -T switch is a transit influence chart. Given a date, it will
  take the transiting planets on that date, and determine how they
  interact with the generic natal chart specified with -i or however.
  The information will be printed as a list of transits, sorted in
  order from most significant to least significant. For each transit in
  effect, the transiting and natal planets (and the signs they are in)
  are displayed, along with the aspect and the orb, and whether the
  transit is applying and going to happen in the future, or just passed
  exactness and the orb is separating. The computer computed power
  value of each transit will be printed too - anything over 100 is a
  very major transit. Any transit that's a return, i.e. a transiting
  planet conjuncting the same one in the natal chart, will be flagged
  with a capital "R" at the end of the line.

  The things which affect how Astrolog computes the influence of a
  transit are: The power of the object that's doing the transit, e.g.
  transiting Pluto conjunct your natal Ascendant is much more powerful
  than the transiting Moon conjunct your Ascendant. The power of the
  object being transited affects the power too (but not as much as the
  transiter) e.g. Jupiter transiting your Sun is more powerful than
  Jupiter transiting an asteroid. Finally, the orb plays a role as
  well, in that a transit that will be exact in a couple of days from
  the given date passed to -y is more powerful than one won't be exact
  for another month. Note that the power of a planet when transiting is
  different than its influence in the natal chart: Although Sun
  conjunct Moon is more powerful in a natal chart than Saturn conjunct
  Moon, when transiting, Saturn transiting Moon is much more
  influential than Sun transiting Moon. Hence there are two lists of
  object influence values in the astrolog.cfg file (described later)
  that can be customized. There's the generic list of standard
  influences (which have items like Sun, Moon, and Ascendant most
  powerful), and a parallel list of transit influences (which have the
  slower moving bodies the most powerful).

  Related to the -tr switch above, the -T switch can be invoked as -Tr,
  which is the same as the general transit influence chart, but will
  only display aspects between a transiting planet and the same natal
  planet. (Note unlike -tr it will include aspects other than the
  conjunction.)

  This switch is in compliment to the -t transit search list, and you
  may find this one more useful. The -t chart prints the times when
  a transit is exact, which is useful to know, but doesn't really help
  when you want to know when a transit enters orb enough to be
  significant, and it won't flag a major year long transit that will be
  exact next month, listing it among a bunch of less significant
  aspects for the following month. With -T, you can see a major transit
  first enter orb at the bottom of the list, and then slowly rise to
  the top as it becomes more exact through the days. And you can answer
  the question as to which is more influential: say an exact transit of
  Mars to a minor house cusp, or a major transit of Saturn to an angle
  that's still a month away from exactness.

  Also notice the resemblance between -T and the -r0 -a combination.
  Both display aspects ordered by influence. In fact, "-i chart -Tn"
  will look almost identical to "-y chart -a", except that -T is
  designed and formated for doing transits to a particular chart.
  (Doing -T will always use applying vs. separating orbs, generate
  powers using the transit influences, and allow the transiting and
  natal planets to be restricted separately with -RT and -R.) Astrolog
  allows transit charts to be done between transiting planets and natal
  planets, as well as charts among transiting planets to themselves,
  both of which can be expressed as searches for exact times, or
  displays of influences of each aspect at a particular time, as
  summarized in the following organized list:

  o -t switch: Display exact times of transits to natal planets.
  o -T switch: Display influences  of transits to natal planets.
  o -d switch: Display exact times of aspects among transiting planets.
  o -D switch: Display influences  of aspects among transiting planets.

-Tp <month> <day> <year>: Print progressions instead of transits.

  The -T transit influence switch can also (like the -t transit search)
  display all aspects between progressed planets and natal planets in
  influence order, if it's invoked as -Tp instead of just -T. This
  works like -T in every way except that a switch combination like "-i
  mychart -Tp 3 31 1996" will display aspects between my natal planets,
  and those in my natal chart progressed to the end of the month, and
  their influence and orbs at that time, instead of between my natal
  planets and the actual positions of the planets at the end of March.

-T[p]n: Display transits ordered by influence for current date.

  The -Tn switch is a shorthand way to pass the current date today and
  time now to the -T switch. If you want to see what transits are most
  affecting your natal chart presently, just do "-i yourchart -Tn".

--

Switches which affect how the chart parameters are obtained:

-n: Compute chart for this exact moment using current time.

  For those with systems who can handle time calls (If your system
  errors on trying to compile them, simply comment out the #define TIME
  line at the beginning), the program supports displaying the chart for
  the time at the current moment! In other words, invoke as astrolog -n
  and see where the planets are right now. (This is fun - the house
  cusps change 1 minute about every 4 seconds!) You will need to change
  the #defines for the default longitude and latitude in astrolog.h, or
  else specify where you are explicitly by using the -l switch to
  change the default location. To figure out the time zone, the program
  uses the default value in the astrolog.cfg file or as defined in the
  DEFAULT_ZONE constant set at compile time.

  Note that the default time zone setting or passing values to -z,
  won't affect the positions of the planets, as expected since they are
  where they are "now" no matter how time is expressed. The default
  zone is merely used to determine what to express the local time to
  when displaying the current time. It is important however to realize
  that the time zone setting on your system can affect the actual raw
  time the program gets internally for "now". If the -n switch seems to
  always generate times an hour or more off to what you have your time
  zone set to, it's likely that your time zone environment variable is
  uninitialized or set incorrectly. You will need to set the "TZ"
  environment variable, setting it to a value such as "xxxnyyy", where
  'n' is the hours your zone is before GMT, 'xxx' is a three character
  string indicating the abbreviation of the zone (required, but doesn't
  need to be set to anything more than 'xxx' if you prefer) and 'yyy'
  is the abbreviation for the zone when/if ever in Daylight Time. For
  example, if running Astrolog on a PC in Eastern Time, put the line
  "set TZ=EST5EDT" in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file.

-n[d,m,y]: Compute chart for start of current day, month, year.

  These switches are like the -n generate chart for current moment now
  feature, except that they will respectively generate charts for the
  midnight on the current day, midnight on the first of the current
  month, and midnight on the first day of the current year.

-z [<zone>]: Change the default time zone (for -d-E-t-q options).

  The -z <value> option can be used to change the default time zone to
  the value in question. For example, you can force the -E ephemeris
  and -t transit lists to be displayed at midnight GMT time instead of
  the local time with "-z 0". If Daylight time is in effect, you should
  set the separate Daylight time default below. Note that one can
  technically get by without changing the Daylight setting, by
  subtracting one from the time zone itself, e.g. for EST where the
  time zone is "5", you can do "-z 4" or "-z EDT" during Daylight time
  to properly display transits, aspects in day, and other lists in the
  local DST zone.

  Normally the -z switch takes an argument which will then become the
  default time zone. If one, however, invokes it by itself, it will
  subtract one hour from whatever the default time zone presently is.
  This is useful since it is equivalent to adjusting any times printed
  to Daylight time, i.e. it will add one hour to any times displayed.
  Again, this is archaic as it's better to just use the -z0 switch
  below. Without the -z0 setting, when entering the birth time for
  charts, one would have to subtract one hour if Daylight time were in
  effect, or subtract one hour from the time zone which will do the
  same thing. For example, over here on the West Coast, I have my
  default time zone compiled to be "8"; when Daylight time is in effect
  here, I can do -z 7 or just -z to decrease the default time zone when
  I make say a -t transit list, which will in effect add one hour to
  the local times displayed, or in effect "Spring ahead" the clock for
  me. (For a better way of adjusting Astrolog for Daylight time without
  having to specify -z all the time, recompile the program, or add one
  hour to times in your head, use the "defaults" file described later
  to edit the default time zone or the Daylight setting.) Remember that
  the -z (and -zl) switches should be before any other switches they
  modify (such as -n) in order for the new default to take effect.

-z0 [<offset>]: Change the default daylight time setting.

  This switch sets the contents of the default Daylight time setting,
  and sets the value in the current chart as well, taking one optional
  parameter. When present the parameter will be used for the Daylight
  hour offset, which will almost always be 0 or 1, but can technically
  be set to something else for Daylight offsets that "Spring ahead"
  amounts other than one hour. When omitted, the -z0 switch will toggle
  the Daylight setting on and off between 1 and 0.

-zl <long> <lat>: Change the default longitude & latitude.

  Similar to the -z switch, the -zl option can be used to change the
  default compile time world coordinates used in certain options, such
  as the -n cast chart for right now switch. Note that both the -zl
  default longitude and latitude, and the -z default zone switches
  affect the time and location of the current chart in memory in
  addition to the default setting. Confusion could result otherwise if
  changing a default after chart info was already obtained, e.g. "-z
  -n" would be different from "-n -z", where the latter wouldn't change
  the zone for the chart because it was seen after the -n was processed
  and the old zone used. The correct thing will happen regardless of
  ordering. This means you can easily do a relocated chart with this
  -zl switch, e.g. "-i yourchart -zl 122W20 47N36" will cast your chart
  relocated to Seattle.

-zt <time>: Set only the time of current chart.

  This simple switch will set the time and only the time of the current
  chart in memory to the given value. For example, to cast a chart for
  3:00pm today, do "-n -zt 3:00pm". Without this one would have to cast
  a whole new chart using the -q switch and respecify the month, day,
  and year. Note that placement of this switch is important, as any
  other switch after it which also sets a time will clobber the
  setting, e.g. "-zt 3:00pm -i chartfile" will be the same as just "-i
  chartfile" because the file has its own time value.

-zd <date>: Set only the day of current chart.

  This is just like the -zt switch above except that it takes one
  parameter for and sets the day of the current chart. For example, to
  see the aspects taking place on the 15th of the current month, do "-n
  -zd 15 -d", which does the chart for the current month and year but
  the day scanned is the 15th instead of the current day.

-zi <name> <place>: Set name and place strings of current chart.

  This switch sets on the command line the contents of the name and
  city string fields of the current chart. Note that this switch is
  actually put into present style chart info switch files generated
  with -o to reload the name fields. You can convert an old style file
  created before version 4.20 to new style and add in the name fields
  for it with: -i file -zi "the name" "the city" -o file. (Note that
  you may also want to correct the time or time zone if Daylight time
  was in effect though.)

-q <month> <date> <year> <time>: Compute chart with defaults.

  The -q <month> <date> <year> <time> option takes the four parameters
  and casts a chart for the time in question. The time zone and
  location are taken from the default compiled values. This is just yet
  another useful shorthand way to quickly make a chart. Note that the
  -qa option which takes all seven chart parameters can be duplicated
  with -q along with the -z <zone> and -l <long> <lat> options.

-qd <month> <date> <year>: Compute chart for noon on date.

  The -q <month> <day> <year> option can be used to cast a quick chart
  for 12 noon on a particular date, using the default longitude and
  latitude, and time zone. One example where this is useful is with the
  -d option, e.g. to see the times of exact aspects on a particular
  date, like your next birthday, your finals, etc, without having to
  specify unnecessary data. Note that this is just like the -q switch
  except that -q requires a specific time on the day in question as well.

-qm <month> <year>: Compute chart for first of month.
-qy <year>: Compute chart for first day of year.

  A quick chart cast for midnight on the first of a month can be
  generated with the two parameter -qm <month> <year> switch. A chart
  cast for midnight on the first of January of a year can be generated
  with the one parameter -qy <year> switch. Both of these use the
  default time zone and location. These switches are most useful for
  charts that don't require all the standard information. For example,
  to get an ephemeris for December, 2000, do "astrolog -qm 12 2000" and
  avoid having to enter in a day, hour, or location that wouldn't have
  any effect. These options are in similar to the -qd <month> <day>
  <year> switch above that will do a chart for noon on the given date,
  and the -q <month> <day> <year> <time> switch that takes a time as well.

-qa <month> <date> <year> <time> <zone> <long> <lat>:
Compute chart automatically given specified data.

  Normally one generates a new chart by entering the data coordinates
  interactively. A fast typist familiar with the program might prefer
  to give all the info at once, which can be done with this option.
  Simply list the seven parameters above, in the exact format as they
  would be given to the program were the user being prompted for them.
  (Note that it's probably better to use the -qb switch below because
  of its extra parameter; the -qa switch will automatically assume
  Daylight time is off.)

-qb <month> <date> <year> <time> <daylight> <zone> <long> <lat>:
Like -qa but takes additional parameter for daylight offset.

  This switch is just like the -qa switch above except that it takes
  one extra parameter for the Daylight Saving time flag. In order, the
  eight parameters for -qb are Month, Day, Year, Time, Daylight offset,
  Time Zone, Longitude, and Latitude. (Like -zi this switch is also put
  into chart info files by -o.)

-qj <day>: Compute chart for time of specified Julian day.

  This switch will automatically cast a chart for the given Julian Day.
  Unlike the other -q switches which take standard months, days, and
  years, this switch takes one parameter for the Julian Day (which may
  be fractional to specify a time within the day in question). For
  example, another way to cast a chart for Midnight, GMT, on New Year's
  day of 1994 is with "-qj 2449353.5". (Julian Day 0 refers to Noon
  GMT, January 1, 4712 BC.)

  Known bug: If the extended Placalc formulas aren't compiled into the
  program it will have to use an older version of the Julian day
  conversion routines which will result in these -qj charts giving
  incorrect results for dates in the Julian Calendar, i.e. before
  October 1582, which can be seen by casting a chart with -qj
  specifying a day less than 2299161.5, in which case the Julian Day
  displayed for the date of the chart cast will be ten days greater
  than what was passed to it.

-i <file>: Compute chart based on info in file.

  See the -o option below.

  Note that there is a "virtual file" named "set" which can be passed
  to the -i and -r switches. Instead of looking for an actual disk
  file, this represents the "last" set of chart information dealt with,
  and is useful to avoid having to manually enter information in
  certain cases. (Other "virtual files" Astrolog can use are "now"
  which means the current time at the default location, and "tty" which
  means prompt the user for the info.)

  This is best used within a -Q loop. For example, you first manually
  enter the time for a chart and it's displayed. Now, this time in the
  loop, you want the same chart in an aspect grid, and don't want to
  have to enter the data again or create a file to read from. Entering
  "-i set" will use this chart info no matter how it was entered. For
  graphics charts this "last" chart will be set to the initial chart or
  whatever animation situation was saved via the 'o' key. Perhaps the
  most useful ability of the "set" chart however is that it will set
  itself to times that appear in -t and -d transit and aspect in day
  searches. For example, if you want to cast a chart for the New Moon
  the other January, first do a combination like "-qd 1 11 1994 -d -R0
  1 2 -A 1", which will scan the 11th for Conjunctions involving the
  Sun and Moon, and display the time. Before, to get a New Moon chart
  one would then have to manually specify the time displayed. Now, just
  "-i set" will bring it up!

  This is one more "virtual file" that's obscure and only useful in
  certain circumstances, named "nul" which may be passed to the -i file
  input or -r switches which take chart info files for parameters. The
  file "nul" means to not change the chart info parameters any, but
  rather leave them with whatever current settings they may have or
  were set to before. This is mainly useful with the -r switches if you
  don't want to have to create two actual files to pass in, or use the
  virtual file "tty" and have to enter in data interactively.

-i[2,3,4] <file>: Load chart info into chart slots 2, 3, or 4.

  If the -i chart file load switch is invoked as -i2, it will do the
  same thing as -i except put the chart info into the "second" chart
  slot, for use with relationship charts. This does not enter or leave
  any relationship chart mode. One can set what chart info each wheel
  ring in the tri-wheel and quad-wheel charts will contain by putting a
  number after the -i switch to load the chart info from a file into
  that slot, where -i3 will load into the third slot, and -i4 into the
  fourth (where -i2 will again load into the second, and -i1 or just -i
  into the first).

-o <file> [..]: Write parameters of current chart to file.

  The program supports directing chart information to, and reading
  output from, data files. The '-o' option will dump all the birth data
  (the date and location, not the planet positions) to the specified
  file. The '-i' option will cast the chart based on the info in the
  file. (This allows you to put your birth data into a specific file,
  and cast your chart whenever you want to after that without having to
  reenter your birth data all the time.)

  Another file output feature, the ability to concatenate "comment
  lines" at the end of a data file, is included with both the -o and
  -o0 options, as you may wish to say keep track of info other than the
  program supported name and city. After scanning the filename, the
  -o[0] option will then write any parameter that follows it at the end
  of the file, until a parameter beginning with a '-' or '/' (the next
  obvious command switch) is reached. For example: -o <file> "Birth
  certificate" Family, will add extra info indicating the source of my
  birth data, and a general category for the chart, in two separate
  lines at the end of the file. (On most systems, quotes can be used to
  allow spaces within one parameter.)

-o0 <file> [..]: Like -o but output planet/house positions.

  Ability to write the actual sign and house positions of a chart to a
  file (instead of just the time and place) has been implemented via
  the -o0 <file> option. This option can be used interchangeably with
  the -o output to file switch. The information written includes the
  zodiac position of all unrestricted objects, their retrograde
  velocity, latitude, and distance, as well as the positions of the
  house cusps. (The chart name strings as set with the -zi switch are
  written out too of course.) This file information can easily be
  passed into another program, and can be read back into Astrolog with
  the -i option. The -i option will automatically determine which type
  the file is, and will either use the given positions, or else
  calculate them as needed. (Note that some switches, such as the -c
  house system selection, will have no effect for this file type.)
  Check an example of one of these files to see the precise format (a
  zodiac position is recorded as three numbers: degree in sign, sign as
  number 1 through 12 or three letter abbreviation, and floating point
  minute within the degree.) When the files are read back in, they will
  be flagged as "having no space or time" like the composite charts in
  the chart header displays.

  This file format can allow one to do things such as transits to
  composite charts (send the composite chart to file with -o0 option
  and then read in the file with -i when using the -t switch)
  composites between two composite charts (use -rc between two
  composite charts sent to a file) and even, if one is willing to do a
  small amount of editing, to do transits to midpoints or the 0 degrees
  Aries point. Note that one can easily edit the positions in the -o0
  position file to be whatever they like, so one could replace some
  unimportant object (e.g. the vertex) with 0 degrees Aries or an
  important midpoint value. Note that trying to still use the -o time
  and space output with a chart in memory that doesn't have space/time
  will confuse the program; it will either say it can't make the file
  or else will output the time/space of the most recent parameter file
  it read in.

  Note for old style -o0 position files created before version 4.20
  that aren't based on command lines (see -Yo switch later): the
  positions of the eight uranians may be output to those planet
  position files in addition to the 20 main objects, but only if the
  uranians are actually calculated with -u in effect. Hence those
  position files can be of two different lengths, but the program will
  be able to read in both formats, leaving the uranians uninitialized
  at zero Aries if they aren't also in the file.

-os <file>, > <file>: Redirect output of text charts to file.

  This switch, given a file, will output the contents of a text chart
  to that file. This is just like output redirection (i.e. "> textfile"
  at the end of a command line) except that it's implemented within the
  program. Hence unlike output redirection it will work from within a
  -Q loop, from the File Run menu in Microsoft Windows, and on systems
  whose shells don't allow redirection at all. This also has the
  advantage in that prompts and user messages won't be sent to the
  file, hence things can be done such as "astrolog -os textfile", where
  the program will still prompt you on the screen for the chart info,
  but the chart itself will still go to the file.

  The -os switch may also be expressed as ->, which is included as a
  convenience with its similarity to the ">" output redirection
  featured in many shells. As with all switches, one may leave off the
  dash and invoke it as just ">". When just ">" is included on the
  command line, the system's own output redirection will tend to be
  used. This switch allows one to also include ">" when prompted for
  command lines within the program, or when running from MS Windows,
  where the shell plays no part.

--

Switches which affect what information is used in a chart.

-R [<obj1> [<obj2> ..]: Restrict specific bodies from displays.

  The ability to restrict the transit (-t) and daily aspect (-d) scans
  to just certain bodies has been implemented with the -R switch. Using
  -R by itself will prevent the asteroids, Chiron, Lilith, the Part of
  Fortune, East Point, and the Vertex from being in any of the charts.
  One may also give a list of one or more numbers representing planets
  to be ignored (e.g. 1 = Sun, 2 = Moon, 3 = Mercury, etc) or specify
  planet abbreviations directly, so that a complete custom setup can be
  obtained (e.g. "-R 1 2 3 4 5" or "-R sun moo mer ven mar" will cause
  all of the inner planets to be ignored). More than one -R switch can
  be combined (e.g. -R -R 16 will cause the asteroids, etc, and the
  North Node to be ignored; the first -R gets rid of the asteroids,
  etc, and the second one deletes the North Node.) Also, specifying the
  same particular body more than once will cause it to be included
  again, or in other words, -R <objectnum> complements the status of
  whether it is to be ignored or not (e.g. -R -R 15 will cause all of
  the asteroids, etc, excluding Vesta, to be ignored; the first -R
  makes causes the asteroids to be ignored, and specifying Vesta in the
  second -R makes it reappear.)

  Note that Astrolog will compute charts faster when objects are
  restricted, since it doesn't bother to compute locations that aren't
  needed or used. For example, the search of a year for a Solar Return
  (-i chart -ty year -R0 sun -RT0 sun) is about twice as fast than when
  the restrictions are omitted, since we're only looking at Sun locations.

-R0 [<obj1> ..]: Like -R but restrict everything first.

  The -R0 option will cause ALL of the bodies to be ignored, which is
  useful if you are looking for just the transits/aspects of a few
  planets (e.g. -R0 6 7 will cause everything but Jupiter and Saturn to
  be ignored.) Combining all these methods can cause whatever you are
  looking for in transits and aspects to be quickly found without having
  to wade through lots of stuff you aren't interested in.

-R1 [<obj1> ..]: Like -R0 but unrestrict and show all objects.

  This will unconditionally UN-restrict all planets and other objects
  used by the program, a compliment to the -R0 switch above which
  restricts everything. Note that this will also set modes, in that it
  does automatically activate the -C, -u, and -U sets of objects.

-R[C,u,U]: Restrict all minor cusps, all uranians, or stars.

  These three switches are similar to the -R0 option in that they
  initially restrict objects, i.e. all the minor cusps, Uranians, and
  stars, (described below) respectively from appearing. For example, if
  you want to include only the star Sirius in an X window chart without
  having to also include all the other stars (or having to enter a very
  long restriction list), do: "astrolog -U -RU 48 -X", which will
  include the stars, and then restrict them all except Sirius, before
  making the chart.

-RT[0,1,C,u,U] [..]: Restrict transiting planets in -t lists.

  Transiting planets may be restricted from charts independently of
  those planets being transited to. In -T charts, the -R option only
  affects the natal planets. To restrict transiting planets, one must
  use the -RT option. The -RT option is exactly like -R, and any
  subswitches of -R can be used with -RT as long as the 'T' immediately
  follows the 'R'. For example, -RT by itself restricts transiting
  asteroids from appearing in -T charts, -RT0 restricts all transiting
  bodies, -RTu restricts the Uranians, and so on. This is a really
  useful feature, and allows one to pretty much be able to generate
  exactly and only those transits one is interested in. For example, if
  you want to see if anything is transiting your natal Jupiter or natal
  Saturn this month, do: "astrolog -i yourchart -T 3 1993 -R0 6 7". If
  you want to see if Chiron is transiting anything this year (excluding
  asteroids), do: "astrolog -i yourchart -Ty 1993 -RT0 11 -R". If you
  are only interested in transits of outer planets to your Sun or Moon,
  do: "astrolog -i yourchart -T 3 1993 -RT0 6 7 8 9 10 -R0 1 2", and so
  on. By default, only the transiting Moon is restricted. To get it
  back, merely unrestrict it with "-RT 2". These default transit
  restrictions are in the astrolog.cfg defaults file described later,
  and are right after the standard restriction table, both of which may
  be modified however you please.

-RA [<asp1> ..]: Restrict aspects by giving them negative orbs.

  The -RA switch will restrict the given aspect or list of aspects from
  appearing in charts, like how the -R switch does for objects.
  Technically, an aspect will be restricted if it's given a negative
  orb. The -RA switch just gives the specified aspects negative orbs,
  and is a shorthand for having to explicitly use the -Ao orb setting
  switch. (This means that -RA won't toggle an already restricted
  aspect back on however.)

-C: Include angular and non-angular house cusps in charts.

  This option must be indicated to include the 12 actual house cusps
  (i.e. Ascendant, et al) in the various chart options, such as the -g
  aspect grids, -t transit searches, the graphics wheel chart, etc.
  This option of course won't have any effect on certain charts where
  only physical bodies are shown (e.g. -Z, -S, -L) or where all house
  cusps are already indicated in the chart (e.g. -v, -w). The house
  cusps technically have actual object indexes like the planets, and
  are objects 21 through 32 in order (add 20 to a house to get its
  index). You can deal with and restrict these individually for
  transit and other charts, e.g. to turn on just the Ascendant and MC,
  do "-C -RC 21 30" Concerning rulerships, each cusp object is set to
  "rule" the sign corresponding to it (e.g. Ascendant "rules" Aries)
  while each cusp "exalts in" the next sign after it of the same
  element (e.g. Ascendant "exalts in" Leo).

-u: Include transneptunian/uranian bodies in charts.

  Display the locations of the "Uranian" planets with the -u switch.
  Transneptunian or Uranian planets are an interesting subset of
  astrology which includes various objects alleged to be beyond Pluto.
  (Do: astrolog -u -O to list the eight Uranian bodies.) Anyway,
  Astrolog will display the zodiac positions of these planets as well if
  one includes this option, and will print their positions after the
  main planets, or include them in the other chart types.

-U: Include locations of fixed background stars in charts.

  Astrolog has the ability to display the positions of 47 of the
  brightest and most important stars in the sky. To include these stars
  in a chart, use the -U "universe" option. The 43 brightest stars,
  i.e. all those with apparent magnitude values < 2.0 are included, in
  addition to four dimmer "stars" which are considered significant,
  i.e.: Polaris the North star, the Pleiades (specifically the star
  Pleione within it) star cluster (home of our extraterrestrial
  cousins), Zeta Reticuli (home of the Grey aliens), and the Andromeda
  (M31) Galaxy (closest galaxy to our own Milky Way, and home to
  various extraterrestrial hierarchies.) One bright star is called
  "Orion", which is formally Alnilam, the middle star of Orion's belt.
  Since stars are fixed in the sky, they will never change position in
  the -s sidereal zodiac, although they will slowly precess forward in
  the normal tropical zodiac. The -R restriction option can be used to
  determine which stars are actually included, although the -U option
  still needs to be included to get any stars at all. (With on screen
  graphics, the stars are labeled by three letter abbreviations, and
  are colored according to their brightness: orange for stars brighter
  than (less than) magnitude 1.0, and dark red for the dimmer remaining
  stars with magnitudes greater than this value.)

-U[z,l,n,b]: Order by azimuth, altitude, name, or brightness.

  In the -v standard chart, -Z horizon chart, and in the -O object list,
  where all the stars are printed sequentially, it can sometimes be
  confusing to locate the star you want among 42 others. The -U option
  can be modified to sort the stars in various ways. If one uses -Ub
  instead of just -U, the stars will be listed in order from brightest
  to dimmest. Doing -Un instead of -U will alphabetize the stars by
  name. -Ul will sort them by their altitude from highest in the sky to
  lowest, while -Uz will sort them by their zodiac position. Note that
  any star ordering will have no visible effect in X windows, and one
  must still use the default ordering when passing numbers to the -R
  option to restrict various stars.

-A <0-18>: Specify the number of aspects to use in charts.

  If you like many aspects, or only desire the major ones, to be
  included in the aspect grids, specifying -A <number> will limit or
  extend the number of aspects (e.g. -A 2 will make charts with only
  conjunctions and oppositions listed in them, while -A 18 will include
  all 18 aspects that Astrolog supports.)

-Ao <aspect> <orb>: Specify maximum orb for an aspect.

  Change the default orbs of the various aspects with the -Ao <aspect>
  <orb> switch. Do you not like the 7 degree orbs for conjunctions that
  are in there by default? Given an aspect number and an orb value,
  the orb used for that particular aspect is updated accordingly.
  Non-integer orb values are allowed of course. Use negative orb values
  to completely eliminate an aspect from ever appearing. For example:
  astrolog -Ao 2 4 -Ao 4 -1 narrows the orb for Oppositions, and
  completely eliminates Trines, leaving all the other aspects at the
  default values. Note that for very wide orbs more than one aspect may
  apply for a particular angle, in which case the more fundamental
  aspect is chosen. Also for wide aspects the fractional value of the
  orb may be lost in the -g text grid (due to too many characters) and
  their might be some slight overlap in the X window -g cells.

-Am <planet> <orb>: Specify maximum orb allowed to a planet.

  Ability to explicitly specify maximum orbs that any aspect can make
  to a particular planet is supported with the -Am switch. This is used
  for objects like the North Node which require narrower orbs than what
  the aspects themselves normally allow. The -Am switch takes two
  parameters: the first to indicate the index of the object, and the
  second to indicate what the maximum orb allowed to it will be. By
  default, the only objects with restriction are the Node, Part of
  Fortune, Vertex, and stars, which allow a 2 degree max orb to them.
  With this option, one can change these limits or impose restrictions
  for other planets too. The astrolog.cfg file (described later) will
  read in these default planet orbs for the first 20 objects.

-Ad <planet> <orb>: Specify orb addition given to a planet.

  Ability to widen an aspect orb for any planet is supported with the
  -Ad switch. This is used for objects like the Sun and Moon for which
  one might want wider orbs to them than what the aspects themselves
  allow. Like the -Am switch, this -Ad switch takes two parameters: the
  first to indicate the object, and the second to indicate how much
  wider orbs allowed to it will be. By default, the only objects which
  have orbs widened for them are the Sun and Moon, each of which adds
  one degree to the orb of any aspect to it. With this option, one can
  change these additions or allow other objects to have them, too. The
  astrolog.cfg file will also read in defaults for these orb additions
  for the first 20 planets. (Note that these object orb additions can
  be added to a negative orb for an aspect making it valid, so if you
  really want to restrict an aspect with -Ao, it should be a large
  enough negative value so that the sum of any additions between two
  objects won't make it go positive.)

-Aa <aspect> <angle>: Change the actual angle of an aspect.

  This option is used to change the actual angle of a particular
  aspect. This is useful if one wants to search for some unusual angle
  not already available in Astrolog's aspects or accessible through the
  -x harmonic charts. For example, if I want to know when any planet
  enters a 2.5 degree orb of any planet in my natal chart, I would do a
  transit search along with "-Aa 1 2.5", where "1" is the index of the
  conjunction aspect, and "2.5" means the "conjunction" is now exact
  when any two objects are 2 degrees and 30 minutes apart.

--

Switches which affect how a chart is computed:

-b: Use ephemeris files for more accurate location computations.

  Astrolog has a set of calculation routines which are much more
  accurate than the standard Matrix software routines that are usually
  used by default. One may choose between these calculation methods
  with the -b switch. With -b, Sun through Pluto, the North Node,
  Chiron, and the four asteroids will be computed more accurately
  (although it will take slightly longer). The other uranians, stars,
  and house cusps are always generated with the Matrix routines.

  This advanced calculation uses ephemeris files for some planets which
  must be in a directory specified at compile time or covered by one of
  the environment variables in order to be found. The advanced routines
  are valid based on how many of the ephemeris files one has. With all
  of them, the formulas will cover and deliver accurate positions for
  nearly 8500 years from -5260 BC through 3237 AD! There are 95
  ephemeris files total. Each file covers a range of 100,000 days, or
  about 273 years. Altogether they take up 4.8 megabytes of disk space,
  but each segment of 273 years only takes up 150K. For each time
  segment, there is an ephemeris file named "LRZ5_n" containing the
  positions of Jupiter through Pluto (at 80 day increments), a file
  "CHI_n" containing the positions of Chiron, and a file "CPJV_n"
  containing the positions of the four asteroids. The 'n' refers to the
  span of Julian Days covered by it (divided by 100000). For example,
  Julian Days 1,200,000 through 1,300,000 are in the files "LRZ5_12",
  "CHI_12", and "CPJV_12" (the 'm' character in some files refers to
  negative/minus Julian Days). You don't need all the files to use -b,
  just those that cover the dates you want to use. If you try to use -b
  with a date not covered by an available ephemeris file, an warning
  message will be printed and the Matrix positions will be used. The
  files "LRZ5_24", "CHI_24", and "CPJV_24" cover the years 1859 through
  2131 AD, which is good for most modern purposes and only take up 150K
  of space. (These three files are included in the standard zip archive
  release file of Astrolog. For Unix users who want any ephemeris
  files, and PC users who want to cover more years, the complete set of
  files is at anonymous FTP sites such as ftp.magitech.com.) The
  following is a list of the precise dates covered by each ephemeris file:

  Files LRZ5_m2 / CPJV_m2 / CHI_m2 cover Jun  6, -5260 BC - Mar 20, -4986 BC.
  Files LRZ5_m1 / CPJV_m1 / CHI_m1 cover Mar 20, -4986 BC - Jan  1, -4712 BC.
  Files LRZ5_0  / CPJV_0  / CHI_0  cover Jan  1, -4712 BC - Oct 14, -4439 BC.
  Files LRZ5_1  / CPJV_1  / CHI_1  cover Oct 14, -4439 BC - Jul 28, -4165 BC.
  Files LRZ5_2  / CPJV_2  / CHI_2  cover Jul 28, -4165 BC - May 10, -3891 BC.
  Files LRZ5_3  / CPJV_3  / CHI_3  cover May 10, -3891 BC - Feb 21, -3617 BC.
  Files LRZ5_4  / CPJV_4  / CHI_4  cover Feb 21, -3617 BC - Dec  4, -3344 BC.
  Files LRZ5_5  / CPJV_5  / CHI_5  cover Dec  4, -3344 BC - Sep 17, -3070 BC.
  Files LRZ5_6  / CPJV_6  / CHI_6  cover Sep 17, -3070 BC - Jun 30, -2796 BC.
  Files LRZ5_7  / CPJV_7  / CHI_7  cover Jun 30, -2796 BC - Apr 13, -2522 BC.
  Files LRZ5_8  / CPJV_8  / CHI_8  cover Apr 13, -2522 BC - Jan 25, -2248 BC.
  Files LRZ5_9  / CPJV_9  / CHI_9  cover Jan 25, -2248 BC - Nov  7, -1975 BC.
  Files LRZ5_10 / CPJV_10 / CHI_10 cover Nov  7, -1975 BC - Aug 21, -1701 BC.
  Files LRZ5_11 / CPJV_11 / CHI_11 cover Aug 21, -1701 BC - Jun  3, -1427 BC.
  Files LRZ5_12 / CPJV_12 / CHI_12 cover Jun  3, -1427 BC - Mar 17, -1153 BC.
  Files LRZ5_13 / CPJV_13 / CHI_13 cover Mar 17, -1153 BC - Dec 28,  -880 BC.
  Files LRZ5_14 / CPJV_14 / CHI_14 cover Dec 28,  -880 BC - Oct 11,  -606 BC.
  Files LRZ5_15 / CPJV_15 / CHI_15 cover Oct 11,  -606 BC - Jul 24,  -332 BC.
  Files LRZ5_16 / CPJV_16 / CHI_16 cover Jul 24,  -332 BC - May  7,   -58 BC.
  Files LRZ5_17 / CPJV_17 / CHI_17 cover May  7,   -58 BC - Feb 18,   216 AD.
  Files LRZ5_18 / CPJV_18 / CHI_18 cover Feb 18,   216 AD - Dec  1,   489 AD.
  Files LRZ5_19 / CPJV_19 / CHI_19 cover Dec  1,   489 AD - Sep 14,   763 AD.
  Files LRZ5_20 / CPJV_20 / CHI_20 cover Sep 14,   763 AD - Jun 27,  1037 AD.
  Files LRZ5_21 / CPJV_21 / CHI_21 cover Jun 27,  1037 AD - Apr 10,  1311 AD.
  Files LRZ5_22 / CPJV_22 / CHI_22 cover Apr 10,  1311 AD - Jan 31,  1585 AD.
  Files LRZ5_23 / CPJV_23 / CHI_23 cover Jan 31,  1585 AD - Nov 16,  1858 AD.
  Files LRZ5_24 / CPJV_24 / CHI_24 cover Nov 16,  1858 AD - Aug 31,  2132 AD. *
  Files LRZ5_25 / CPJV_25 / CHI_25 cover Aug 31,  2132 AD - Jun 16,  2406 AD.
  Files LRZ5_26 / CPJV_26 / CHI_26 cover Jun 16,  2406 AD - Mar 31,  2680 AD.
  Files LRZ5_27 / CPJV_27 / CHI_27 cover Mar 31,  2680 AD - Jan 14,  2954 AD.
  Files LRZ5_28 / CPJV_28 / CHI_28 cover Jan 14,  2954 AD - Oct 30,  3227 AD.
  Files LRZ5_29 / CPJV_29          cover Oct 30,  3227 AD - Aug 15,  3501 AD.

  Astrolog uses the formulas from the "Placalc" program package to
  generate its precise positions. Placalc's accuracy is about the same
  as Mark Pottenger's "CCRS" routines, and those used in Nova (it even
  fixes some accuracy problems Nova has, in some of its earlier
  versions at least). Placalc's integrated outer planet positions
  represent the standard of the Nautical Almanac, the international
  astronomical standard, as published in the Astronomical Almanac, for
  its computations as computed before 1984. (Since 1984 the standard
  has been the DE200 integrations by JPL.) The Sun's position
  implements the Newcomb theory for all terms > 0.01", the positions of
  Mercury through Mars are done to all terms > 0.05", while "Brown's
  improved lunar ephemeris" is used such that the Moon is within 3" of
  DE200. For the asteroids, at the conclusion of the integration
  process computing their files, the uncertainty error had reached
  8.0E-11 AU after CPJV_29, and 4.9E-10 AU after CPJV_m2. Placalc's
  fraction of second precision, is of course much more accurate when
  compared to the Matrix positions, which are only accurate to about
  one minute (and several degrees for Chiron, as well as the four
  asteroids) for this century only. For example, at 1800 AD, the Matrix
  positions for the outer planets are off by 2 degrees, and about 1
  degree for 2100; by 1500 AD, Matrix is off by 14 degrees for Pluto
  while Chiron is barely in the right hemisphere any more.

  There is a flag to "Use ephemeris files" in the astrolog.cfg file,
  which when set, will always use the Placalc routines and is the same
  as just including -b all the time, in which case -b will toggle them
  back off. There is a compile time option #define PLACALC in the
  astrolog.h which can be commented out to disable the -b switch and
  the new formulas. Note that because the asteroid ephemeris files were
  first introduced in a version after those for the other planets,
  meaning one may not yet have CPJV_n files for dates they have the
  other files for, there is an "undocumented" switch called -ba, which
  is like -b but will still compute the asteroids using the Matrix
  formulas.

  Note that this calculation method is not compatible with allowing the
  -v0 switch to express planetary velocities relative to average speed
  work with it, and nor will central planetary bodies other than the
  Sun or Earth (standard Geo and Helio centric charts) via -h work. It
  will however display velocities for the Moon and the Node, which
  aren't available with the Matrix routines.

  Special thanks goes to Dr. Alois Treindl who kindly allowed his
  formulas to be used in Astrolog. Mr. Treindl is the founder and owner
  of Astrodienst Zurich, second largest astrological computer service
  in Europe, and is well known for his work with Liz Greene. Astrolog
  basically treats his Placalc routines as a library which we link
  into, in that code that knows about both programs is kept to a minimum.

  Special thanks also to Mr. Paul Schlyter, of the Swedish Amateur
  Astronomer's Society (SAAF, or in Swedish: Svensk Amat|rAstronomisk
  F|rening), for providing the ephemeris files for the four asteroids,
  by writing a utility which does the integration process to determine
  the positions, and that conveniently outputs files in the Placalc
  format. Note that the requirements for use of these asteroid files
  are similar to that of the rest of Astrolog, in that they are freely
  available for non-commercial use but unavailable for commercial use.

-b0: Like -b but display locations to the nearest second too.

  The ability to display zodiac positions to the nearest degree second
  is supported with the -b0 switch. Normally all positions are
  displayed just to the minute (which was all that is useful due to the
  accuracy available in the Matrix formulas). With the Placalc routines
  accurate to within seconds, this switch, in addition to turning on
  the more accurate formulas like just -b above does, will also turn on
  the more accurate display.

  When this setting is on, the planet and house positions in the -w
  text wheel chart, and the sidebar positions in graphic wheel charts,
  will be to the nearest second. The -Z local space chart will display
  the altitude and azimuth to the nearest second, while the other three
  vector columns will be displayed with an extra digit of precision.
  The -S orbital position chart will have all five of its columns
  displayed to an extra four digits of precision. The -L0 astro-graph
  chart with latitude crossings will display the latitude crossing
  intersections to the nearest second.

  Finally the standard -v listing will display the zodiac positions and
  latitudes to the nearest second, and the velocity values will have
  an extra four digits of precision. Note however this doesn't leave
  room to the right anymore for the house cusp positions and element
  table normally shown. They will be left out for -b0, however when
  the -C switch is in effect, the house cusp positions will be
  displayed in their own separate rows, which normally isn't ever done
  since there's always the list to the side. (One more thing is that
  -b0 combined with -v will display an extra column at the end showing
  the decan positions of each object, allowing viewing of each planet
  alongside its decan without having to actually change positions with
  the -3 switch.)

-c <value>: Select a different default system of houses.
(0 = Placidus, 1 = Koch, 2 = Equal, 3 = Campanus,
4 = Meridian, 5 = Regiomontanus, 6 = Porphyry, 7 = Morinus,
8 = Topocentric, 9 = Alcabitius, 10 = Equal (MC),
11 = Neo-Porphyry, 12 = Whole, 13 = None.)

  Fourteen different house systems are supported in the program: Invoke
  as astrolog -c <number> to change the system from the default of
  Placidus. Note that certain house systems (i.e. Placidus and Koch)
  aren't defined for locations inside the Ant/arctic circle. If the
  user attempts to cast a chart using them with a latitude beyond about
  66 degrees N or S, the program will halt and print an appropriate error.

  House system number 10 is the Midheaven based Equal house system. This
  is just like the more common standard Equal house system (-c 2)
  except that we start with the 10th cusp being the same as the MC and
  disassociate the 1st cusp from the Ascendant, instead of starting
  with the 1st cusp being the same as the Ascendant and disassociating
  the 10th cusp from the MC.

  House index 11 is the Neo-Porphyry system of house division. This is
  a new system similar to Porphyry houses except that it's "smooth"
  around the zodiac with the MC/Asc difference being spread in a
  continuous sinusoidal manner from expanded to compressed quadrants.

  House index 12 is the Whole system of houses, where the first cusp is
  at zero degrees of the sign of the Ascendant, and the others are all
  at the beginning of the succeeding signs. This is basically the same
  as the Equal system with all positions shifted back to the start of
  their sign. Thanks to Andy Gray for telling me about this system and
  how it's computed.

  House system 13 refers to no houses at all, or in other words where
  the Ascendant will always be 0 degrees Aries, the Nadir 0 degrees
  Cancer, etc, which is useful for the extended chart animations as
  described later, where having houses at all can tend to get in the
  way; one can even observe the precession of the equinoxes with this
  system if used in conjunction with the -s sidereal chart option.

-s [..]: Compute a sidereal instead of the normal tropical chart.

  With this option, the chart will be just like the normal charts as
  most commonly used in Western astrology, except that all the zodiac
  positions will be shifted (to be about 24 degrees earlier). This is
  because the option casts sidereal charts which are based on the
  positions of the fixed stars (i.e. Aries starts at the constellation
  Aries) rather than the seasons (i.e. Aries starts at the Spring or
  Vernal Equinox.) Due to the "precession of the equinoxes" the
  position of the Sun at the Equinoxes has been gradually happening at
  an earlier point in the sidereal zodiac each year (taking about 2100
  years change signs.)

  This switch accepts an optional parameter of an offset for the start
  of the zodiac. This value, when non-zero, will be added to all zodiac
  positions, and effectively allows one to choose any starting point
  for the sidereal (or tropical) zodiac, which is useful for Hindu or
  other systems whose sidereal zodiacs have zero Aries at a different
  location than the standard Fagan-Bradley sidereal zodiac the program
  uses by default. For example, "-s 10.5" will add 10 degrees and 30
  minutes to all zodiac positions. This value is initialized to a
  zodiac offset value setting in the astrolog.cfg initialization file,
  which is by default zero.

-sr: Compute right ascension locations relative to equator.

  This will display planetary positions relative to the Earth's equator
  instead of the ecliptic i.e. Earth's orbit. This is the way more
  commonly used in astronomy, and results in real right ascension
  notation, especially when combined with the -s sidereal zodiac and
  -sh hours and minutes display format. This switch makes the
  declination values in the standard -v listing also relative to the
  equator, instead of the ecliptic latitude displayed by default, where
  "Declination" will be printed at the head of the column instead of
  "Latitude". (Without this the only way to get such information is
  from the zenith latitudes in the -L astro-graph chart which show the
  same thing.) Note that this setting isn't fully integrated with all
  of Astrolog's charts; specifically it will distort the values in the
  -Z local horizon, -S orbit, and -L astro-graph charts which assume
  ecliptic positions, and hence -sr shouldn't be combined with these
  options.

-s[z,h,d]: Display locations as in zodiac, hours/minutes, or degrees.

  For astronomers out there, the -sh switch will express all planetary
  positions in the right ascension hours/minutes format instead of the
  sign/degrees/minutes astrologers are accustomed to. This will affect
  how the objects are listed in the -v display, and how star azimuths
  are displayed in the -HO list. For example, 0 degrees Aries is
  represented as 0 hr, 0 min; 0 Cancer goes to 6 hr, 0 min, and so on
  through the 24 hour clock. The -sd switch will cause zodiac
  positions to be displayed as a simple degree value in the 360 degree
  circle. To return to the default of displaying as a degree within a
  zodiac sign, use the -sz switch.

-h [<objnum>]: Compute positions centered on specified object.

  Normal astrology charts are based on the positions of the planets
  relative to the Earth. However, this option allows seeing of the
  zodiac positions with respect to the Sun's (or any other planet's)
  point of view. The -h option when invoked by itself will display a
  heliocentric chart: the Sun in the original listing will be replaced
  with the Earth's position as seen from the Sun in the heliocentric
  chart, with the other planets' positions modified accordingly. For
  bodies other than the Sun, the option takes a parameter to indicate
  which planet to center the chart on, e.g. do -h 5 to cast a Mars
  centered chart. (Moon centered charts aren't allowed; in fact, note
  that when the -b ephemeris setting is off, the -h option won't ever
  affect the Moon, which will always be displayed as seen from the
  Earth, no matter what the center body is set to, since it's not a
  formal planet.) Note also that the Earth has its own object index,
  which is position number zero, meaning 0 is a valid value to pass to
  switches that take an object like -R. Charts such as the local
  horizon chart which don't include the central planet, will
  automatically leave it out even if that planet is unrestricted.

-p <month> <day> <year>: Cast 2ndary progressed chart for date.

  A secondary progression chart for a particular date can be cast using
  the '-p <month> <date> <year>' command switch. (Note: I'm not sure if
  the house cusps are progressed correctly for all methods of
  computation, but they are reasonably close to what is expected using
  most of them.) The precise time within the given day progressed to
  is midnight in the default time zone.

  Hackers note: this setting to progress charts to the specified time,
  may be turned off by invoking the -p switch as "_p" with the
  underscore reset prefix. Unlike the standard -p switch, _p take no
  parameters. This is a command switch trick only useful when doing
  multiple charts in a -Q loop, or when passing extra command lines to
  a graphics screen with the return key or through macros.

-p0 <month> <day> <year>: Cast solar arc chart for date.

  Solar arc progressions are supported in addition to secondaries.
  Invoke the -p <month> <day> <year> switch as -p0 instead, and a chart
  will be generated with all planets and house cusps progressed forward
  an amount equal in degrees to the number of years that have passed
  between the specified date and the chart in question. The -pd option
  here (see below) specifies the number of days that have to pass per
  zodiac degree to progress forward; by default this is 365.25. To
  generate a solar arc chart for the current moment now, invoke the -pn
  switch as -p0n.

-p[0]n: Cast progressed chart based on current date now.

  The -pn switch is like the -p <month> <date> <year> switch except that
  (like the -n switch) it assumes the current moment now to cast the
  progressed chart to. This is just another shorthand convenience to see
  what ones progressed chart is like presently; just do: astrolog -i
  file -pn.

-pd <days>: Set no. of days to progress / day (default 365.25).

  User definable progression rates can be specified with this option.
  When using the -p progression option, Astrolog assumes you want the
  standard "year for a day" rate of progressions. By passing different
  values to the -pd switch, one can change the default "365.25 days for
  a day" to any value they want for some less often used method of
  progression. For example, one can do "-pd 7 -pn" to do a week for a
  day, "-pd -365.25 -pn" to get negative year for day progressions, and
  so on. For tertiary progressions, do "-pd 29.530588". (Note that "-pd
  1 -p..." would be the same as if no progression were done at all.)

-x <value>: Cast harmonic chart based on specified factor.

  Harmonic charts (i.e. where all the planet positions are multiplied
  by a factor and the chart recast) are supported via the "-x" option
  (e.g. "-x 3" will make all trines conjunct in the chart displayed.)
  The parameter passed in may range anywhere from 1 (i.e. no harmonic
  factor) to 30000 for those who want to explore extreme harmonics.

-1 [<objnum>]: Cast chart with specified object on Ascendant.

  The -1 <obj> option can be used to change the houses to force a
  particular object to be on the ascendant. This is useful in casting
  Solar charts or for when the time of birth is not exactly known. For
  example -1 2 will case a normal chart, but the house cusps will be
  rotated so that the moon is on the ascendant.

-2 [<objnum>]: Cast chart with specified object on Midheaven.

  Just as the -1 option is used to cast a chart with an object on the
  Ascendant, the -2 <object> switch will cast a chart with the
  specified object on the Midheaven. The house cusps will be rotated so
  that the object in question is conjunct the 10th house cusp. As with
  the -1 option, if <object> is not specified, the Sun will be assumed
  by default.

-3: Display objects in their zodiac decan positions.

  Decan displays are supported in Astrolog, and one can display a decan
  influenced chart with the -3 switch. The decan theory is that each
  sign in the zodiac can be divided into three parts: The first 10
  degrees (i.e. the first decan) is mainly influenced by the sign in
  question, the second 10 degrees (second decan) although still
  influenced by the sign in question is also somewhat influenced by the
  next sign of the same element, while the last decan is influenced by
  the third sign of the same element. The -3 switch applied to a chart
  will move each object into the sign of its decan. For example, if the
  Sun is at 29 degrees Aquarius and the Moon at 5 degrees Virgo, in the
  resulting chart, the Sun will go to Libra (26 degrees) and the Moon
  will remain in Virgo (although be at 15 degrees now since it was
  previously in the middle of the first decan of Virgo.)

-f: Display houses as sign positions (flip them).

  The -f option can be used to "flip" the signs and houses, i.e. display
  the house as a sign position and vice versa. For example having the
  Sun at 26 degrees Scorpio, 2/3 way though the 10th house, will cause
  the resulting Sun under the -f option to be at 20 degrees Capricorn,
  26/30th the way through the 8th house. This can be used to determine
  how far a planet is through a particular house, as well as for domal
  chart analysis that Mark Kenski has informed me about. Domal analysis
  is based on the fact that for synastry comparisons, for example, a
  planet in Gemini and one in the 3rd house can be considered related in
  a way similar to a conjunction.

-G: Display houses based on geographic location only.

  This switch generates a special type of locational analysis chart,
  called a geodetic chart, in which the house cusps are computed from a
  different source, i.e. as a function of only the longitude and
  latitude. This basically gives every spot on the planet a different
  unique set of house cusps, and can be used to analyze the
  characteristics of different areas, and their influence on you if you
  insert your own planets in the houses. This type of chart was
  described in the January 1992 issue of Dell Horoscope magazine, from
  which I learned how to generate these charts. Basically, the Midheaven
  is approximately the longitude value converted from degrees into the
  appropriate zodiac sign; for example 0 degrees E goes to 0 degrees
  Aries, 30 degrees E goes to 0 degrees Taurus, etc.

-F <objnum> <sign> <deg>: Force object's position to be value.

  The -F option is used to force a particular object's position to
  always be a particular location in the zodiac. This feature can be
  used as an easy way to manually include things Astrolog normally
  doesn't in various charts. For example, this can be used to force the
  position of some minor thing, like the Vertex, to always be the
  location of whatever you prefer, like the 0 degrees Aries point, or
  an important midpoint. Then you can do an aspect grid, transit
  search, or whatever, and calculate aspects to midpoints or transits
  over midpoints. The -F switch takes three arguments: first is the
  index of the object to replace, next is the sign from 1..12 to force
  it to be, and third is the degree within the sign. For example, if I
  want to see if anything is making an exact aspect today with my Sun
  Moon midpoint at 6Sag28, I could do "astrolog -n -d -F 16 9 6.28",
  which would replace the North Node with my Sun Moon midpoint in the
  aspect search.

-+ [<days>]: Cast chart for specified no. of days in the future.

  The -+ <#ofdays> option will cast a normal chart, but one for #ofdays
  in the future (or past if a negative value is given). One use for
  this is in combination with the -n and -d options. For instance, I
  often invoke the program as "astrolog -n -d" to see the exact times
  of today's aspects. However, just before midnight I might want to
  see what's going to happen in the following day, so I would do
  "astrolog -n -d -+ 1" to see the exact times for tomorrow's aspects.
  The #ofdays parameter is optional, and will default to one if left
  off, so the above command can be done as just "astrolog -n -d -+".

  Note that for such a chart, the chart header will show the correct
  date of the actual new chart, instead of the original one. For
  example, today (9-11), if I do "astrolog -n -+ 2" I will get the
  chart for two days from now, and the chart header will display 9-13.
  This has some special uses. For example, if you want to know what the
  date was/will be when you are 10000 days old, do "astrolog -i
  yourchart -+ 10000" and see what the date in the resulting chart
  header is.

-- [<days>]: Cast chart for specified no. of days in the past.

  This "dash minus" option is just like the "dash plus" (-+) option
  described above, except it subtracts instead of adds the specified
  number of days from any chart cast. This is only for convenience, in
  that "-- 1" is the same as "-+ -1".

-+[m,y] [<value>]: Cast chart for no. of months/years in future.

  The -+m switch is just like the -+ switch above except that it will
  add one month (30 days) to whatever chart instead of one day. The
  -+y switch will add one year (365 days) to whatever chart. The --
  "dash minus" switch is extended in a similar manner, in that --m and
  --y will do as expected. These switches also have the optional
  parameter to specify how many months or years to move forward or back.

--

Switches for relationship and comparison charts:

-r <file1> <file2>: Compute a relationship synastry chart.

  Computing the relationship between two charts is supported. Invoke the
  program as 'astrolog -r <file_of_person1> <file_of_person2>' and the
  program will give you the relationship between the two charts. In
  other words, the program will use the positions of person2's planets
  and person1's houses. Use this with the -w option to get a wheel chart
  and you can do synastry. Note that transits can be computed with this
  by comparing your chart with the positions of the planets at the
  current moment (as in -n switch). To make this easier, you may specify
  the filename "now" for any file and the computer will use the current
  planet positions instead of looking for a like named file. (e.g.
  'astrolog -r me now' will compute transits for file 'me'.)

  Hackers note: if the -r switch is invoked as "_r" with the underscore
  reset prefix, whatever relationship mode will be canceled. Unlike the
  standard -r switches, _r takes no file parameters. This is a command
  switch trick only useful when doing multiple charts in a -Q loop, or
  when passing extra command lines to a graphics screen with the return
  key or through macros. Astrolog's -r relationship chart switches set
  relationship chart mode, and without this there's no easy way to
  return to single chart mode. Yes when a graphics screen is up, the
  'c' key will toggle relationship comparison mode, but that's not
  available from the command line.

-rc <file1> <file2>: Compute a composite chart.

  The '-r' option can be used to generate composite relationship
  charts. Simply invoke it as '-rc <person1> <person2>' instead of
  just -r and a composite chart (i.e. composed of the midpoints of the
  planets, etc. of the two charts in question) will be generated.
  (Note: when the house cusps in the two charts are nearly 180 degrees
  apart, simply taking the midpoints of all the cusps may result in
  them being out of order in the resulting composite. In such a case we
  give priority to the composite midheaven, and invert the midpoints of
  any of the other cusps or the Ascendant by 180 degrees if leaving
  them that way would have things out of order.)

-rm <file1> <file2>: Compute a time space midpoint chart.

  Time-space midpoint relationship charts are supported: Doing "-rm
  chart1 chart2" will calculate the time and location exactly half way
  between the times and locations as indicated in the two files. Unlike
  all other types of relationship charts, this one actually exists in
  space and time, and therefore can be treated like a single chart and
  can be output to a file with the -o option.

-r[c,m]0 <file1> <file2> <ratio1> <ratio2>: Weighted chart.

  The -rc composite and -rm time-space midpoint relationship charts may
  be weighted to give more influence to one of the charts. When the
  switches are invoked as -rc0 or -rm0 they accept two additional
  parameters which are the ratio weights to give to the two chart files
  in question. For example, the sequence "-rm person1 person2 2 1" will
  still do a time space midpoint chart, but the time and location that
  the chart is cast for will be biased at a 2:1 ratio toward person1,
  i.e. will be 2/3 of the way from person2's chart info closer to
  person1's info.

  Note that the -rc0 switch can be used to generate multiple composite
  charts between more than two people! A composite chart between two
  people can already be done and saved to a file with "-rc person1
  person2 -o0 composite12". A third person can now be merged in by
  doing a composite between it and the composite of the first two, but
  giving the first result a 2:1 ratio because two charts have already
  gone into it, by "-rc0 composite12 person3 2 1 -o0 composite123". A
  fourth person can then be merged in at a higher ratio with "-rc0
  composite123 person4 3 1 -o0 composite1234" and so on. Actually this
  method won't always generate a 100% correct multiple composite chart
  in cases where the objects are spread out over 180 degrees and the
  initial composites put the current midpoint in the wrong half, e.g.
  if the Suns of person1 through person3 are 1Can, 29Sag, and 0Ari,
  then the true composite Sun is at 0Ari, but composite12 is at 0Lib
  and hence the final composite is at 0Leo or 0Sag, in the wrong
  "quadrant" biased toward the earlier results. Still the results are
  useful and the method can be used with -rm0 to get the correct
  average between multiple chart locations.

-rd <file1> <file2>: Print time span between files' dates.

  One useful non-astrological function in the program is the ability to
  determine how much time has passed between two dates, with the -rd
  switch. As with the -rb option below, this is considered a
  relationship "chart" because it requires the input of two different
  dates, and when -rd is in effect, again the standard -v planet
  position listing will be replaced by a line telling how much time has
  passed in the interval. The time difference is expressed in seven
  ways: to the nearest year, month, week, hour, minute, and second.
  For example, "-rd person1 person2", will display how many years,
  days, etc person1 is older than person2 (or the other day around).
  Want to say know how many years older your mother is than you? Just
  do "-rd momchart yourchart". Want to find out how many days old you
  will be on Jan. 1, 2000? Do "-rd yourchart tty", and type in the
  first date of the next millennium, and see what you get!

-r0 <file1> <file2>: Keep the charts separate in comparison.

  There is a distinction between any of the above types of particular
  relationship charts and the actual comparison between two separate
  charts. The -r0 option is used to generate actual comparison charts.
  For example, combining -r0 with the -g switch will cause a full grid
  chart of the aspects between all the planets of the two charts (with
  person1's planets on the vertical axis and person2's on the
  horizontal) to be displayed. (Unfortunately, if all 20 of the
  default objects are left unrestricted here, the grid will exceed 80
  columns, unless the -Y8 80 column clip feature (described later) is
  turned on.) The -r0 option can also be used with the -X switch to
  generate true relationship wheel charts, (described later). The -r0
  option will act like the -r synastry option in certain displays that
  can't compare two charts; for example, '-r0 -v' will act the same as
  just '-r -v'. (Note: the "-t file" current transit option is
  basically a shorthand way of doing "-r0 file now".)

  Comparison relationship charts may also be generated for the -m
  midpoint and -a aspect list options. Combining -m with -r0 will
  yield an ordered list of all midpoints between all combinations of
  one planet from chart1 and another planet from chart2. Combining -a
  with -r0 will yield a list of all aspects between planets in the two
  charts, in order based on what Astrolog think their influences are.
  So, if you really want to know if your Sun widely trining your SO's
  Moon, will override the effect of your Saturn closely squaring their
  Mars, do "astrolog -r0 yourchart sochart -a" and see the influence
  given to each aspect.

-rp[0] <file1> <file2>: Like -r0 but do file1 progr. to file2.

  This switch is a form of the -r0 relationship comparison charts. This
  switch, given two files, will compare the natal chart in file1, to
  the chart of this natal chart progressed to the time specified in
  file2. This is a shorthand way to the commonly desired comparison of
  a progressed chart to a natal one. The -y switch may be invoked as
  -yp <file> which will automatically compare the chart to the current
  time now. For example, to get a dual graphic wheel chart with your
  natal planets in the inner wheel, and your current progressed chart
  on the outer wheel, simply do "-yp yourchart now -X". (There is no
  easy way to do this otherwise, short of using -o0 position files,
  since the -p progression switch will affect all charts.) The -rp
  switch may also be invoked as -rp0, which will do the same thing but
  as a solar arc progression instead of a secondary progression.

-rt <file1> <file2>: Like -r0 but treat file2 as transiting.

  The -rt switch will behave exactly like the existing -r0 chart
  comparison option but with one difference: transit restrictions will
  affect the second chart. With -r0, both charts are treated as natal
  charts and hence the normal -R restrictions apply to both, but one
  may want to have different sets of planets active in the two charts,
  such as in a wheel chart where transiting planets are being compared
  to natal. The -y switch which is like the -r0 switch but assumes the
  current moment now for the second chart, may be done as -yt in the
  same way. For example, to do a graphic bi-wheel showing your complete
  natal chart in the inner wheel, and only the current transiting outer
  planets on the outer wheel, do "astrolog -yt yourchart -X -RT0 jup
  sat ura nep plu".

-r[3,4]: Make graphics wheel chart tri-wheel or quad-wheel.

  Astrolog can do tri-wheel and quad-wheel graphics charts. These are
  like the standard and bi-wheel charts, but with a third and/or fourth
  ring of planets. The standard or first chart in memory is placed on
  the outer wheel, next in is the second chart in memory, where the
  third and/or fourth charts are on the inside. (Note this is different
  from the bi-wheel graphic which has the first chart on the inside and
  the second on the outside.) The house cusps and the graphic sidebar
  if showing will correspond to the info in the first ring. There is
  never any aspect display in the middle of the wheel, but when the -Xi
  alternate chart display flag is set, the program will draw dotted
  lines from each planet in the outer rings to the inner one, as is
  always done in the bi-wheel chart. The -r3 switch, taking no
  parameters, puts one in tri-wheel mode, and the -r4 switch puts on in
  quad-wheel mode. (You can also do -r2 to enter bi-wheel mode, and -r1
  or _r to return to the standard single wheel.)

-y <file>: Display current house transits for particular chart.

  The command switch '-y <file>' can be used as a shortcut way to
  compute the current transits for the chart in <file> (unless the TIME
  features are compiled out), which saves you from having to mention
  the "now" in the -r0 option.

-y[b,d,p,t] <file>: Like -r0 but compare to current time now.

  The -y option is extended based on the -rb and -rd features. The
  -yd <file> switch will display how many months, days, etc old the
  person in the file is right now. Want to know how many minutes old you
  are? Just do "-yd yourchart". Do the same command again right away and
  see that you are now a couple seconds older than the first time! There
  are also switches -yp[0] and -yt which similarly behave like -rp[0]
  and -rt above but automatically compare to now.

--

Switches to access graphics options:

-k: Display text charts using Ansi characters and color.

  With this option, the text charts may be displayed in color, as well
  as with real graphics characters instead of with things like dashes
  and pluses. This makes the text charts look almost as neat as their
  color graphics counterparts. All that's needed is a terminal that
  accepts Ansi escape sequences. You will get garbage if you include -k
  on a non-Ansi terminal. (For this reason, the default for this flag
  is off, although it can be made on all the time by setting the
  appropriate flag in the astrolog.cfg configuration file.) Most PC's
  are in Ansi mode, so if you have a PC this should work. Include the
  -k switch on the command line, and the program will display all
  charts as before, but change the color appropriately for every part
  of any chart printed! Just try a -w chart, a -g grid, or a -t list
  and see the difference of how much easier it is to find a planet or
  aspect among a large chart! I highly recommend this setting be made
  on by default in the astrolog.cfg file if your system will support
  it, especially for PC users who display text charts on the screen
  more often than they print one out.

  Color isn't used randomly but is based on logic. Most colors are very
  similar to the ones chosen in the color X charts. In general,
  everything is based on the following rules for elements: Fire is Red,
  Earth is Yellow, Air is Green, and Water is Blue. Zodiac signs and
  positions are printed in the color of their element. Houses are
  printed in the color of their corresponding sign. Planets are printed
  in the color of the sign they rule. As for the other objects, we have
  the following colors: Asteroids are in bright purple (magenta),
  Uranians are in dim purple, and non-physical points like the Node,
  Fortune, and Vertex are in a bluish gray (dark cyan). Stars are
  either orange if they are bright (magnitude < 1.0) or a dark red if
  dimmer. For aspects we have the following: Conjunctions are Yellow,
  Oppositions are Blue, Squares are Red, Trines are Green, Sextiles are
  Light Blue (Cyan). For the minor aspects we have magenta for
  inconjunct/semisextile, orange for semisquare/sesquiquadrature, dark
  cyan for all the quintiles, dark purple for all the septiles, and
  dark red for all the noviles.

-k0: Like -k but only use special characters, not Ansi color.

  This minor switch is just like the -k switch, however it only toggles
  whether the high Ascii graphics characters are used, as opposed to -k
  which toggles both that and whether Ansi colors are used. A system
  with a black and white monitor may want to use high graphics but not
  color, while a system with a foreign character set may prefer color
  but not graphics characters.

-V <25,43,50>: Start up with text mode set to number of rows.

  For PC's compiled with screen graphics, the -V switch will change the
  text screen to have the specified number of rows, assuming the
  hardware available supports it. Legal values are 25, 43, and 50. This
  most useful as an initial parameter when running the program from
  Microsoft Windows (see later) to give more text rows to work in, or
  in the -Q loop mode (see later), as well as being another way of
  getting to the functionality of the DOS "mode" command. Note that
  for Astrolog builds made using the Borland compiler, only the 25 and
  50 line modes are available; attempting to enter a 43 line mode will
  go to 50 rows.

-X: Create a graphics chart instead of displaying it as text.

  This is the general switch, which means display a chart in an X window
  instead of on the screen in some form. For example, the command
  'astrolog -i mychart -X' will open a new window and display the chart
  in question in it. (Of course, all the other switches, e.g. -R, -c,
  -1, etc, can be used to change what info is actually displayed.) If
  you use the -L astro-graph switch in addition to this, the appropriate
  Astro*Carto*Graphy map will come up in a window instead of the earlier
  boring list of longitudes. (e.g. astrolog -i me -X -L) The -Z and -g
  switches will produce their own chart types as well, although, of
  course, only one type of chart can be in a window at any given time.

-Xb: Create bitmap file instead of putting graphics on screen.

  This switch will cause a bitmap file to be produced and written to a
  file instead of putting the graphics on the actual screen. This is
  useful if you want to convert the graphics to different formats, e.g.
  so they can be displayed on alternate systems, etc. Note that -Xb (or
  any other -X<letter> switch) automatically assumes the -X switch
  above, so 'astrolog -i file -Xb' is sufficient (and you don't also
  have to include the -X).

-Xb[n,c,v,a,b]: Set bitmap file output mode to X11 normal,
compacted, very compact, Ascii (bmtoa), or OS/2 bmp.

  The bitmap file can be written in five different formats; by default
  whatever format specified at compile time is used. One can change
  this mode by putting an extra character on the command line after the
  -Xb switch. Specifically, to override the compile time mode, use -Xbn
  for a standard X11 bitmap, -Xbc for an X11 bitmap with some white
  space removed, -Xbv for a very compact X11 bitmap (which may not be
  able to be processed correctly by all X programs), -Xba for a one
  character per pixel Ascii dump identical to the result generated from
  the X11 bmtoa program, and finally -Xbb for the OS/2 .bmp bitmap
  described below.

  One of the available bitmap formats are the .bmp extension bitmap
  files commonly used on PC's running under IBM OS/2. If you
  have a PC running OS/2, you can set your desktop background to be one
  of the Astrolog bitmaps by: use the -Xb option to create
  a bitmap file, then rename it to have the extension .bmp and put it
  in your OS/2 "bitmaps" subdirectory, then right-click on the desktop,
  select "properties" -> "background" and select this file.

-Xp: Create PostScript stroke graphic instead of bitmap file.
-Xp0: Like -Xp but create complete instead of encapsulated file.

  Astrolog can generate PostScript graphics files. PostScript is a
  graphics format different from bitmaps in that it's based on
  "strokes" as opposed to "pixels". With a stroke graphic, an image is
  defined in terms of "circle here, line there, etc" instead of a large
  array. This means PostScript graphics can be printed at any size
  without losing accuracy or becoming "blocky", and look perfectly
  smooth when printed to a laser printer. A PostScript file is also
  about an order of magnitude smaller in size than a corresponding
  bitmap file.

  To generate a PostScript chart, use the -Xp switch. This will work
  just like bitmap files for all Astrolog's graphics charts, in that
  you will be prompted for a file to write the graphics to unless you
  explicitly pass a file to the -Xo switch. The type of file generated
  will be an encapsulated PostScript graphic (which are usually seen
  with a .eps extension) meaning that it's made to be inserted into a
  document and scaled and so on and printed from there. A true
  independent PostScript file which can be sent directly to a printer
  can be generated by specifying -Xp as -Xp0 instead. As with bitmaps,
  it is recommended to include -Xm for a monochrome graphic unless you
  have a color printer, and to include -Xr so the chart is black on a
  white background (so that you don't cover 90% of the page with ink
  when printing)!

  There is a compile time option #define PS in the astrolog.h which can
  be commented out to disable the -Xp switch and all PostScript
  features. Note that on an X window system one may directly print out
  a bitmap to a PostScript printer even without this internal support.
  One simply brings up an Astrolog chart in an X window, or creates a
  bitmap and displays that bitmap in a window using some other graphics
  program, and then uses the Unix command "xdpr" to print it, with a
  line such as "xdpr -P<postscriptprintername> -device ps", and then
  clicking on the window to print it to the specified printer. Of
  course, the native PostScript charts will look much smoother.

  Special thanks goes to Mr. Brian D. Willoughby (who BTW also lives
  really close to where I work, and who helped me restore the files on
  my NeXT optical disk after it crashed thereby recovering my only
  copies of Astrolog versions 1.00 through 2.00) who wrote the routines
  and parts in the xgeneral.c file which deal with PostScript (e.g.
  what's the PS command to draw a line, ellipse, filled rectangle,
  etc.) Basically, if it's inside #ifdef PS, Brian likely gets credit
  for it, for anything else (except the placalc.c file of course, and
  the Matrix routines which are marked as so) I'm the one to blame. :)

-Xo <file>: Write output bitmap or graphic to specified file.

  This switch is used in conjunction with the -Xb, -Xp, or -XM options,
  to specify the name of the file to write the graphic image to. If
  not included the program will prompt you for the filename before
  writing to disk.

-XB: Display X chart on root instead of in a separate window.

  For X window systems only, this switch will cause the chart graphics
  to be displayed directly on the root window. This action occurs very
  quickly since the program does not have to write a separate bitmap
  file and call xsetroot -bitmap on it (although one could easily do
  this if they want to). For example, one could put the line 'astrolog
  -n -XB' in their .xsession file and whenever they log in, their
  background will be set to a chart of the current state of the planets!

-Xm: Create monochrome graphic instead of one in color.

  For systems without color monitors, the -Xm switch will create all
  charts in monochrome B/W mode. One can still generate color bitmap
  files on a monochrome system, just can't properly display them of
  course.

-Xr: Create chart graphic in reversed colors (white background).

  Normally the charts comes up white on a black background. To get the
  chart or bitmap displayed in reverse video (black on white), use this
  -Xr switch.

-Xw <hor> [<ver>], -ge[..]: Change the size of chart graphic.

  The default graphic chart size is 480x480 units. This can be changed
  with the -Xw switch. -Xw with one argument n will make an n by n
  chart; -Xw with two arguments x and y will make an x by y image.
  Note that this switch will not affect astro-graph or aspect grid
  windows; to change the size of these use -Xs below.

  For X window systems only, Astrolog accepts the standard -geometry
  switch (which can be abbreviated as -geom or anything starting with
  -ge). This is only an alias to this -Xw chart size switch, in that it
  takes the same parameters in the same way. PC graphics charts may be
  automatically sized to the dimensions of the screen by passing zero
  to either or both parameters of the -Xw switch. (Without this, to
  fill the screen or prevent clipping, one would have to find out the
  dimensions of whatever graphics mode beforehand, or manually press
  the 'B' key to do the same thing.) If -Xw is passed zero under X
  Windows, it will use the compile time default window size.

-Xs <100,200,300,400>: Change the size of map or characters by %.

  Note that the size of the planet and sign glyphs don't change when
  you change the size of a graphics chart. This can cause problems for
  very small charts where the glyphs overlap the rest of the chart and
  for very large charts where there is lots of excess space. The -Xs
  switch can be used to change the size of all glyphs. The valid values
  that can be passed to it are 100, 200, 300, and 400 where 200 is the
  default. Note that this switch is used to change the size of the
  astro-graph (and aspect grid) graphic charts (because the world map
  is sort of considered to be one giant glyph by the program.)

  Astrolog has its own internal character set definitions for the
  glyphs which it just draws at a higher scale based on the -Xs
  setting. This can make glyphs at higher scales look slightly blocky.
  To help prevent this, there's a second alternate "internal font" of
  double sized glyphs for planets and aspects, which allow the 100% or
  small scale, and the 200% or medium scale glyphs, to appear smooth to
  the nearest pixel. (The improved larger glyphs are also used at the
  400% or huge scale, and when printing.)

-Xi: Create chart graphic in slightly modified form.

  Certain people have asked that some of the graphics charts be modified
  in various minor ways, i.e. in either adding or removing certain
  information. Rather than add a new hard to remember minor option for
  each change, I have added one major switch which covers all the
  charts. The -Xi switch will invoke this "induce/inhibit information"
  option, and pressing the 'i' key in a window will accomplish the same
  thing by toggling the mode's status. By default, all the charts are
  as before, but when this bonus option is set, it affects each graphic
  chart in a different way, as follows:

 o For the standard -v and relationship -r0 -v wheel charts, it will
   inhibit the display of the aspect grid in the center - useful for
   speed or when doing large time lapse animations when it would get in
   the way.

 o For the -g aspect grid, it will flip the aspects and midpoints across
   the center diagonal, i.e. the midpoints will be below it and the
   aspects above it, instead of the other way around. For the -r0 -g
   relationship aspect grid, the entire grid will be replaced with one
   showing all midpoints between all the objects in the two charts.
   Note: The -g0 switch when combined with -r0 will also generate a
   relationship midpoint (as opposed to aspect with just -g) grid.
   However, this will revert back to the aspect grid if both -Xi and -g0
   are in effect with -r0.)

 o For the -Z horizon chart and -S space chart, it will, for the major
   planets, increase the size of the "points" showing where each object
   actually is, making a brighter "spot", for easier viewing; combine
   this in the horizon chart with the 'l' key label inhibitor and get a
   very realistic view of the night sky, with planets brighter and all.

 o For the -L astro-graph chart, this will eliminate the display of the
   Ascendant, Descendant, and Nadir lines, leaving just the vertical
   Midheaven lines and zenith points, for a remarkable increase in speed
   and much less clutter when including many objects.

 o For the -XW world map display, this will show the Earth's ley line
   locations by drawing them on top of the map. Familiar with ley lines?
   They are lines of energy crossing the Earth. I was experimenting
   earlier with the master ley line grids on the Earth (in the pattern of
   an overlapped 20 sided Icosahedron and 12 sided Dodecahedron) and I
   figured Astrolog with its world map would be an interesting program to
   explore this with. Actually this is mainly a hack, and belongs more to
   the field of dowsing than to astrology, but I figured I would leave it
   in there for amusement and inspiration.

   Hackers note: there is an interesting "bug/feature" that can arise
   with the -XW as well as the -XG (and -XP, described below) switches:
   These displays can be brought up in a window without having to
   specify an actual chart. Now suppose one presses 'V', 'L', etc. to
   bring up a chart - what will be displayed? The answer will be
   whatever initial values were already there, and if you're curious,
   it's set to be my own birth data: 11:01am PST (8 hours before GMT) on
   Friday, November 19, 1971 in Seattle, WA (122W20 47N36). This info
   can also be brought up by accessing the "-i nul" virtual chart
   straight from the command line before any other switches.

 o For the -XP polar globe view, this will show the southern hemisphere
   instead of the northern.

 o For the -XG globe display, it will display the zenith locations of all
   planets (and stars if -U in effect) on the globe, i.e. where on the
   Earth each object could be viewed by looking straight up. This on the
   globe display is almost identical to the astro-graph chart without its
   various lines, except of course that the projection of the world map
   is different. It's also similar to the -Z horizon display, except that
   it's free from the distortion of projecting the celestial sphere upon
   a plane, so it has use to star gazers. However, animation mode here
   will still only affect what part of the Earth is viewable, and won't
   update the chart from which the zenith locations were obtained.

 o For the -E and -Ey graphical ephemeris displays, it will exclude
   showing the Moon, which is commonly desired because its line moves
   across the ephemeris chart so much faster than any of the other planets.

-Xt: Inhibit display of chart info at bottom of graphic.

  Normally, at the bottom of any chart graphic is printed some header
  information listing the date, time, and location of the chart in
  question (unless the info is already being shown in a sidebar). One
  can inhibit this display by specifying the -Xt switch.

-Xu: Inhibit display of a border around graphic.

  This switch toggles off the border setting that is also interactively
  toggled by pressing the 'b' key when a graphics screen is up. This
  switch allows one to toggle the border for graphics files as well as
  set the default for this in the astrolog.cfg file.

-Xl: Inhibit labeling of object points in chart graphic.

  This switch will inhibit labeling with glyphs or text abbreviations,
  the spots indicating the positions of planets in the various graphics
  charts. This is just the command line counterpart to the existing
  functionality accessed by the 'l' key.

-Xj: Don't clear screen between chart updates, drawing trails.

  This switch will toggle on a flag which will cause the graphics
  screen to not be cleared on new chart draws. Pressing the 'j' key
  interactively will toggle the same setting. This feature is used to
  draw "jet trail" streaks on the screen for some charts, such as the
  -S orbit and -Z local horizon. If you bring up one of these charts,
  turn on the setting, and then animate forward, a "time exposure" can
  be done showing the orbits of planets or an object's path across the
  sky. (When this is active, entering animation won't automatically
  jump to the flicker free mode on PC's, because that would make us
  flip back and forth between two pages breaking the continuity of our
  "streaks".)

-X1 <object>: Rotate wheel charts so object is at left edge.

  Yet another graphics feature, this allows one to effectively rotate
  one of the graphic wheel charts so that a particular object is hinged
  to the left hand (east) edge of the chart. Given the -X1 switch with
  the index value of an object, the wheel is drawn but always rotated
  so that the object in question is at the left side of the chart. By
  default we have the ascendant at the left edge, of course. This is
  useful for tracking important planets so one knows where they are,
  but yet doesn't distort the house cusps as the -1 switch does.

-X2 <object>: Rotate wheel charts so object is at top edge.

  This is identical to the -X1 switch above except here we rotate the
  entire graphic wheel so the object in question is always at the top
  of the chart. Note that during a day, the degree difference between
  the Ascendant and Midheaven varies in most house systems, so that
  with the Ascendant hinged at the left edge, the Midheaven will wobble
  back and forth near the top of the wheel. If you prefer, "-X2 18"
  will fix the Midheaven at the top of the screen, and the chart will
  be like before except the Ascendant will be the one to wobble near
  the left edge of the chart.

-Xd <name>, -di[..] <name>: Open X window on specified display.

  For X windows only, the -Xd <display> switch can be used to change
  the display to bring the window up on. Normally, the X window will
  always come up on the current display, but we can do things like
  "astrolog -Xd machine:0.0" and have the window appear there. In
  addition, the program will accept this string through the standard
  "-display" (which can be abbreviated as "-disp" or anything starting
  with "-di") switch common to most X11 applications.

-XW: Simply create an image of the world map.

  Believe it or not, I painstakingly entered the data for the world map
  used by the program by hand using an Atlas during a long week. If you
  just want to see the map of the world by itself without any
  astro-graph lines on it, use the -XW switch.

-XW0: Like -XW but do a non-rectangular Mollewide projection.

  The -XW0 switch is just like the normal -XW switch in that it just
  displays the world map and nothing else, except that this -XW0 map
  generated will be in what's called the Mollewide projection, a good
  looking form often used for maps of the world, as opposed to the
  standard rectangular map projection used in -XW which distorts the
  polar regions of the globe across the top and bottom of the screen.
  (The Mollewide projection pinches the polar regions together,
  generating a elliptical map, which is similar to the -XG globe
  displays, but which shows the whole world instead of just half.)

-XG [<degrees>]: Display the image of the world as a globe.

  Once we have the data for the map of the world, there are
  several neat things we can do with it; for instance, with a little
  trigonometry and clipping, we can bring up a view of a globe, which
  is what the -XG switch does. An optional argument will specify a
  rotation value in degrees to display different parts of the globe.
  (The globe seems to look best for a -Xw window size of around 350.)

  Note that the -XW and -XW0 maps can be animated like as this -XG
  globe display can. Animation of these maps are done by shifting the
  whole map to one side or the other. In fact, such a feature can be
  used indirectly to shift one of the X window astro-graph charts
  (which are drawn on the world map) from the normal case of having the
  date line on the edges of the screen: Go into the world map or globe
  display, animate it a bit, and then change graphic modes to display
  the astro-graph chart, and it will be shifted by the corresponding
  amount. (Note that animating the astro-graph screen itself will
  change the chart info, not how the screen itself is done.) Because
  the -XW world map, and -XP polar globe display, can be animated just
  as the -XG general globe display can, the -XW and -XP switches accept
  optional parameters on the command line that will specify what degree
  (from 0 to 359) to start the map at, just like the -XG switch does.
  In addition, the -XG option itself accepts a second optional
  parameter, which is the starting angle for the globe's tilt, from -90
  to +90 degrees.

-XP: Like -XG but create the globe from a polar projection.

  The -XP option will generate a polar view of the Earth as a globe.
  This is like the -XG globe option except that the view is always from
  the top (or bottom). By default, the view is looking down on the north
  pole with 0 deg W/E toward the bottom of the screen. (Animation mode
  will cause the view to spin about the center of the screen.) To see a
  view of the south pole hemisphere, go into the bonus information mode
  described above ('i' key). Again, like with all the other X window
  display modes, one can enter this display with a keystroke: press 'P'
  in any Astrolog window and it will revert to this display.

-XF: Display maps as constellations on the celestial sphere.

  A graphics chart showing all 88 of the astronomical constellations is
  available with the -XF switch. When this mode is active, the -XW
  world map and -XG and -XP globe chart modes will draw the outlines of
  the constellations on the celestial sphere instead of continents on
  the Earth. Pressing the 'F' key when a graphics screen is up will
  toggle this setting on. (If you aren't already in one of the map
  graphics modes, -XF and the 'F' key will switch to one.) The
  constellation maps may be rotated, tilted, and animated and can do
  everything else just like the world maps, and depict the sky as if
  you were looking up at it from Earth. In the -Xi display modification
  mode, the locations of the planets in the current chart will be shown
  among the constellations. The constellations are labeled with their
  correct abbreviations, and you can see the familiar image outlines
  such as the Great Bear, Cygnus, and all the others, as well as the
  constellations named after the twelve signs of the zodiac, and how
  these astrological signs compare with their corresponding
  constellations. I happen to have four planets in my own natal chart
  in the constellation Ophiuchus, while there are several other
  constellations very close to the ecliptic which planets (other than
  the Sun) often enter, e.g. the Moon will technically be in Orion on
  September 27th. As with Astrolog's map of the world, I entered the
  data describing the irregular shape of each constellation myself, and
  the boundaries are accurate although rounded to the nearest degree.
  This is a unique feature that isn't in any astronomical programs that
  I know of much less astrological! For a demo of this, do "astrolog -i
  yourchartfile -XF -XG -Xi -Xn -U" and see a rotating celestial sphere
  of the constellations and stars, and where the planets in your natal
  chart are located within them.

-Xn [<mode>]: Start up chart or globe display in animation mode.

  The -Xn [<value>] option can be used to start up an X window in
  animation mode. It a window, one would have to explicitly press 'N' or
  a shift+number key to start the window animation. Without a parameter
  after -Xn, the option will start it up in continuous update to "now"
  mode (which is like pressing 'N' in that any chart will be erased with
  the current chart now.) The switch can accept parameters from 1..9,
  corresponding to the animation rates obtained by pressing shift 1..9
  in the window, i.e. update whatever chart is passed to it seconds,
  minutes, hours, days, months, years, etc. later each time.

-HX: Display list of key press options for screen graphics.

  This switch prints out the list of keys one can press when a graphics
  screen is being displayed. This list may also be obtained by pressing
  the '?' key interactively when graphics are actually up. With -HX,
  this may be done anytime and be printed out or sent to a file like
  all other Astrolog tables.

-W <value>: Run given menu command internally.

  This obscure switch allows one to
  invoke a menu command from a command line, taking one numeric
  parameter indicating the item to run. Values 40001 through 40229 are
  valid menu commands, where the list of what number corresponds to
  what command is in the resource.h source file. An example use of this
  is to put "-W 40040" in your astrolog.cfg file which will start the
  program with the "Chart Resizes Window" setting on by default.
  Another example is having "-W 40209" on the command line of the
  program's icon to have the Chart Info dialog come up on startup.

-WN <1-32000>: Set animation update delay in milliseconds.

  This switch specifies the animation delay, taking one parameter
  indicating the number of milliseconds between the start of screen
  updates. This is the same as the "animation delay" edit control in
  the Graphics Settings dialog, and exists here as a switch so one may
  set a default value for it in the astrolog.cfg file.

-WM <1-48> <text>: Set menu text for macro command.

  This switch allows one to customize the menu text for the macro
  running commands, taking two parameters, the macro from 1-48 whose
  menu item to change, and the new text to put on the menu. An
  ampersand "&" may be used to put an underscore under the character
  following it, which will be used as the standard menu shortcut for
  the command. For example, doing -WM 12 "Best friend's chart", will
  edit the last item on the "Edit Run Macro (Normal Set)" submenu to
  read "Best friend's chart". After it will still appear "F12" as
  this doesn't change the direct keyboard shortcut. (One should of
  course also use the -M0 switch to assign a macro to slot 12 here to
  actually display your friend's chart when the macro is run.)

-Wn: Don't redraw screen until user forces update.

  This switch toggles it so that the
  window will not redraw its contents until you force an update (with
  the Redraw Screen command or by pressing space). Normally the screen
  updates after every command or whenever a section of the window gets
  uncovered. However this constant redrawing may cause unwanted waiting
  on a slower system, especially if one is tweaking various minor
  settings in say a large transit search, and doesn't want to wait
  after each modification.

--

Astrolog for OS/2 obscure command switches:

-Y: Display help list of less commonly used command switches.

  This switch was described in an earlier section.

-Yn: Compute location of true instead of mean node.

  This switch allows you to set whether the North Node in Astrolog
  (object number 16) is the Mean or the True node of the Moon. The mean
  Node is the default, but toggling on the -Yn flag will do the True
  node. (The default may also be set at compile time via the TRUENODE
  #ifdef.)

-Yd: Display dates in D/M/Y instead of M/D/Y format.

  This is a switch which determines whether dates are displayed in
  Month/Day/Year order or in the more "European" Day/Month/Year format.
  Toggling on or off this flag will specify the DMY or MDY format
  everywhere in the program from text wheel charts to transit charts to
  the chart info displayed in graphics charts.

-Yt: Display times in 24 hour instead of am/pm format.

  This is another option which is just like the above except that it
  affects how times are displayed throughout the program. When clear,
  times will be printed in am/pm format, while when set they will be in
  the more "European" 24 hour clock.

-YC: Automatically ignore insignificant house cusp aspects.

  This option toggles on a useful flag to automatically prevent display
  of irrelevant or redundant aspects involving house cusps, processing
  them in a more intuitive manner. This affects charts such as -t
  transit search lists, -T transit influence charts, and -a aspect
  lists. First, aspects other than conjunctions to minor cusps will be
  ignored, e.g. a sextile to the 12th house cusp is redundant and isn't
  really useful, as we are more interested in the conjunction to the
  2nd house. Minor aspects to the angles such as the Ascendant and
  Midheaven are left alone. The setting also prevents redundant aspects
  to two items that are always opposite each other, e.g. if a transit
  list shows a trine to the Midheaven, it won't show a sextile to the
  Descendant right next to it.

-Y8: Clip text charts at the rightmost (e.g. 80th) column.

  This setting when active will stop printing lines of text within
  charts if they're long enough to go beyond the right edge of the
  screen. This can be used to prevent text from wrapping around the
  screen to the next line. By default, with all objects unrestricted,
  certain charts will have rows more than 80 columns wide, which can
  break up the chart making it difficult to read, e.g. the -r0 -g
  relationship aspect grid, the -E ephemeris listing, and the -L
  astro-graph columns when uranians are included. With this option on
  however, these and any other charts that can go beyond column 80,
  will always be displayed on one line, with columns that would go
  beyond the 80th not getting printed. Note that this setting can
  actually clip at any column instead of just the 80th, where the
  screen width value used is the same as used for interpretation
  formatting, i.e. the optional parameter to the -I switch.

-YQ <rows>: Pause text scrolling after a page full has printed.

  This feature gives you the option to have Astrolog automatically stop
  whenever the screen gets filled with text and prompt before scrolling
  to the next page. It takes one parameter to define the number of rows
  to print before prompting the user to press return to continue. If
  set to zero, the feature will be turned off and Astrolog will print
  continuously until done. This helps those who may be concerned about
  the program scrolling things off the screen before they can read it.
  Without this one would have to press Ctrl-S to have the system pause
  printing, send output to a file, or be on a system with scrollbars to
  see everything. This feature is on by default and set to 24 lines,
  although this can be changed easily in the astrolog.cfg file. When
  the program is paused, one can type a couple things before pressing
  return: Entering 'q' will terminate the program, entering 'Q' will
  turn off the feature and scroll until done, '8' will toggle the right
  hand column clipping setting, and 'k' will toggle the Ansi color
  setting.

-Yo: Output chart info and position files in old style format.

  Astrolog can still read in all old style -o info and -o0 position
  chart files generated by previous versions of the program without
  problem. Not only that, but it will write out these old formats too
  if the -Yo switch is put into effect. When set, it will output -o and
  -o0 files exactly as in version 4.10 and before, in simple lists of
  numbers in fixed fields instead of in generic command files.

-Yc: Angular cusp objects are house positions instead of angles.

  This obscure switch determines whether the angular house cusp objects
  (i.e. indexes 21, 24, 27, and 30) contain the position of their
  respective house cusps, or the positions of the Ascendant, Nadir,
  Descendant, and Midheaven. These positions are always the same except
  for certain house systems, e.g. in the Equal house system the
  position of the 10th cusp is different from the Midheaven. Normally
  the angular house objects always contain the positions of the Asc,
  MC, etc, however this feature gives the user the option to have the
  objects' contents be the positions of the cusps as defined by the
  house system in use.

-Yz <min>: Forward clock by amount for current moment charts.

  This obscure switch, taking one parameter for the number of minutes,
  allows one to offset forward or backward the time considered to be
  the current moment now. This is useful if your -n now charts always
  seem to be a few hours or whatever off, as seems to be the case on
  certain Mac or Amiga systems. For example, if -n says it's 3:30pm
  when it's really 1:30pm, doing "-Yz -120" will back up the clock
  appropriately (and change the planetary positions slightly too). It's
  important that this switch be used as a last resort instead of first,
  where one should first check their system time, the system time zone
  setting such as may be set with the TZ environment variable, and
  Astrolog's default time zone. A line for this setting appears in the
  default astrolog.cfg file.

-Yl <1-36>: Toggle plus zone status of sector for sector chart.

  This command switch is used with the -l sector charts and sets
  whether a sector is a plus zone sector or not. Taking one parameter
  of a sector number, it toggles the plus zone status of it. Like the
  -R restriction switches, the "_" prefix may be used to make a sector
  minus and the "=" prefix to make a sector plus.

-YE <obj> <semi-major axis> <eccentricity (3)> <inclination (3)>
<perihelion (3)> <ascending node (3)> <time offset (3)>
Change orbit of object to be the given elements.

  This feature allows one to "define their own planets", by changing
  the orbital elements of one of Astrolog's objects. This switch takes
  17 parameters, which specify all the data needed for any elliptical
  orbit around the Sun. The parameters are as follows: First is the
  object to redefine; second is the semi-major axis of the new orbit,
  in AU; next are three parameters for the eccentricity of the orbit's
  ellipse; next are three parameters for the inclination of the orbit
  with respect to the ecliptic, in degrees; next are three parameters
  for the argument of perihelion, which is the "rotation" of the orbit
  in degrees or how far away its perihelion is from zero Aries; next
  are three parameters defining the ascending node, which is the "tilt"
  of the orbit or how far away the point where the orbit intersects the
  ecliptic is from zero Aries; finally are three parameters for the
  "mean anomaly" which is basically where on the orbit the planet is at
  a reference time and how fast it moves along it. Many of the above
  element settings take three values when it seems like only one is
  needed. The second and third values are used as linear and quadratic
  error factors to the first, and can be zero unless every last bit of
  accuracy that can be provided outside of ephemeris files is needed.
  Note that these parameters basically replace the same elements as
  used in the old Matrix formulas. This means the -YE switch settings
  are ignored when the -b ephemeris flag is in effect. Note also that
  the Matrix formulas have special error factors applied on top of
  their main elements for Jupiter through Pluto, hence it's recommended
  to only redefine asteroids, uranians, or inner planets. The following
  example will roughly move Venus into Earth's orbit: "-YE 4 1 0 0 0 0
  0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 23000".

-YR <obj1> <obj2> <flag1>..<flag2>: Set restrictions for object range.

  This is like the -R switch except that it explicitly sets the
  restrictions for a range of Astrolog objects instead of just one. The
  first two parameters specify the lower and upper object bounds, and
  are followed by zero or one flag parameters to clear or set the
  restriction status of each object within the range.

-YRT <obj1> <obj2> <flag1>..<flag2>: Transit restrictions for range.

  This behaves exactly like the -YR switch above except it affects
  transit restrictions, like how the -RT switch is to -R.

-YR0 <flag1> <flag2>: Set restrictions for sign, direction changes.

  This sets the restriction status for sign and direction changes. It
  takes two parameter flags, with the first setting for sign changes,
  and the second direction changes. This affects the -d daily event
  searches, and works like the -R restrictions but for all types of
  these special events, instead of all aspects or all events containing
  a particular object.

-YRZ <rise> <zenith> <set> <nadir>: Set restrictions for -Zd chart.

  This switch allows one to determine which events appear in the -Zd
  rising and setting time chart. It takes four parameters, which
  respectively control whether rising events, zenith transit events,
  setting events, and nadir transit events are included in the chart. A
  zero value indicates to include that event, while a one means to
  restrict it. For example, to include only rising and setting events
  in the -Zd chart, do "-YRZ 0 1 0 1".

-YAo <asp1> <asp2> <orb1>..<orb2>: Set aspect orbs for range.

  This is like -Ao but sets the orbs for a range of Astrolog aspects
  instead of just one. The first two parameters specify the lower and
  upper aspect index bounds, and are followed by a list of orb values
  for each aspect in the range.

-YAm <obj1> <obj2> <orb1>..<orb2>: Set max planet orbs for range.

  This is like -Am but sets the maximum aspect orbs allowed to a range
  of objects instead of just one. Again, the first two parameters are
  the lower and upper object indexes, followed by the list of max orb
  values.

-YAd <obj1> <obj2> <orb1>..<orb2>: Set planet orb additions for range.

  This is like -Ad but sets the planet orb addition values for a range
  of objects instead of just one. Again, the first two parameters are
  the bound indexes, and are followed by the list of planet orb
  additions.

-YAa <asp1> <asp2> <ang1>..<ang2>: Set planet aspect angles for range.

  This is like -Aa but sets the angles to use for a range of aspects
  instead of just one. Again, the first two parameters are the bound
  indexes, and are followed by a list of angle degree values for each
  aspect in the range.

-Yj <obj1> <obj2> <inf1>..<inf2>: Set influences for object range.

  This sets the powers or influences of the given range of planets,
  when considered in a natal chart, as used in charts such as the -j
  influence chart, -a aspect influence list, and -T transit influence
  list.

-YjC <cusp1> <cusp2> <inf1>..<inf2>: Set influences for house cusps.

  This sets the influences for the given range of houses, as used in
  charts such as -j.

-YjA <asp1> <asp2> <inf1>..<inf2>: Set influences for aspect range.

  This sets the influences for the given range of aspects, as used in
  charts such as the -j influence chart, -a aspect influence list, and
  -T and -D transit lists.

-YjT <obj1> <obj2> <inf1>..<inf2>: Set transit influences for range.

  This sets the influences of the given range of planets, just like
  -Yj, except here for when the planets are transiting, as used in
  charts such as the -T transit and -D external planets influence lists.

-Yj0 <inf1> <inf2> <inf3> <inf4>: Set influences given to planets
in ruling sign, exalted sign, ruling house, exalted house.

  This switch takes four parameters and sets respectively, the extra
  influences given to a planet when it's in the sign it rules, when
  it's in the sign it exalts in, when it's in the house corresponding
  to the sign it rules, and when it's in the house corresponding to the
  sign it exalts in. These values are used in examples such as the -j
  influence chart.

-YJ <obj> <sign> <cosign>: Set sign planet rules and co-rules.

  This switch allows one to customize the rulerships of a given planet.
  It takes three parameters, the object to modify, the zodiac sign for
  it to rule, and a second sign for it to co-rule. Pass in the value
  zero to make a planet not rule any sign. For example, Jupiter by
  default rules Sagittarius and co-rules Pisces. If you'd prefer it to
  rule Cancer and not have a co-rulership, do "-YJ Jup Can 0".

-YJ0 <obj> <sign>: Set zodiac sign given planet exalts in.

  Similar to the -YJ switch, this allows one to customize the zodiac
  sign a given planet exalts in. It takes two parameters, the object to
  modify, and the new sign to exalt in (with a zero value meaning no
  exaltation). For example, to make Pluto exalt in Aries (and hence
  implicitly be debilitated in the opposite sign Libra) do "-YJ0 Plu Ari".

-YkC <fir> <ear> <air> <wat>: Customize element colors.
-YkA <asp1> <asp2> <col1>..<col2>: Customize aspect colors.
-Yk0 <1..7> <1..7> <col1>..<col2>: Customize 'rainbow' colors.
-Yk <0..8> <0..8> <col1>..<col2>: Customize 'general' colors.

  Astrolog can customize the colors as used for almost anything in the
  program. A color may be set to any one of 16 values, represented by
  the numbers 0 to 15, which are: 0 - Black, 1 - Maroon, 2 - DkGreen, 3
  - Orange, 4 - DkBlue, 5 - Purple, 6 - DkCyan, 7 - LtGray, 8 - DkGray,
  9 - Red, 10 - Green, 11 - Yellow, 12 - Blue, 13 - Magenta, 14 - Cyan,
  15 - White. When entering a color as a parameter, use the correct
  number above, or else type the color's name as printed above (which
  may be abbreviated to the first three characters). The switches to
  change color settings are below.

 o -YkC <col1> <col2> <col3> <col4> switch: This switch defines the
   colors used for the four elements, and takes four parameters, for
   fire, earth, air, and water, in that order. The colors used for
   planets are based on the element of the sign they rule, so this
   affects the colors of the main planets too. For example, to make
   earth be green and air yellow, instead of the other way around as
   Astrolog used to always force, do "-YkC 9 10 11 12" or "-YkC Red
   Green Yellow Blue" or just "-YkC red gre yel blu".

 o -YkA <asp1> <asp2> <colors> switch: This defines the colors used for
   a range of aspects. The first two parameters are the lower and upper
   indexes of the aspects to modify, and are followed by one color
   parameter for each aspect in the range. For example, to highlight
   Trines by making them white and all the other major aspects dark
   blue, do "-YkA 1 5 dkb dkb dkb whi dkb".

 o -Yk0 <val1> <val2> <colors> switch: This sets a range of colors used
   other places in the program (excluding elements and aspects) whose
   default colors are one of the colors of the rainbow. The first two
   parameters are values from 1 to 7 indicating the lower and upper
   bounds of the default colors to redefine, and are followed by new
   actual colors to use instead. The seven indexes represent the colors
   Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Cyan, Blue, and Purple. For example, if
   you want to change the color used for the Uranians from their default
   of purple to orange, do "-Yk0 7 7 orange" and you've effectively
   "redefined the color purple".

 o -Yk <val1> <val2> <colors> switch: Like -Yk0 above this also sets a
   range of colors as used many places in the program, except this
   allows one to redefine all the standard or obscure colors (i.e. the
   other nine that aren't one of the rainbow colors covered above).
   Again the first two parameters indicate the range of colors to change
   which are from 0 to 8, and are followed by the new colors to use. The
   nine indexes represent in order the colors Black, White, LtGray,
   DkGray, Maroon, DkGreen, DkCyan, DkBlue, and Magenta. For example, to
   change the highlight color as used in graphics charts to draw borders
   and the like from LtGray to Yellow, do "-Yk 2 2 yellow". (Note that
   you can use this to even "change" the colors Black and White to draw
   graphics on whatever background color you want.)

-YXG <0-2><0-2><0-2><0-3>: Select among different graphic glyphs
for Capricorn, Uranus, Pluto, and Lilith.

  Astrolog has the ability to choose between different common glyphs
  for various astrological symbols. One may optionally display charts
  with the "European" version of the Capricorn glyph, instead of the
  more twisty "American" type glyph. One may display charts with the
  "astronomical" version of the Uranus glyph using a dotted circle with
  an ascending arrow, instead of the more astrological "Herschel" glyph
  with the crescent bounded cross over a circle. One may display with
  the "astronomical" version of the Pluto glyph as the "PL" initials,
  instead of the more "astrological" version with the circle over
  crescent over cross. Finally one may choose to display Lilith as a
  small reversed crescent instead of as a circle with a line through
  it. The -YXG switch changes the glyphs to use for these signs and
  planets that may be drawn in more than one way. It takes one
  parameter, a four digit number specifying the glyphs to use for
  Capricorn (1000's place digit), Uranus (100's place), Pluto (10's
  place), and Lilith (1's place). For each position, the digit "0"
  means to leave a glyph alone, while "1" means set to what's generally
  considered the "American" form, and "2" means to what's generally
  considered a "European" form. (For Lilith only, one may also choose
  the digit "3", which is the "U" shaped South Node glyph.) For
  example, "-YXG 0120" leaves the glyphs for Capricorn and Lilith at
  their present setting, sets Uranus to be the "Herschel" glyph, and
  Pluto to be the astronomical "P" glyph. The default selection is
  "1111", but many astrologers on the Eastern side of the Atlantic may
  prefer "2222".

-YXg <cells>: Set number of cells for graphic aspect grid.

  This sets the size of the graphic -g aspect and midpoint grids, i.e.
  the number of cell rows and columns available to draw items in.
  Aspect grids by default are always 20 by 20 cells (21 by 21 for the
  -r0 relationship comparison grids counting the index row) to account
  for the default number of objects active. If this size value is too
  high (or objects are restricted), there will be unused rows at the
  bottom, while if it's too low (or objects are added), rows will be
  clipped off the bottom.

-YXf <val>: Set usage of actual system fonts in graphic file.

  This sets whether or not actual system fonts (instead of Astrolog's
  vector graphics) are used for glyphs and text in PostScript graphics
  files. Zero means no system fonts, while one means use Courier,
  Wingdings for metafiles, and the Astro font. (This can also be set to
  the hack value of two if you don't have the Astro font, which means
  don't try to use this system font but do use all the others.)

-YXp <-1,0,1>: Set paper orientation for PostScript files.

  This allows one to set the page orientation for full PostScript
  graphics files as generated with the -Xp0 switch. If the orientation
  parameter value is positive, that means the chart will be printed in
  portrait mode, while if negative, it will be in landscape mode. If
  the orientation value is set to zero (the default), then the program
  will decide based on the size of the current chart, with charts with
  wider horizontal sizes (e.g. astro-graph charts and wheel charts with
  sidebars) being in landscape, and charts with horizontal sizes less
  than or equal to the vertical (e.g. aspect grids and wheel charts
  without sidebars) being in portrait.

-YXp0 <hor> <ver>: Set paper size for PostScript files.

  One may also choose the paper size of full -Xp0 PostScript graphics
  charts. There are two parameters given which specify the horizontal
  and vertical size in inches of the paper to be printed upon. By
  default this is 8.5" x 11". If you have say 8.5" x 14" legal size or
  A4 paper in your printer it can be used just as easily. (Note: It's
  possible that at least some systems or drivers may clip all graphics
  beyond 8.5" x 11", but excluding any external restrictions Astrolog's
  PostScript should allow one to go beyond these limits.)

-YX <hi-res> <lo-res>: Set modes to use for PC screen graphics.

  For PC's with graphics only, this sets the two graphics modes as used
  when displaying charts on the screen. The two parameters specify the
  mode number to use as the default "hi-resolution" mode, and the
  "flicker-free" mode used for animations.

-0[o,i,q,X]: Disallow file output, input, exiting, and graphics.

  This obscure switch is invoked in one of four forms: -0o, -0i, -0q,
  or -0X, where more than one of the subswitches may be combined, e.g.
  -0oiqX to do all four forms at once. Each subswitch disables a
  section of the program. The four areas of file output, file input,
  program termination, and graphics mode charts, may be respectively
  turned off by the four subswitches above. Once a section is disabled,
  it is that way permanently and can not be turned back on until the
  program quits. Attempting to access a restricted feature will display
  an appropriate error message or at least do nothing. This switch was
  meant to be used when Astrolog is being run from a chart server, a
  BBS, as a demo, or related situation. For example, if one set up
  Astrolog on the Net to be able to receive chart requests including
  arbitrary command lines where the result is e-mailed back to the
  user, the administrator probably wants to prevent the client from
  using the -o switch to create or potentially overwrite files on the
  server, in which case -0o can be put in the astrolog.cfg file to
  prevent file output before the client gets a chance to do anything.
  Similarly, -0i can be used to prevent the client from using -i to
  read in private files on the server. If the server only e-mails text
  back to the user, you probably don't want the server copy of the
  program going into interactive graphics mode waiting for someone to
  pass it keystrokes, in which case -0X can be used. Finally, -0q might
  be useful in demo situations where people can play with the program
  but you don't want them exiting it. In this last case, the only way
  to stop the program is to kill the process; a Control-C should stop
  the DOS or Unix versions, but you'll probably have to exit Windows to
  terminate Astrolog if a -0q is done in the Windows version.

-;: Ignore rest of command line and treat it as a comment.

  The -; "dash semicolon" switch when encountered causes all the rest
  of the switches on a command line to be ignored and not processed.
  This allows the semicolon (usually used by itself without the
  optional dash prefix of course) to be used to begin comments and for
  comment lines in the various command files.

--

Astrolog graphics screen key press options:

     (Note: When a graphics chart is up, pressing a key which doesn't
do any of the operations below will sound a beep.)

Press 'H' or '?' to display this list of key options.

  The most important key, of course. Pressing this will display a help
  list of all the key presses available in the text screen from which
  the window was invoked from.

Press 'p' to toggle pause status on or off.

  Press this to pause all automatic updates to the window or screen.
  This is mainly used to temporarily freeze any animation (see below)
  so a particular chart can be looked at without interruption. When
  animation is on but temporarily paused with this key, the mouse
  (inactive for the purpose of scribbling during animation) will come
  active again. Related to this, the number keys which set the rate of
  animation, but for PC's scroll the chart when not in animation mode,
  will do the scrolling instead of setting the rate when animation is
  paused then.

Press 'x' to toggle fg/bg colors on screen.

  Pressing this will invert the colors on the screen, or in other
  words will do the same thing as the -Xr switch on the command line.

Press 'm' to toggle color/monochrome display on screen.

  For color displays, pressing this key will toggle in and out of
  monochrome mode.

Press 'i' to toggle status of the minor chart modification.

  Pressing this key will toggle whether or not an alternate form of the
  present chart should be displayed. See the -Xi switch described
  earlier for more information on these alternate chart formats.

Press 't' to toggle header info on current chart on screen.

  Pressing the 't' key will toggle whether or not the chart parameters
  are printed at the bottom of the window or in a sidebar. This
  corresponds to the -Xt switch mentioned earlier.

Press 'b' to toggle drawing of a border around the chart.

  This key, when pressed when a graphics chart is being displayed, will
  toggle whether or not a border is drawn around the graphic. Some
  charts, such as aspect grids, will always have a border regardless of
  the state of this flag, while others such as the globes will never
  have one. Most charts however, such as the wheel charts will look
  good either way and this key can be used to choose.

Press 'l' to toggle labeling of object points in chart.

  Press the 'l' key in a window to inhibit the labeling of all planets
  in the various charts. Instead of drawing the actual little point and
  then the glyph near it (as well as sometimes a line from the glyph to
  the dot), just the point is displayed. This mode is mainly useful for
  the -Z horizon and -S space charts (and has little use for anything
  else) when in cramped quarters or to get a more realistic view of how
  the sky actually looks.

Press 'j' to toggle not clearing screen between chart updates.

  This key toggles on the "jet trails / time exposure" flag which will
  cause the graphics screen to not be cleared on new chart draws. See
  the -Xj switch which affects the same setting for more info.

Press 'v' to display current chart positions on text screen.

  Press this key to dump back to the text screen the list of where all
  the planets currently being displayed in the window are. This display
  is the same as produced with the -v switch, and is useful if one wants
  text to show where everything in the chart is.

Press 'R', 'C', 'u', 'U' to toggle restriction status of minor
objects, minor house cusps, uranian planets, and stars.

  Press the 'R' (restrict) key in an Astrolog graphics screen and the
  chart will be redrawn with the restriction status of the asteroids
  and other minor objects toggled. Pressing the 'C', 'u', and 'U' keys
  in the window will toggle the restriction status of the four minor
  house cusps, the uranian planets, and the fixed stars, respectively.
  These keys compliment the 'R' key option and are the counterparts to
  the -C, -u, -U, and -RC, -Ru, -RU switches. (Note that for the 'C',
  'u', and 'U' keys, toggling their state off will automatically
  restrict all the objects associated with them, while the 'R' key can
  simultaneously restrict some and unrestrict other bodies.)

Press 'c' to toggle relationship comparison chart mode.

  This key, when pressed when a graphics chart is being displayed, will
  toggle the state of whether a relationship comparison chart (-r0) is
  being shown. For example, pressing it when a wheel chart is up will
  revert to a dual wheel chart showing two sets of planets, while
  pressing it when an aspect grid is up will revert to a dual aspect
  grid between the planets of two different charts. When going from a
  comparison to a single chart, one of the charts will be used while
  the other thrown away. When going from a single to a comparison, the
  same chart information will be put in both (which won't be too useful
  until they are made different through animation or other keypresses).

Press 's', 'h', 'f', 'g' to toggle status of sidereal zodiac,
heliocentric charts, domal charts, and decan charts.

  Press the 's' key in the window to toggle whether or not the sidereal
  vs. tropical zodiac is used. Press the 'h' key to toggle to a
  heliocentric based chart or back again to a geocentric one. Press the
  'f' key to toggle the status of whether or not the chart should be
  modified to correspond to the appropriate domal chart (where the
  house positions are represented as zodiac positions and vice versa).
  Press the 'g' key to toggle the status of whether or not the chart
  should be modified to correspond to a decan chart (where each sign is
  divided in thirds representing the two other signs in its element).
  These keys of course correspond the -s, -h, -f, and -3 options,
  respectively.

Press 'O' and 'o' to recall/store a previous chart from memory.

  Have you ever animated your natal or some other chart to some far
  distant future or past time, only then to wish you could somehow
  easily get back in time to the original chart? You can, by pressing
  the 'O' key in a window, which will recall to the screen previously
  "saved" chart parameters (which are by default set to whatever you
  started the window with.) Press the 'o' key to change this default
  stored chart to be the chart that is presently in the window.

Press 'B' to dump current window contents to root background.

  Press the 'B' key in an X window to dump whatever is currently being
  displayed to the background root window. This is basically the
  corresponding keypress to the -XB option.

Press 'B' to resize chart display to full size of screen.

  For PC systems, the 'B' key does a different function that the
  feature shown above. See PC graphics section for its description.

Press 'Q' to resize chart display to a square.

  One can manually resize the Astrolog X Windows using a window manager
  (except when a world map or aspect grid is displayed, in which case
  any resizing will have no effect). Pressing the 'Q' key will
  automatically resize any (non-world map) window to be a square. This
  is useful, after resizing charts to approximately the size you want,
  to make them precise squares. Note that for PC's, this will take EGA
  and CGA mode pixel ratios into account, in that the horizontal and
  vertical sizes may be made different in order that the actual display
  looks square. This will also take into account wheel chart sidebars
  and only resize the actual visible chart to a square when one is
  being displayed to prevent distortion.

Press '<' and '>' to decrease/increase the scale size of the
glyphs and the size of world map.

  This two keys will respectively decrease and increase the size of the
  sign and planet glyphs (as well as resize the astro-graph and aspect
  grid charts) through the three scale factors available. After resizing
  the window, you will probably want to use these keys if the glyphs are
  then too big or small for the new chart.

Press '[' and ']' to decrease/increase tilt in globe display.

  '[', ']' keys: Not only can the globe display be rotated, but the
  poles can be tilted down at various angles! (This basically makes the
  -XP polar globe view option obsolete; it's still in there only for
  backwards compatibility.) Press the '[' and ']' keys when the globe is
  being displayed to respectively "pull down" and "push back up" the
  angle of the polar axis from which the globe is viewed. Combining
  this with the globe rotation allows one to move any point of the globe
  to the center of the screen.

Press '+' and '-' to add/subtract a day from current chart.

  These keys, when pressed when a graphics chart is being displayed,
  will update the current chart forward or backward one day (actually
  1..9 days based on the current animation rate). When animation mode
  itself is active, these keys will jump by the current animation step,
  instead of only an amount in days.

Press 'n' to set chart information to current time now.

  This key, when pressed when a graphics chart is being displayed, will
  change the current chart (or "outer" chart when a -r0 comparison
  chart is up) to the current time and place now. This interactively
  does the same as the -n command line switch. The only other way to
  revert a graphics chart to the time "now" is to enter animation mode
  via the 'N' key and then leave it, so this is a shortcut convenience.
  (This feature is only available when the TIME compile time value is
  uncommented of course.)

Press 'N' to toggle animation status on or off. Charts will
be updated to current status and globe will rotate.

  Animation! This key will toggle in and out of a mode where the chart
  is continually updated in the window. Entering the animation mode
  will cause the chart being currently displayed to be replaced by the
  chart for the exact moment at the time you are running the program.
  Every second or two, the chart will be updated to reflect the new
  current state of the planets and houses. For large window sizes, one
  can actually see very minor changes in the chart every few seconds.
  With the text 'T' mode in effect, the chart is basically an advanced
  version of xclock, and makes a good window to be left running on
  your display. If you are in the -XG globe display mode, pressing
  the 'N' key will cause the globe to rotate for an impressive display!
  Note that when a comparison relationship chart is up, animation will
  forward the chart in the "second" slot rather than the "first". This
  is more intuitive when animating bi-wheel transit to natal charts,
  where the transiting, i.e. second, chart will be the one forwarded.

Press '!'-'(' to begin updating current chart by adding times.
!: seconds, @: minutes, #: hours, $: days, : months,
^: years, &: years*10, *: years*100, (: years*1000.

  These nine keys (i.e. shift plus the number keys from 1..9) enter
  into a different form of chart animation. Pressing them will cause the
  current chart being displayed (i.e. it will not revert to the current
  planet positions) to continually have a delta time added to it and be
  recast and shown. Pressing '!' will have one second added to the chart
  for every update (slow action unless you have a very fast system - the
  animation will be even slower than for the 'N' key). Pressing '@' will
  have one minute added to the chart each time, which makes for a nice
  display (note that you will definitely want to be in the text 'T' mode
  for these animations so you can see what times in the future these
  charts are being cast for. Pressing '#" will have one hour added each
  time (note that now the house cusps are starting to move quickly, so
  you may want to switch to a different system of houses (such as the
  Equal to keep the Midheaven from flopping back and forth) and/or use
  -1 to put an object like the sun on the Ascendant.) Pressing '$' will
  have one day added each time (now you will probably want to start
  using -R to remove fast moving objects like the moon), and pressing
  '%' will have one month added for each update of the window. The
  final keys, shift 6..9 cause years, decades, centuries, and millennia
  to be added each time, and tend to only be used to look for long range
  actions (when will Neptune next enter Pisces, etc.) To exit these
  animation modes, press the 'N' key.

Press 'r' to reverse direction of time-lapse or animation.

  Press this to reverse the direction of any animation taking
  place. For the '!'..'(' animation keys above, this will cause
  negative times to be added to the chart, e.g. pressing '#'
  then 'r' on a chart cast for noon will cause the next chart to
  be displayed for 11am, then 10am, etc. For the Globe animation,
  this will cause the rotation to reverse direction.

Press '1'-'9' to set rate of animation to 'n' degrees, etc.

  The nine number keys are used to set the relative "rate" of
  animation to "n" whatevers. For example, normally the "@" key means
  add one minute to the chart for each update, but press "5" and now
  we are adding 5 minutes each time. For the Globe animation,
  by default the Earth rotates one degree each time; however, the
  number keys can speed this up to nine degrees for each update.

Press '1'-'9' to determine section of chart to show if clipped.

  For PC systems only, see the section on PC graphics for this
  additional feature accessed through the number keys. Note when
  pressing numbers to set the animation rate or the section of a PC
  graphics screen to view, the numeric keypad will work for PC's even
  if numlock isn't on. It would be annoying to press a number on the
  keypad only to pass some random characters to Astrolog because you
  forgot to turn on numlock.

Press 'V','A','Z','S','M','K','J','L','E','W','G','P' to switch to
normal (-v), grid (-g), local (-Z), space (-S), sector (-l),
calendar (-K), dispositor (-j), astro-graph (-L), ephemeris
(-E), world map (-XW), globe (-XG), and polar (-XP) modes.

  There are basically twelve main modes in which the graphics screen
  can be in: There are the nine main charts (wheel, aspect grid, local
  sky, space view, Gauquelin sector, calendar, dispositor, astro-graph,
  and ephemeris) as well as the three world displays (the simple map by
  itself, the globe view, and the polar projection). These twelve keys
  can be used to switch between these modes in the middle of program
  execution. For example, you can bring up your own chart in a window,
  then press 'L' to see the astro-graph chart for the same birth data.
  Then you can press 'W' to just see the world map by itself, and 'G'
  to see the globe view, after which you can press 'V' to return to
  your original wheel chart.

Press '0' to toggle between -Z,-Z0 & -XW,-XW0 & -E,-Ey modes.

  When graphics are up on the screen, pressing this key acts similar to
  the mode changing keys above that switch between the different
  graphic chart types. When pressed, the state of the program being
  invoked with -Z vs. -Z0, as well as the state of -XW vs. -XW0, and
  the state of -E vs. -Ey, will be reversed. In other words, if I am
  viewing the -Z -X horizon chart, and I want to see the -Z0 -X sky
  graphic, then I press '0' to go to it. Similarly, this key will flip
  me back and forth between the -XW simple rectangular world map
  display and the -XW0 Mollewide projection graphic, as well as the -E
  monthly ephemeris and the -Ey yearly ephemeris. A bit of a hack, but
  useful, and the only way to change these suboptions while the program
  is running.

Press 'F' to toggle between world and constellation map modes.

  This key toggles on the constellation charts where the map and globe
  modes show the celestial sphere instead of the Earth's continents.
  See the -XF switch which affects the same setting for complete info.

Press 'F1'..'F12' [plus Shift,Ctrl,Alt] to run macros 1..48.

  For PC's, pressing the function keys F1 through F12 will execute
  macros when graphics are being displayed. Pressing F1 through F12
  will run macros 1 through 12. Pressing Shift+F1 through Shift+F12
  will run macros 13 through 24. Control+F1 through Control+F12 will
  run macros 25 through 36. Finally Alt+F1 through Alt+F12 will run
  macros 37 through 48. Executing a macro that hasn't been defined yet
  (either with a function key or the -M switch) will do nothing.

Press 'space' to force update of current graphics display.

  When a graphics chart is up on the screen, pressing the space bar
  will force a redraw of the chart. This is useful for say to cleanup
  after one has scribbled on it with the mouse button features
  (described below).

Press 'del' to clear the graphics screen and not redraw.

  Pressing the delete key when a graphics screen is up will clear the
  screen, but not redraw the chart right away unless animation mode is
  on. This is most useful for the -Xj "timed exposure" streaks in
  horizon and orbit charts if you want to start a new "jet trail" while
  animating.

Press 'tab' to toggle between graphics resolutions.

  This feature is only available on PC systems. See PC graphics section
  for its description.

Press 'enter' to input a command line of general switches.

  Pressing the return key when a graphics screen is up will pause and
  prompt you for a command line. This command line will be processed
  after which you will be returned back to the graphics state you left,
  allowing the changing on the fly of any setting that isn't already
  covered by pressing whatever key, without having to drop all the way
  back to a -Q loop or out of the program altogether. This can be used
  to redisplay the -H switch list too. (There are a couple of rare
  things you can't do in the middle of graphics, e.g. you aren't
  allowed to suddenly switch to one of the graphics file modes.)

Press 'q' to terminate the window and program.

  Pressing this key will exit graphics mode or terminate the window
  (and leave the Astrolog program itself.)

--

Left   mouse button: Draw line strokes on chart in window.
Middle mouse button: Print coordinates of pointer on world map.
Right  mouse button: Terminate the window and program.

  Mouse buttons: Pressing the mouse buttons in the X Windows (or on the
  screen for PC's) will do various functions. The left mouse button
  acts as a pen that allows one to actually draw on the chart: press it
  and drag the pointer to draw a line on the window - good for aiding
  in analysis or in presentations. (Any scribbles one makes will
  disappear the next time the chart window is updated, therefore this
  drawing is disabled in animation mode.) The middle mouse button
  (right button for PC's) will only work when the world map is shown,
  i.e. in the -L astro-graph or -XW world map displays: press it and
  get the approximate longitude and latitude of the place on the map
  where the pointer is, printed in the main window (or have the current
  chart's location set to this for PC's). For the four scale sizes of
  100, 200, 300, and 400 percent, the accuracy is to the nearest
  degree, 30 minutes, 20', and 15', respectively. So, if you want to
  cast a chart for southern Madagascar, Africa, but don't know the
  coordinates, click the middle button on the map for a good
  approximation! Finally, the right button (middle button if any for
  PC's) acts just like the 'q' key, and will terminate the program.

  Note that for X Windows, pressing the middle mouse button when a
  world map is up, in addition to displaying the longitude and latitude
  of the point clicked on in the parent window, will also set the
  current chart location to this point. This makes an easy interface
  for doing chart relocation! Say you want to relocate your natal chart
  to Tokyo, Japan. Just bring up your chart in graphics mode, press 'W'
  to switch to the world map display, click middle button on Japan,
  then return to the wheel chart and there your chart is, as if you had
  been born at the same time but in Tokyo.

  Control keys: Certain control keys can be pressed when a graphics
  chart is up to set the color of the "pen" one can scribble on the
  chart with using the left mouse button. (Who knows, maybe Astrolog
  will contain a full featured drawing program someday. ;) Usually, the
  scribbles are always in the gray highlight color. However, sixteen
  control keys can be pressed to change the pen to sixteen different
  colors, which are defined as follows: Ctrl-A is White, Ctrl-Z is
  Black, Ctrl-R is Red, Ctrl-G is Green, Ctrl-B is blue, Ctrl-Y is
  Yellow, Ctrl-O is Orange, Ctrl-L is Light gray, Ctrl-D is Dark gray,
  Ctrl-V is Magenta (Valentine pink), Ctrl-U is Purple (pUrple), Ctrl-E
  is Maroon (Dark red, next to 'R' on keyboard), Ctrl-F is Dark Green
  (Forest green, next to 'G' on keyboard), Ctrl-N is Dark Blue (Navy
  blue, next to 'B' on keyboard), Ctrl-J is Cyan, Ctrl-K is Dark Cyan
  (Next to 'J' on keyboard).


*******************************
DATA ENTRY AND THE MAIN DISPLAY
*******************************

     The main part of the program is executed simply by entering
"astrolog" (assuming that's the name of the executable), and the
program will ask you for all the birth info and will give the
planet/house positions. For example, for a chart in Seattle at the
Fall Equinox (for September 22rd, 1994 AD at 11:19pm Pacific Daylight
Time, 7 hours before GMT) for the ten prompts one would enter: Sep,
22, 1994, 11:19pm, PT, Y, 122W20, 47N36, Fall Equinox, Seattle, WA.
The program then calculates and displays the positions of all
planets, Chiron, the four main asteroids, as well as items like North
Node of the Moon, Lilith or the South Node, the Part of Fortune, the
Vertex, and the East Point. (The Uranian bodies and fixed stars can
also be listed if one includes the appropriate command switches
described earlier.)

     Two of the chart info fields interactively prompted for above
are general text fields for the person's name or chart title, and the
name of the city or location the chart is cast for. When set the
contents of these fields will be displayed in the various charts,
such as the -v listing, the -w text wheel, and in the graphic wheel
chart sidebars. (You can prevent these two fields from being prompted
for by setting the -Yo old style info switch described earlier.)

--

     The user interface where one manually inputs the chart
information is "smart" in various ways, as many of the chart info
fields may be entered in several formats and be parsed correctly:

     Months may be entered as numbers from 1 to 12 or as their true
names. Case doesn't matter, and month names may be abbreviated to
their first three letters.

     Year values may be entered with an optional "BC" or "AD" suffix.
(Periods may be interspersed, e.g. "b.c." is allowed.)  Years BC may
also be entered as negative years, but if you do this note that you
have to add one to the negative number since there's no formal year 0
BC or 0 AD, e.g. since 1BC is followed by 1AD, specifying "5BC" would
be the number "-4".

     Time values may be entered with a "pm" or "am" (or just "p" and
"a") suffix (periods may be interspersed), or in the standard 24 hour
clock. The separator between hours and minutes may be a colon or a
decimal point. For example, 6:30pm may be entered as "18:30",
"6:30pm", or even "6.3p". 12:30am may be entered as "12.30a.m.",
"0:30", and so on.

     Time zones may be entered as strings in the format "UToffset",
where offset is a signed number. A positive sign indicates hours
ahead of UT (Universal Time, formerly known as GMT). This follows
the international standard for time zone designation. For many time
zones there are frequently used American abbreviations. Listed for
each of these zones is its official American name, its abbreviation,
its international designation, and finally its standard meridian.

  Hawaiian Standard Time   HST  HT  H   UT-10:30   157.5W
  Central Alaska Time      CAT          UT-10      150  W
  Alaska Hawaii Standard   AHS          UT-10      150  W
  Hawaiian Daylight Time   HDT          UT-9:30    157.5W
  Alaska Hawaii Daylight   AHD          UT-9       150  W
  Yukon Standard Time      YST  YT  Y   UT-9       135  W
  Yukon Daylight Time      YDT          UT-8       135  W
  Pacific Standard Time    PST  PT  P   UT-8       120  W
  Pacific Daylight Time    PDT          UT-7       120  W
  Pacific War Time         PWT          UT-7       120  W
  Mountain Standard Time   MST  MT  M   UT-7       105  W
  Mountain Daylight Time   MDT          UT-6       105  W
  Mountain War Time        MWT          UT-6       105  W
  Central Standard Time    CST  CT  C   UT-6        90  W
  Central Daylight Time    CDT          UT-5        90  W
  Central War Time         CWT          UT-5        90  W
  Eastern Standard Time    EST  ET  E   UT-5        75  W
  Eastern Daylight Time    EDT          UT-4        75  W
  Eastern War Time         EWT          UT-4        75  W
  Atlantic Standard Time   AST  AT  A   UT-4        60  W
  Atlantic Daylight Time   ADT          UT-3        60  W
  Atlantic War Time        AWT          UT-3        60  W
  Brazil Standard Time     BST  BT  B   UT-3        45  W
  Brazil Daylight Time     BDT          UT-2        45  W
  West Africa Time         WAT          UT-1        15  W
  Greenwich Mean Time      GMT  GT  G   UT           0
  Western European Time    WET          UT           0
  Central European Time    CET          UT+1        15  E
  Eastern European Time    EET          UT+2        30  E
  Russia Zone 3            UZ3          UT+4        60  E
  Russia Zone 4            UZ4          UT+5        75  E
  Indian Standard Time     IST  IT  I   UT+5:30     82.5E
  Russia Zone 5            UZ5          UT+6        90  E
  North Sumatra Time       NST          UT+6:30     97.5E
  South Sumatra Time       SST          UT+7       105  E
  China Coast Time         CCT          UT+8       120  E
  Japan Standard Time      JST  JT  J   UT+9       135  E
  South Australian Time    SAS          UT+9:30    142.5E
  Guam Standard Time       GST          UT+10      150  E
  Russia Zone 1            UZ1          UT+11      165  E
  New Zealand Time         NZT  ZT  Z   UT+11:30   172.5E
  International Date Line  IDL          UT+12      180  E
  Local Mean Time          LMT  LT  L   LT         Varies

     Note: The special time zone setting "LT" allows one to do
charts for times given in Local Mean Time. When encountered, the
actual time zone setting will be set just so, doing the "subtract
four minutes for every degree west of the time zone's standard
meridian" arithmetic, to make it work.

     Longitude and latitude locations may be entered in the standard
<degree><direction><minute> notation, e.g. "122W20" or "33S52". The
direction specifier may also be put at the end of the string, with a
colon separator between degrees and minutes, e.g. "122:20W". The
direction character may also be left off altogether in which case
positive values indicate western and northern locations and negative
eastern and southern, e.g. "-33:52".

     Note: One may enter seconds for times (and locations) as
fractional minutes by including more than two digits for the minute
after the decimal or colon separator. For example, "122:205" will be
treated as 122 degrees and 20.5 minutes west. To specify the time of
4:05am and 45 seconds, enter the time as "4:0575am".

     Astrolog deals with the switchover from the Julian to the
present Gregorian calendar system when accepting input and printing
output. The calendar system changed (at least in Europe) from the
Julian to the Gregorian calendar in 1582 when October 4th was
followed the next day by October 15th. Throughout the program
Astrolog uses the Julian Calendar for date and leap year
specification for dates before 1582-10-4 and the Gregorian after. It
will properly handle the change even in the middle of months in
charts, e.g. in -K calendar charts, -E ephemeris charts, -dm aspect
search charts, and graphics animations, ten days will be skipped in
October 1582.

--

     When the standard list of planetary positions is displayed, some
additional pieces of information are shown along with the planetary
locations: Whether or not each planet is in its ruling sign, or fall,
as well as the same information for houses, is shown. Planets in
their exalted and debilitated signs and houses are noted too. In
addition to the (R) indicating a planet in its ruling sign, and an
(F) for a planet in its fall, we have (e) if a planet is in its
exalting sign, and a (d) for a planet in its debilitating sign (which
is always opposite the exaltation, as how the fall is opposite the
ruler). An element table indicating the sum of the signs in each
element and mode and their totals is displayed in a grid form too.

     Also in this main display, the total number of planets in each
of the hemispheres of the wheel, as well the number of objects in
yang/positive/masculine and yin/negative/feminine quality signs, are
counted. To the right of the element table, we have a column of
seven numbers labeled as follows: "+" is the number of "yang" objects
(i.e. in Fire or Air signs); "-" is the number of "yin" objects (i.e.
in Water or Earth signs); "M" is the number of objects above the
horizon (i.e. in the "Southern" hemisphere of the Midheaven); "N" is
the number of objects below the horizon (in the "Northern" hemisphere
of the Nadir); "A" is the number of objects in the Eastern half of
the sky (in the hemisphere of the Ascendant); and "D" is the number
of objects in the Western half of the sky (in the hemisphere of the
Descendant). Note that cusp objects are left out of hemisphere
counts (but still included in the other object summaries) as they
would skew things since they are always in a particular hemisphere.
Finally we have a field indicating the division of objects into the
first six and second six signs of the zodiac. The number of objects
in the first six signs of the zodiac will be printed, labeled by the
character "<". (The number in the second half isn't printed; just
subtract from the total if you want to know.) According to a book on
the Kaballah, the emphasis of the first six signs on the zodiac is on
"what's to learn", and the emphasis on the second six signs is on
"what's to share". Use or interpret this as you wish.

     I have taken the liberty to define ruling and exalting signs for
the asteroids (and the rest of the first twenty objects that don't
already have them.) This won't affect much other than whether a 'R',
'F', 'e', or 'd' is displayed in the -v charts, but it will slightly
affect the powers given to these objects in the -j influence chart
since they can be in their ruling sign, etc. The -HO object list will
display the list of ruling and exalting signs (and the fall and
debilitating signs which are just opposite the above) for all these
objects in addition to the planets; however, I have listed them below:

     Chiron, the compassionate, experienced healer, is most similar
in function to Pisces, hence Chiron rules here. Chiron expresses well
in caring, feeling, Cancer, hence Chiron exalts here. Ceres, goddess
of agriculture and representing the mothering, reproductive instinct,
is similar in function to Taurus, hence Ceres rules here. Ceres
expresses well in the nurturing, caring, sign of Cancer, hence Ceres
exalts here. Pallas Athena, mentally acute and unemotional, is most
similar in function to Virgo, hence Pallas rules here. Pallas
expresses well in practical, disciplined, introverted Capricorn,
hence Pallas exalts here. Juno, ability to sacrifice self-interests
to maintain a relationship, is most similar in function to
relationship oriented Libra, hence Juno rules here. Juno expresses
well in sociable, crowd pleasing Leo, hence Juno exalts here. Vesta,
with its orientation to directing hidden creative or sexual energy
without fear, is most similar in function to Scorpio, hence Vesta
rules here. Vesta expresses well in individualistic, quirky Aquarius,
hence Vesta exalts here.

     The North Node, with its emphasis on being able to break from
the past routine and pursue the unfamiliar and personal growth, is
most similar in function to society questioning independent Aquarius,
hence it rules here. The Node expresses well in growth and sacrifice
oriented Virgo, hence the Node exalts here. The South Node's ruling
and exalting signs are set to be respectively Leo and Pisces, i.e.
the opposite of the North Node's. The Part of Fortune is calculated
based on the positions of the Sun, Moon, and Ascendant; if these
three objects are in their ruling signs, then the Fortune will fall
in Pisces, hence the Fortune should rule here. Similarly, if the Sun,
Moon, and Ascendant are all in their exalting signs, then the Fortune
will fall in Aquarius, hence the Fortune should exalt here. The
Vertex, being always near the Descendant, corresponds to Libra, and
hence has the same rulership and exaltation as Venus: Libra and
Pisces. The East Point, being always near the Ascendant, corresponds
to Mars, and hence has the same rulership and exaltation as Mars:
Aries and Capricorn. Lilith has the rulership of Scorpio and
exaltation in Pisces. House cusps and angles rule the sign
corresponding to them, e.g. Aries for the Ascendant, Taurus for the
2nd Cusp, and so on. House cusp objects exalt in the next sign of the
same element beyond the one they rule, e.g. Aries exalts in Leo.

     Each uranian also has been assigned its own ruling and exalting
sign, meaning uranians in their rulership, etc, will be flagged as
such and have more or less influence and so on. I also came up with
these myself and used the interpretation strings to decide what the
most appropriate signs are. If you prefer other signs or no sign at
all for any of the rulerships, you can easily change them using the
-YJ switch described elsewhere. Specifically, Cupido rules Libra and
exalts in Gemini, Hades rules Scorpio and exalts in Virgo, Zeus rules
Leo and exalts in Aries, Kronos rules Capricorn and exalts in
Sagittarius, Apollon rules Sagittarius and exalts in Aquarius,
Admetos rules Virgo and exalts in Scorpio, Vulkanus rules Aries and
exalts in Leo, and finally Poseidon rules Sagittarius and exalts in
Pisces.

     The standard chart listing of the planetary positions will also
include an additional field for the "velocity" of each planet. This
velocity value approximates how fast the planet is moving through the
zodiac with respect to the Earth (or whatever the central body is set
to) in degrees per day. This value of course, goes negative when a
planet goes retrograde. This is useful not only to get a feel for how
fast each planet moves through the zodiac, but to determine when a
planet is about to go retrograde or direct - the value approaches
zero when the planet changes direction.


**********************************************
FILES, DATA DEFAULTS, AND COMPILE TIME OPTIONS
**********************************************

     Astrolog includes the ability to search an input file for
various default settings to use in the program. This allows one to
easily change major defaults without having to recompile the program,
which is useful if, say, one receives a compiled executable from a
friend who has a different configuration. The program looks for the
file "astrolog.cfg" in the current directory, and if not there, looks
for it in the default directory (and in directories indicated by
environment variables if set). Parameters in this file will override
any defaults compiled into the program, although the highest priority
is still given to the command line options. Note one doesn't *have*
to have this file in order to run the program - if not found Astrolog
will still run as before using compile time defaults.

--

     As of Astrolog version 4.20, all files are a series of command
switches that indicate the contents of the file and set the
appropriate things when executed. This is very powerful, extendable,
and general. Astrolog still has the ability to read and write the old
chart formats. This affects -o chart info files, -o0 chart position
files, and the astrolog.cfg config file. In a sense there is no
difference between the three formats, just they are generated or read
in for different situations. Whenever any chart is read in, Astrolog
simply reads in the file a line at a time and processes the switches
as if they were on the command line or entered in a -Q loop.

     The astrolog.cfg config file is one of the files that is a
series of command lines. This change makes the astrolog.cfg file much
more powerful and versatile than it would be otherwise. The file is
not in a fixed format with fields that have to be in a certain order.
You can move lines around, add as many lines as you want, or take
lines out without problem. These config files shouldn't become out of
date in future versions of the program either. Incompatibilities will
only arise if the syntax of a switch changes, and even then it's
obvious as to the small correction that needs to be made. It's
important to remember that any switch can be put in the astrolog.cfg
file. For example, you can change the default behavior of the program
when invoked without any switches, by say putting "-n" in it, to make
the program always display the chart for now unless you specify
otherwise. You may want to put "-C" in it if you want the house cusps
to always be included in transit and other charts. If you are always
doing graphics charts, you can put "-X" in there somewhere so you
don't have to put it on the command line. Long or complicated
switches like new planet definitions, and color customizations, are
good candidates to put in astrolog.cfg so they don't have to be
retyped all the time.

     The file as generated with the -o switch is also just a couple
of command lines to set the chart information appropriately. (Before
version 4.20, the older file format hadn't changed a bit since files
where first introduced in version 1.20!) Note that you can manually
add additional switches to any chart info file, to have per chart
settings. For example, if you are always displaying a particular
natal chart's aspect grid, you can put a "-g" in that particular file
so you don't have to include -g on the actual command line with the
"-i file". (Or you can put the "-g" in the astrolog.cfg file and have
all charts come up by default in the aspect grid instead of the -v
listing.) Note also that the -i switch is technically a generic
command file reader. You can read any switch file with -i, and even
reload the astrolog.cfg defaults with a line such as "-i astrolog.cfg".

     Since -i will read in and process any command file, you can make
your own arbitrary command files and read them in whenever you want.
You aren't limited to modifying just chart info files and
astrolog.cfg. Say you like to use a narrower set of orbs for
transits. You can make a special file that just sets a bunch of orbs
using the -A switches, and then read it in via "-i narroworbfile" and
combine it with -t or whatever. Note that command files can even
process other command files inside of them. Remember that
astrolog.cfg is just a special command file; the program basically
just does a "-i astrolog.cfg" internally on startup.

     -@ switch: All Astrolog switch files have to begin with the '@'
character, which identifies them as such. The switch files as
generated with -o and -o0, and the default astrolog.cfg file, have a
couple numbers immediately following their '@' which indicate the
file type and version, included for potential backward compatibility
issues in the future. (For those interested, the first two digits
indicate file type, where "01" is a -o chart info file, "02" is a -o0
chart position file, and "03" is a configuration file like
astrolog.cfg. The second two digits indicate file version: Chart info
files are "0102", because version 1 of a chart info file was the
pre-version 4.20 form. Chart position files are "0203" because
version 2 was the pre-version 4.20 form, and version 1 was the
pre-version 3.10 form of the old format. The astrolog.cfg file is
"0308" because versions 1..7 were all the different old fixed field
versions of this dating back to when the config file was first
introduced.) Note that the '@' happens to technically be a switch
too, but is only dealt with internally by the program. If you make
any of your own command files to read in with -i, just be sure there
is a '@' character (better yet the sequence of characters "@0308" to
be like the default astrolog.cfg) at its very beginning and
everything will work.

     Chart position files as generated with the -o0 switch are much
improved over the format used in versions 4.10 and before. The zodiac
positions have an extra two digits of precision and the declinations
have an extra one digit. The newer files include the velocity of the
planet and its distance from the sun, so applying vs. separating
aspects and -S orbit charts work perfectly. (Before the data would be
lost.) These files may also include star positions unlike before, and
are more complete with respect to house cusps. The actual house array
is kept separate from the cusp object indexes, meaning that one for
example can reload charts in the Equal house system that disassociate
the Midheaven from the 10th cusp and remember both positions, and
even save a -r synastry chart with -o0 and remember both sets of
house cusps on reload.

     -YF switch: As -o0 position files are a series of command lines,
there is a switch to set the actual positions of a planet. This is
the -YF switch which takes eight parameters, which are: the index of
the object to set the positions of, the degree within the sign of its
position, the zodiac sign of its position, the minute within the
degree of its position, the degree of its ecliptic declination, the
minute within the degree of the declination (which should always be
positive, e.g. for a declination of -10.5 degrees, the parameters
would be -10 and 30), the velocity in degrees per day (positive is
direct motion, negative retrograde), and finally the distance from
the Sun or central body in AU. This switch shouldn't really be used
outside of -o0 files as it causes the chart to be assumed to have no
time or space, but is described here for completeness. Note that
another advantage to the newer -o0 files is that you can again add
other switches to them (e.g. "-s" to indicate if it's a position file
for a tropical or sidereal zodiac chart), and rearrange or delete
lines without problem, unlike the older -o0 files which required all
the planets and in a fixed order.

     Here's an example of one of the switch based command files,
specifically a chart info file with the newer name, city, and
Daylight fields in it. This is much easier to understand and modify
than older files, and is the info for my own natal chart consisting
of the three lines below:

@0102  ; Astrolog for OS/2 chart info.
/qb Apr 10 1971 20:28 ST -1:00 12:01E 57:39N =
/zi "Magnus Olsson" "Mölndal (Sverige)"

--

     Astrolog for OS/2 will always look for chart files, its
configuration file, and ephemeris files in the current directory and
default directories set at compile time. In addition the user can set
an environment variable named "ASTROLOG" to point to an alternative
directory. This environment variable can be set from the OS/2 command
line with a command such as "set ASTROLOG=E:\PROGRAMS\ASTROLOG\CHARTS".
This command can be put in your CONFIG.SYS file to remain persistent.
Specifically, when Astrolog searches for a file, it will look in the
following directories, in order: The current directory, the ASTROLOG
environment variable directory, and finally the compile time default
directory.


*****************************************
DESCRIPTION OF X WINDOW GRAPHICS FEATURES
*****************************************

     One of the most impressive features of Astrolog are its graphics
features available for X windows, which are generally accessed in the
program via the -X switch and derivatives of it on the command line.
There are seven different types of chart displays: A standard graphic
display of a wheel chart in a window (with glyphs, aspects in the
center, etc), graphic displays of the Astro-graph charts (which look
almost identical to the Astro*Carto*Graphy maps from Jim Lewis)
complete with all the labeled lines drawn on a map of the world (like
the -L option), aspect/midpoint grids showing the aspects and orbs in
effect between every body in a chart (like -g option), a local sky
chart showing where each planet is located on a map of the local
horizon area (as in -Z), a space chart showing an aerial view of the
solar system (as in -S), a dispositor graph chart showing planetary
rulership chains (accessed with -j), and a graphic ephemeris plotting
position vs. time (as in -E), in addition to non-astrological charts
such as calendar (-K) graphics. The X wheel and aspect grid charts can
also displayed in a different manner to accommodate relationship
comparison charts showing two sets of planets at once. There are also
other commands that can be given to the window once it is up and
running, which can do other things, such as continually update the
window every few seconds to the current status (i.e. an extended
version of the -n option) as well as other forms of animation.

     Probably the only thing more impressive than the graphics
features are the graphics features displayed on color monitors.
(Charts displayed in color are *much* more eye catching than the
monochrome ones, in my opinion.) Here is how the colors have been
assigned for the various charts: Four colors have been allocated for
the four elements - Fire = Yellos, Earth = Green, Air = White, Water =
Blue. The various sign glyphs (and the corresponding house labels)
are in the color of their element. Planets are in the color of the
sign of their main ruler. Chiron and the four asteroids are Pink,
while the north node, and other non-physical objects like the fortune
and vertex are Blue Grey. Representations of the Ascendant/
Descendant/ Midheaven/ Nadir (in the astro-graph map lines and
elsewhere) are in the element color of the corresponding sign/house
that the angular lines refer to, i.e. Ascendant = Yellow, Midheaven =
Green, Descendant = White, Nadir = Blue. A few extra things have been
added for color wheel charts only: dark gray lines marking off each
house (in addition to the main lines on the horizon and meridian),
and each degree instead of every 5th degree being marked in dark gray
on the outer circle (every 5th degree being white). Aspects lines are
colored too, as follows: Conjunctions = Yellow, Sextiles = Light
Green, Squares = Red, Trines = Dark Green, Oppositions = Blue,
Quincunxes = Dark Blue, Semisextiles = Orange. For aspects not
matching the Zodiac we have Semisquares/Sesquiquadratures = Orange,
(Bi/Semi)Quintiles = Blue Grey, (Bi/Tri)Septiles = Maroon,
(Bi/Quatro)Noviles = Violet.

     For color terminals, the -XG globe display and -XW world map
display are done with the continents in different colors, also making
them look much better than monochrome maps. Each of the seven
continents is in a different color of the rainbow, and the colors are
chosen to correspond to the appropriate chakra (etheric energy vortex
along the human spine) that goes with each land mass. They are:
Africa - red - Root chakra, Australia - orange - Navel chakra, South
America - yellow - Solar plexus chakra, North America - green - Heart
chakra, Europe - blue - Throat chakra, Asia - indigo - Third Eye
chakra, Antarctica - violet - Crown chakra. Major lakes are colored
navy blue, of course.

--

-v -X: The graphic wheel charts have their graphic information
organized as follows: There's an outer circle showing the signs and
sign glyphs, inside of which is a smaller circle divided up into 5
degree increments to make determining exact degrees easier. Inside of
this is a circle divided up into the 12 houses labeled with numbers.
The entire chart is divided by two dashed lines through the
Ascendant/Descendant (which is always horizontal of course) and the
Midheaven/Nadir. Inside the house circle are the planet glyphs in
their appropriate positions. Small pointer lines run from each glyph
to just before single dots. These dots indicate the precise locations
in the zodiac of each object. The pointer lines (which are dashed if
the object is retrograde and solid otherwise) are necessary so as not
to have to draw planet glyphs on top of one another when planets are
conjunct. Inside the ring of the single dots, are the aspect lines
connecting these positions. Since the default number of aspects to
use is just the 5 majors, one can determine which aspect is in place
just by looking at the aspect line. The accuracy of the aspect is
determined by the dashedness of the line: A solid line means the orb
is < 2 degrees; a dashed line means the orb is 2 to 4 degrees; a
really dashed line mean the orb is 4 to 6 degrees, and so on.

-v0 -X: Astrolog's wheel charts will be labeled more extensively than
just having the chart header information displayed at the bottom of
the graphic like in other chart modes. The wheels will include full
information on time, place, the chart's name and city fields if
defined, house system, zodiac, central planet, element table info
(including the count of objects in angular, succeedent, and cadent
houses, and the count of objects in the first six "learning" signs
and the last six "sharing" signs), as well as the actual positions of
house cusps and planets as displayed in the wheel. All this
information is in a "sidebar" to the right of the wheel which
includes a listing not unlike the -v text chart. (Note that the size
of this sidebar is such that for the default 480x480 pixel chart
size, including the sidebar will make it 640x480, which perfectly
fills a VGA PC screen.)  If you want a simpler style wheel with just
the chart information at the bottom of the graphic, set the -v0 flag,
as in "-v0 -X" instead of "-v -X" or just "-X".

-w -X: A different way of formatting the graphical wheel charts
described above is available by combining the -w switch with -X.
Normally all of Astrolog's wheel charts are such that each zodiac
sign is the same size. Due to different house sizes in most systems
however, this makes the houses appear different sizes on the wheel,
so that the Midheaven won't be the exact top of the chart for
instance. Some users may instead prefer "house oriented" as opposed
to sign oriented wheel charts. Astrolog, with the -w -X combination,
will make each house be the same size on the screen, and will
compress or expand the signs instead (of course this means that such
things as exact squares may not be between objects exactly 90 degrees
apart on the circle any more). When graphics are displayed on the
screen, the '0' key will toggle between the two forms of wheel chart.

-L -X: The graphical astro-graph charts are organized as follows: A
map of the world is shown. The edges of the map are labeled with
ruler lines that are 5 degrees apart (with longer ruler lines for
more important longitudes and latitudes, like those that are
multiples of 10, 30, etc.) The equator is labeled with a dashed line.
The polar regions of the world aren't shown; the map shown ranges
from 60 degrees S latitude to 75 degrees N latitude. Note that each
pixel on the screen represents exactly one half a degree on the
world. (For -Xs 100 the ratio is one pixel to one degree, and for -Xs
400 the ratio is one pixel to 1/4 degree.) On this map are drawn the
lines indicating where on the world the various planets are angular
at the time in question. (Note: you might want to -R restrict some
objects because otherwise the map tends to get pretty cluttered with
lines.) As expected, Midheaven and Nadir lines are vertical, and the
Ascendant and Descendant lines are curved. Little square boxes on the
Midheaven lines indicate the exact zenith latitude location. Each
line is labeled at the top or the bottom of the screen, showing what
planet is in question and (sometimes) what angle is in question. All
Ascendant and Midheaven lines are labeled at the bottom of the
screen, and all Descendant and Nadir lines are labeled at the top.
Each line goes a bit beyond to the top or bottom of the world map,
and then another pointer segment (which is again dashed of the object
in question is retrograde) goes and points to the planet glyph. The
glyph for the Ascendant or Midheaven is under each of the glyphs at
the bottom of the screen, explicitly indicating whether the line is
an Ascendant or Midheaven line. At the top of the screen, however,
there are only the glyphs, but one can still determine whether these
lines are Descendant or Nadir lines based on whether they are curved
or not. Note that not all the Descendant lines are labeled; this is
because some of the Ascendant/Descendant lines actually connect near
the top of the screen and don't actually cross it. This graphic
astro-graph chart will display a small purple dot at the precise
point on the world map for which the chart in question is being
generated. This is useful to help see how close the various planetary
lines are to you, if you live in the middle of the continent or
someplace not easily determinable on the compact map of the world.

-L0 -X: Graphic astro-graph charts will be done slightly differently
if done by combining -L0 with -X. A thin horizontal line will be
drawn all across the map of the world at the latitude of the chart in
question. Normally, there's only a small dot at the precise location.
In astro-graph charts, intersections between lines anywhere at the
same latitude of a natal chart, even if any number of degrees away
longitudinally, will affect the person, in the same way but not as
stong as if they are directly under the instersection itself. This
small chart modification can make finding such intersections easier
in the graphics chart, just as -L0 for text charts actually lists the
latitudes of all crossings.

-g -X: Aspect grid graphics with the appropriate aspect glyphs can be
displayed by combining the -g option with the -X option (astrolog -g
-X). Both the split aspect/midpoint grids labeled down the diagonal,
as well as the relationship aspect grids between two charts (astrolog
-r <file1> <file2> -g -X) are supported. The aspects glyphs, objects,
and the signs in the grids are in their colors as defined earlier.
Like the astro-graph windows, these charts can't be resized in the
normal way unless one uses the '>' and '<' keys. For anything less
than the larger scale sizes (achieved with the switch -Xs 300, or by
pressing '>' within a window) all that will be displayed in each
aspect grid cell is the glyphs of the aspect in effect, the planet
being aspected, or the sign of the midpoint. However, once the
largest scale size is reached, there is room in each cell to display
the aspect orb to the nearest minute off of exact (with a plus or
minus sign indicating whether the actual angle is slightly greater
than or less than exact, or an 'a' or 's' if applying vs. separating
orbs are to be shown instead); the degree and minute in addition to
the sign for midpoints; and the degree and sign location for each
planet that's in the grid, as with the -g text charts.

-m -X: Combining the -m switch with -X will have the same result as
-g with -X, since the aspect grid shows both aspects and midpoints
separated by the grid diagonal. However, doing a relationship
midpoint chart (-r0 -m -X) will result in the relationship aspect
grid coming up but showing the midpoints instead of aspects, as
desired. The -r0 -m -X switch combination implicitly does the results
of the -g0 switch, which for relationship charts puts midpoints
instead of aspects in the grid.

-Z -X: The -Z local horizon feature can be displayed in an X window
as well (e.g. astrolog -Z -X), in which all the planets will be
displayed in a window depicting the sky. The small dot above or below
each glyph indicates exactly where each planet is. (Some of the
glyphs may be overlapping, although the program tries to cut down on
this.) There is a horizontal line dividing the window representing
the local horizon; planets above this line are visible, while planets
below it are set. There are three vertical lines dividing the window
as well: The middle line represents the due south direction, the one
to the left is due east, the one to the right is due west, and the
edges of the window are due north. (These directions are labeled in
the borders of the chart.) Like the standard chart display, this
window or graphic may be resized to any proportion. At any time one
can press the 'Z' key when a graphic is up to enter this display type
in that window.

-Z0 -X: An additional graphics chart is available through the -Z0
switch: local horizon charts suitable for stargazing. As we know, the
normal -Z switch generates a listing of the planets with respect to
the local horizon, and the -Z combined with the -X switch generates a
graphic image of the planets and stars on the local horizon. This
chart assumes one is facing due south, and is divided left to right
by the horizon line, with straight up being toward the top of the
screen and straight down toward the bottom. This is a good chart,
especially for noticing the rising and setting of planets and other
objects, but the fact that the meridian is split up causes distortion
when trying to view objects high up in the sky. Therefore, if one
combines this -Z0 switch with the -X switch, a differently oriented
local horizon chart will be displayed. Here, the zenith point
straight up is in the center of the screen, and the horizon line is a
surrounding circle. Due north is along the line from the center to
the top of the screen, due south is on the line from the center to
the bottom, east is to the left, and west is to the right. In other
words, this is just like what one would see if they were lying on
their back looking straight up with their feet to the south, so this
should be better for stargazing. Outside the circle marks what's
below the horizon, and the extreme corners of the screen mark the
nadir - what's straight down. As with the normal -Z graphic chart,
this one has the various axes marked at five degree increments.

-S -X: The -S switch can be combined with -X to give a graphics chart
of the solar system. This will be displayed as an aerial view of the
entire solar system, with 0 degrees Aries to the left of the screen,
0 degrees Cancer to the bottom, etc. Note that this chart includes
all possible planets, including the Earth (whose glyph is a cross
inside a circle). Whatever object is chosen to be the central body is
at the center of the screen, with all the others around it. This is a
fun chart to animate - watch the planets go around the Sun, and *see*
how they turn retrograde with respect to the Earth. In addition to
the bodies themselves, twelve spokes are drawn from the center body
to the edge of the screen, which delineate the zodiac with respect to
it. Note that the scale of the solar system is large; attempting to
fit all the planets out to Pluto on the screen at once will cause all
the inner planets to be crammed together near the middle of the
screen. To deal with this, the scale size as indicated with the -Xs
switch and the '<' and '>' keys will affect how much of the solar
system is viewed at once (in addition to the glyph sizes). For a
scale size of 400, the viewing region will have a radius of 1 AU
(just enough to cover out to the Earth's orbit). For a scale size of
300, the viewport will have a radius of 6 AU (about out to the orbit
of Jupiter; useful for viewing the inner planets). For a scale size
of 200 (default), it will have a radius of 30 AU (enough to include
Neptune, and Pluto most of the time). Finally, a scale size of 100
will result in a radius of 90 AU, enough to easily include the entire
solar system, as well as the orbits of the hypothetical Uranian
bodies beyond Pluto. Note that this chart (and its text version as
well) will usually leave the Earth's Moon out. The -b extended
Placalc formulas are required to be in effect (as well as either the
Sun or Earth being the central body) in order for the Moon to be able
to appear. At a 400% scale zoom with the Moon included as well, one
can actually get a feel for the relative distance of the Sun from the
Earth and the Moon from the Earth, although the chart will have to be
over 1000 pixels wide for the Moon to even appear one pixel away from
the Earth at all!

-l -X: The Gauquelin sector chart may be displayed in graphical form
by combining the -l switch with -X, where the 36 sectors will be
arranged in a wheel, with chart header info displayed at the bottom
or in a sidebar as with regular wheels. Each planet will be plotted
at its appropriate sector location, with plus zone sectors labeled in
red and minus in dark green, and aspects will be indicated in the
middle of the wheel. This chart also has the plus or minus zone
status of each sector indicated by a small plus or minus sign around
the outside border of the wheel.

-j -X: Graphic dispositor charts are available by combining the -j
influence switch with -X. This is a another graphics chart format
that can also be switched to whenever screen graphics are up by
pressing the 'J' key. The dispositor of a planet is the planet that
rules the sign it's located in. For example, if you have Venus in
Aries, the dispositor for your Venus is Mars. A graph can be made
showing an arrow from each planet to its dispositor. A final
dispositor is a planet who is its own dispositor, i.e. in its ruling
sign with no arrows pointing away from it. There can also be two
planets in what's called mutual reception (or a reception loop of
more than two) if they are each other's dispositor, e.g. Venus in
Aries and Mars in Libra. Astrolog's dispositor chart will show four
subgraphs, one in each quadrant. Both a sign dispositor graph, as
described above, and a house dispositor graph, where each planet is
linked to the planet ruling the house it's in, are shown. In
addition, both types have the same information displayed in two
different useful formats: a wheel with the planets around the
perimeter, and in a hierarchy with final dispositors at the top and
the other planets stacked based on how many levels they are from
final ones. Final dispositors are circled in white, while those in
reception loops are circled in gray, and dispositor arrows within the
top level (i.e. in reception loops) are in white too instead of the
color of the planet for easy identification. For a demo of the
dispositors in your own chart, do "astrolog -i yourchartfile -j -X".

-K -X: Graphic calendar charts are available by combining the -K
calendar chart with -X. This is another graphics format that can be
switched to whenever screen graphics are up by pressing the 'K' key.
This shows a calendar for the month of the current chart, like the
corresponding text chart but in graphic format with boxes for each
day like a real calendar. The current day within the month will be
highlighted in green (if the -Xl label inhibitor flag isn't on). The
-Xi alternate display mode will put the date numbers in the middle of
their box instead of in the upper left corner. Finally the -Xt chart
info display flag for this particular chart will control how the date
numbers are justified in their box. The -Ky yearly calendar switch
may be combined with -X switch to generate a graphic calendar for the
entire year. When the graphic calendar for the year is drawn, the 12
individual months will be arranged in either a 2x6 grid, a 3x4 grid,
a 4x3 grid, or a 6x2 grid, based on the dimensions of the chart; for
example, a square chart will be drawn three months across by four
down, but a tall skinny chart will cause the calendar layout to be in
a 2x6 grid.

-E -X: A graphical planetary tracking chart is available by combining
the -E switch with -X. This "graphical ephemeris" will display the
sign degrees of the zodiac along the horizontal axis, and the days in
the given month along the vertical. The positions of the planets at
each day (at the time and zone from the current chart) are then
graphed. The result is a bunch of wavy lines that make it easy to see
all the planetary movements during the month. Wherever lines cross
there's a conjunction on the day indicated on the axis at the same
level as the crossing. Although this only looks at the month in the
given chart information, the actual day will be highlighted on the
vertical axis. Combining the -Ey yearly ephemeris instead with -X
will generate a graphical ephemeris showing the movements for the
entire year, with the months labeled along the vertical axis. In the
-r0 relationship comparison mode, this chart will have in addition to
the standard ephemeris lines for the first chart, dashed vertical
lines drawn at the positions of the planets in the second chart, at
the time the ephemeris is done for.

-r0 -X: True relationship wheel charts can be displayed in a window,
i.e. where the planets of both charts are displayed in separate rings
of the same wheel. Use the -r0 option to display this comparison
type. For example, for the command "astrolog -r0 person1 person2 -X",
the following is displayed: The signs and houses as in person1's
chart are drawn in the outermost part of the wheel. Inside this is a
ring of person2's planets as displayed in person1's houses, and
inside of this are person1's own planets. Finally at the very middle
is an aspect grid, which shows those aspects that are occurring
between the objects in the two charts. Basically this is just the
standard wheel chart for person1, except that person2's planets are
in an outer ring of objects and the aspect grid shows the aspects of
the relationship. Putting such a chart in animation mode only affects
person2's planets, so this is a great way to analyze transits: Doing
"astrolog -t yourchartfile -X" will show all your current transits,
and allow you to easily animate the transiting planets through your
natal signs and houses.

--

     A couple of conveniences for the graphics features exist. Note
that the -Xo <graphicsfilename> option is only used in conjunction
with the -Xb write output to bitmap switch (or the -Xp or -XM
PostScript and metafile chart formats). Therefore, -Xo automatically
assumes -Xb is set. (Invoking -Xb itself without -Xo will have the
program prompt the user for the bitmap filename.) In other words,
astrolog -Xb -Xo 'file' is the same as just astrolog -Xo 'file'.
Astrolog includes its own appropriate X bitmap (a rainbow over an
opened Third Eye) if one iconifies its X window.

     For X windows, one can animate a graphics chart on the root
background by combining -XB with the -Xn switch. This will be just
like the animations done in windows except the root is being used
instead. Astrolog can be run in the background this way to
continually update your root to the current chart representing the
present moment. Limitations with this are that since there's no
window, no keypresses can be processed so the program must be
manually terminated, and that the continual updates will be as CPU
intensive as the window animations are.


************************************
DESCRIPTION OF DOS GRAPHICS FEATURES
************************************

     Astrolog's PC graphics charts look and feel and are displayed
just like the X window graphics already described. When compiling,
one has a choice between four options: (1) choose no graphics
abilities at all, (2) compile so that graphic chart bitmaps can be
generated and output to a file, (3) compile allowing file graphics in
addition to direct screen graphics in X windows, and (4) compile with
file graphics and direct graphics on the screen of a PC. The addition
of PC graphics in no way inhibits or affects the X window graphics
already in place; it's merely a matter of which compile time options
are set. Unix users don't need to look at this section.

     Astrolog uses the Microsoft PC graphics library as defined in
the file graph.h included with their Visual C/C++ 1.52 "C" language
compiler. This file and the graphics.lib library is needed in order
to be able to compile with these graphics options set, just as the X
window libraries are needed to compile with those graphics included.
If unavailable, one can still access these PC graphics with the
library linked in, in the already compiled executable posted.

     PC Astrolog is a DOS program and should be run from a DOS
prompt, outside of any Windows system. To generate a graphics chart
instead of a text one, include the -X switch just as one would do to
bring up an X window. The expected graphic chart will be displayed on
the screen unless the -Xb write bitmap to file switch is in effect.
The colors chosen for the graphics are basically identical to those
chosen in X window charts, and both of these in turn are based on the
Ansi colors used in the Ansi text charts.

     Now, there are many various types of PC monitors and
resolutions. Astrolog will automatically try to determine and pick
the highest resolution mode available on your system, so this need
not be worried about.

     The PC Astrolog charts may be animated in all the various ways,
and the animation will usually be flicker free! Now, PC's do have
limited memory, therefore there might not be room for more than one
page of graphics at the highest resolution. Hence, animation at the
highest (default) mode, may flicker; however, graphics at a slightly
lower resolution may take enough less memory to allow enough to do
flicker free animation. A special PC only feature for this has been
added: Pressing the 'tab' key while the PC graphics are up will try
to pick a lower resolution, where flicker free animation can be done.
Specifically, we'll toggle to a 640x350 EGA mode. On my own system,
the highest resolution I get is a 640x480 16 color VGA mode, however
the charts can't be animated without flicker. When I hit 'tab', I
drop from 480 lines of graphics to 350, but now the animation will be
perfectly smooth. The results with whatever graphics system you have
may be different.

     The chart that comes up will use as many pixels as is defined by
the chart's size as specified with the -Xw and -Xs switches. The 'Q'
change chart size to square key works just as before. However, on PC
screens we will try to take in account the pixel size ratio. On EGA
screens where the pixels are long and narrow, meaning a true "square"
chart looks tall and thin, we compensate by increasing the horizontal
size of the chart. The 'B' key, which for X window graphics will
blast the current window contents to the root background, is a
meaningless feature for a PC. This key, for PC graphics systems, will
instead resize the chart to be the full size of the screen. Note
that some charts however (such as wheel charts without sidebars, -S
space charts, -Z0 sky charts, and -XG globes) are distorted unless
they are square. For these charts, the 'B' key will resize the chart
to be the largest square that will fit on the screen, i.e. will
automatically do what pressing 'B' followed by the 'Q' force to
square key would do. When the graphics mode is changed through
'tab', the chart size will also be modified to be the largest
"square" that will fit on the screen.

     If the size of the chart is less than the size of the screen, it
will be displayed centered in the middle of the screen. If however
the chart size is greater than the screen size, then the chart will
take up the whole screen, and part of it will be clipped. By default
we show the upper left corner of the chart if this is the case. Now,
one can define and change which part of the chart gets shown. On PC's
the meaning of pressing the number keys have been enhanced. Normally,
number keys set the animation speed; they still do, but now only when
animation is actually being done. If not in animation, the number
keys from 1..9 will define which "quadrant" or area of the chart gets
shown. It's best to think of and use the number pad for this feature
(make sure num lock is on!) Pressing the '7' key, i.e. the upper left
number on the number pad, will set it so the default upper left part
of the chart is seen. Pressing the '3' key, on the lower right corner
of the pad, will show the lower right corner of charts larger than
the screen size. Pressing '5' will show the middle area of the chart,
with equal amounts of the chart clipped from left and right, and top
and bottom. Pressing '6' will show the right end of the chart,
vertically centered on the screen, and so on. Basically, we have a
simple implementation of something like scroll bars, allowing viewing
of all parts of the "window". One can generate and display on the
screen even the largest charts producible with Astrolog. Even on an
640x350 EGA, one can use this to generate and view all parts of a
300% scaled relationship aspect grid (883x883), or even a 300% scaled
world map display (1082x545)!

--

     Astrolog has support for the mouse and the mouse buttons when
running graphics under DOS. Upon entering a graphics chart under
DOS, a mouse pointer will appear. Holding down the left mouse button
will allow you to scribble on the screen with the mouse as a pen, in
the highlight color, just like how for Unix the left button is used
to scribble in an X window. For PC's, the middle mouse button (if you
have one - most mice such as Microsoft mice don't) will exit graphics
mode and terminate the program, like pressing the 'q' key or like how
the right mouse button does for X windows. The right mouse button
does the same thing as the middle button for X: it will reset the
current chart location to that clicked on. It won't actually display
the new longitude and latitude, but you can easily see what it is by
observing the chart information at the bottom of a graphics chart, or
by pressing the 'v' key to see the whole chart and its location in
text mode.

     The ability to use the mouse to sketch and scribble on the
charts is extended for PC's. The right mouse button (on those
non-world map charts where it doesn't already set the current
location) will draw a straight line to the mouse pointer from the
point where one last clicked the left button. Also, pressing ctrl-t
will draw a rectangle from the point of the last click to the current
mouse position. Finally, pressing ctrl-x will draw an ellipse
inscribed within the bounds from the last click point to the current
position. These are just more features to make Astrolog a better
graphics drawing program. :)

     Not all PC systems have mice. There is a #define in astrolog.h
called "MOUSE". If commented out, then all mouse functionality will
be compiled out, even if compiling for Unix. Note that the mouse
pointer and all PC mouse functions are temporarily disabled when
running in an animation mode. If on a PC system a mouse isn't
installed on a system and Astrolog is run with mouse features
enabled, the mouse features will be ignored as if the functionality
weren't even compiled in.

     [There's a minor known bug with the PC mouse features in the
program, which is that when in a flicker free graphics mode, the
mouse pointer will only appear half the time. (You can still scribble
and set location, just that the pointer won't be visible.) This is
due to the fact that a flicker free mode is actually two pages
switched back and forth between for smooth updates. If you don't see
and want your mouse here, the update generated by pressing spacebar
will revert you to the other page where the mouse pointer is.]

--

     To make an OS/2 Desktop icon for Astrolog, simply drag the
executable (astrolog.exe) to the desktop from the directory you have
chosen for it. To change the title of the program object (now created
as the result of the drag'n'drop operation) hold down the ALT key and
click with mouse button 1 over the current title. When finished
editing the title click somewhere else.



***************************
DESCRIPTION OF GUI FEATURES
***************************

     First, users of other versions of the program should find moving
to the OS/2 version of Astrolog easy and familiar. All the text
and graphics chart displays are available and look the same.  All
chart info and command files work and haven't changed format any. All
the command line switches are available and work and can even be
passed to the program while running to do things if you prefer, in
addition to the more user-friendly interface being available. All the
keypress commands one can press while an interactive graphics screen
was up are set as shortcuts for equivalent operations here.
Basically, additional features and a more user friendly interface are
presented, while all the other things are still available. :)

     In using the dialogs, one should specify or enter the
appropriate settings, and then press "OK" for them to take effect, or
"Cancel" to discard any changes made. On pressing "OK", the program
will check all the fields for validity, and display an appropriate
error message and not close the dialog if anything is out of range,
giving a chance to correct or cancel. For numeric controls, note that
if the existing value is displayed with a decimal point in it,
floating point numbers are legal, while if there isn't one then
integers are required.

     Every menu command has an accelerator, i.e. an underscore below
a letter, where when the menu is displayed one may press that letter
to select that option (pressing Alt plus the appropriate letter may
be used to pull down a top level menu). In addition every menu option
has a unique direct keyboard shortcut, where pressing the appropriate
key will invoke the command directly without having to pull down a
menu. To the right of each menu option is listed the key or key
combination that's its shortcut. Note that a capital letter here
means the shift key needs to be down, e.g. "Alt+o" means hold down
the Alt key and press "o", while "Alt+O" means hold down both the Alt
and Shift keys and then press "O".

     Astrolog tries to be smart about what you're trying to do when
menu options are selected, and may automatically change settings to
make the appropriate thing happen. For example, as with the DOS and X
Windows versions, the charts in the Windows version can be divided
into "text mode" i.e. just text, and "graphics mode" charts, where
the first option on the View menu will switch between them. Charts
like transit lists only exist in text form, so when selected you'll
automatically leave graphics mode if in it; likewise, selecting most
any item on the Graphics menu will enter it as those settings have no
effect on text charts. Similarly, entering animation mode will
automatically turn on the flicker free updates setting, and so on.

     As with Astrolog versions on other platforms, you can use the
mouse to draw on the window here too. Click and drag the left mouse
button to scribble lines. Doing a Shift+click will draw a straight
line from the location you last clicked to the current position.
Doing a Control+click will draw a rectangle with opposite corners at
the location last clicked and the current position. Doing
Control+Shift+click will draw an ellipse with opposite corners at the
two positions clicked. Finally, when the current display is either
the world map or an astro-graph chart, one may click the right mouse
button on the map to relocate the chart to the spot on the world
clicked upon, which will change the longitude and latitude of the
current chart info in memory.

     The window that the charts are drawn in has horizontal and
vertical scrollbars on it. For charts that are just text, the
scrollbars may be used to shift the chart up or left to view any
characters that get written off the bottom or right edge of the
window. For charts that are graphics, if the chart is larger than the
window it's in, the scrollbars may be used to move around the
viewable portion of it, while if the chart is smaller than the
window, the scrollbars will control where in the window the chart is
drawn, e.g. centered, in upper left corner, etc. Note that it's most
common and logical to have the chart and window the same size, in
which case moving the scrollbars has no effect on the graphics chart.
Note that for text mode charts, there exists behavior such that if
the window has been scrolled down so that all the text is off the top
of the screen, the program will automatically scroll up and redraw
again, so the bottom 20 rows or so are visible.

     Astrolog for OS/2 will start by loading its basic configuration
from the user profile named ASTROLOG.INI, then it will read in and
process the contents of the ASTROLOG.CFG command file if available,
and immediately after this the program will process the contents of
the OS/2 command line if any, i.e. any command switches or parameters
specified in either the program object or given when running the
program from the OS/2 command line.

--

     Astrolog for OS/2 is reasonably intuitive to use and do what
you want with even without referring to any documentation. If anything
is unclear you are welcome to drop me a note via email.

     One menu item may, however, need some immediate clarification:
"Save Settings...". This menu item saves settings made within the
program to the ASTROLOG.CFG file so that they will automatically be in
effect again the next time the program is run. In the OS/2 version it
is in most cases, however, not necessary to select this menu item as
the majority of settings are saved AUTOMATICALLY in the user profile
upon program exit.

     Some settings are only available through direct editing of the
ASTROLOG.CFG file. This file closely resembles the "astrolog.dat" file
from the Windows version.

--

     There is an especially useful WWW link that should be mentioned
together with this program since it provides simple access to a
database of coordinates for thousands of cities (and even towns)
around the globe:

        http://www.astro.ch/atlas/

     This site also uses a modified version of Astrolog for Windows,
which can be accessed interactively to check time zones in effect for
any specific chart in time and space.

--