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-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! -rb <file1> <file2>: Display biorhythm for file1 at time file2. Biorhythm charts are supported by Astrolog with the -rb switch. Although not directly related to Astrology, the concepts are similar, and adding this didn't require much extra code, and since some are interested in this, I felt I'd add it in. The biorhythm theory says that we have three main types of energy: Physical, Emotional, and Intellectual. These three run in continuous wave cycles from high to low, each of which repeats about every 30 days or so. Therefore, a biorhythm chart for a particular day should describe how much energy one has or how they are feeling in this area. Now, Astrolog considers biorhythm charts as a type of relationship chart, because in order to generate one, two dates or charts are needed: the birth date of the person, and the date to cast their chart for. Technically the program will replace the standard -v listing of planet positions with the biorhythm chart when -rb is in effect. As an example, "-rb file1 file2" will cast the chart for the birthday signified by chart1 or chart2 (whichever is older) for the date in the other file. Remember that one can substitute the pseudo filename 'tty' to mean get the chart info from the terminal instead. The actual biorhythm chart itself will display, for the day in question, what the percentages of the physical, emotional, and intellectual cycles are, as numbers from -100% (low ebb) to +100% (happy and full of energy). In addition, the biorhythm percentages for the seven days before (T-7 days) and the seven days after (T+7 days) the date in question will be listed, too, so one can see if the cycles are rising or falling. Finally, as a cute way to help in interpretation, the program prints the appropriate smiley, medium, or sad face after each percentage. (BTW, it takes over 58 years for all three cycles together to synchronize and repeat themselves.) -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 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 -m0 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 -m0 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 -m0" and see the influence given to each aspect. -rp <file1> <file2>: Like -r0 but do file1 with 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 -X". (There is no easy way to do this otherwise, short of using -o0 position files, since -p will affect all charts.) -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> (assuming you have the TIME features compiled in), which saves you from having to mention the 'now' in the '-r0' option. -y[b,d,p] <file>: Print biorhythm/datediff for current time now. The -y option is extended based on the -rd and -rb features. The -tb <file> switch will display the person indicated in file's biorhythm for today. The -td <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 "-i yourchart -td". Do the same command again right away and see that you are now a couple seconds older than the first time! ---- 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 X11 graphic 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.dat parameter 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! 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. -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. -- -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). Astrolog allocates its bitmap arrays in an efficient manner. When creating an x by y graphics image, that is exactly how much memory is allocated. You can run Astrolog along with TSR's or other programs in memory which may reduce the amount of free memory available for the program. If you get a message saying there isn't enough memory for the bitmap, just try again with a slightly smaller size until it works. For the other extreme, if you have the memory and disk space, Astrolog can generate a 2500 by 2500 bitmap over three megabytes in size. Note that on a PC, combinations such as "-Xb -Xs 400 -g" will likely always run out of memory, since the bitmap always has to be a very large size. For this case of a large scaled aspect grid, one can get around the problem by manually "clipping" the aspect grids through decreasing the number of cells to to include by changing the "Aspect grid cells" astrolog.dat default parameter described later. -Xb[n,c,v,a,b]: Set bitmap file output mode to X11 normal, compacted, very compact, Ascii (bmtoa), or Windows 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 Windows .bmp bitmap described below. One of the available bitmap formats are the .bmp extension bitmap files commonly used on PC's running under Microsoft Windows. If you have a PC running Windows, you can set your root background to be one of these monochrome 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 Windows subdirectory, then go into Program Manager -> Control Panels -> Desktop and select this file to be your "wallpaper". These bitmap files may be generated in either color or black and white. By default, all graphic charts will be in color, unless specified otherwise. Color is most useful for these PC bitmaps (-Xbb), although a color bitmap will take up more disk space. X11 bitmap files will always be output in monochrome format, since color .xbm files don't exist. A color Ascii file (-Xba) will have the color value of each pixel converted to a hexadecimal number, instead of being in the format generated by the Unix bmtoa utility in the case of monochrome charts. -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. :) -XM[0]: Create Windows metafile stroke graphic instead of bitmap. -XM switch: Yet another graphics format, Astrolog can generate Windows metafiles. Metafiles are those files (usually with extension .wmf and often called "pictures" for users) that are frequently used in Microsoft Windows for clipart and other such things. (Astrolog is one of the few non-Windows programs which can generate metafiles internally without relying on Windows itself.) Like PostScript, metafiles are a "stroke" graphic format. Metafiles are in binary format unlike the human readable Ascii text in PostScript files, and hence are smaller in size for the same image. Although the same chart generated in PostScript and metafile format will more or less look the same, for PC and Windows users, metafiles are preferred. (For Unix systems PostScript is preferred since there aren't many Unix apps out there that know or care about Windows metafiles, while PostScript is a standard used everywhere.) A metafile can be inserted as a picture into Word, CorelDraw, and pasted into Windows Write and many other applications. Unlike PostScript, a metafile can be displayed on the screen in your document, instead of like most EPS files which when displayed by Windows just indicate that "this is an PostScript image" and have to be printed to be seen. A metafile can actually be edited in MS Draw and many other drawing applications where one may modify the Astrolog chart, change colors, add text, and so on before printing! Metafiles (and PostScript graphics) have the option to include actual system fonts for text, as well as even zodiac sign, planet, and aspect glyphs! This will look smoother than having Astrolog fake all the characters with 45 degree line segments. There is a setting in the astrolog.dat file which when set by the user will always use system fonts instead of simulating them. If the -XM switch is invoked as -XM0 instead, the status of this flag will be toggled for the chart generated. (This switch can be used with PostScript charts by specifying "-XM0 -Xp".) In the PostScript charts, the following printer fonts are used: Courier for text, Times Roman for house labels, and Astro for Sign, Planet, and Aspect glyphs. For these metafiles, the following Windows TrueType fonts are used: Courier-New for text, Times New Roman for house labels, Wingdings for sign glyphs, and Astro-SemiBold for Planets and Aspect glyphs. All of these fonts should be installed in your system already except likely Astro-SemiBold. This font is available from the hilbert ftp site in the directory /pub/astrology/Fonts in the file 6ttfont.zip. To install it on Windows, unzip this file, then go into the Windows Control Panel and select the Fonts icon. Click on the Add button and select the file "astro-se.ttf" that was in the zip archive, and the font will be installed on your system. If it's not installed, the planet and aspect glyphs will appear as letters. (Hack: If you can't get access to the Astro font, but still want all the other fonts to be included, one can set the value of "use actual fonts" in astrolog.dat to 2 instead of 1, which will cause only the planet and aspect glyphs to be simulated by Astrolog.) It is possible that a metafile using all the system fonts may print perfectly to a PostScript printer, but an PS file itself won't find the Astro font. This is because the Astro font may be installed on your Windows system, but not on the printer itself, and because when printing a metafile to a printer, Windows will conveniently automatically embed the necessary font information in what it sends to the printer if the font isn't already there. Note that one may actually generate a PostScript chart from a metafile in Windows by using the Print Manager (or the Setup dialog button available from within those Windows host applications that use the standard Print dialog) to set printing to be to an encapsulated PS file instead of directly to a printer. Of course doing this won't likely be needed since Astrolog can generate PS files natively. There is a compile time option #define META in the astrolog.h which can be commented out to disable the -XM switch and all metafile features. -Xo <file>: Write output bitmap to specified file. This option is used in conjunction with the -Xb option, to specify the name of the file to write the bitmap to. If not included along with the -Xb option, the program will prompt you for the filename when writing the bitmap 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 with the chart centered in the middle. 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. -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 considered to be one giant glyph by the program.) -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 default 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). 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. One can inhibit this display by specifying the -XT switch. -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. -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.) -XP: Create just the world map, but 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. -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. -Xn: 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. ---- Astrolog window keypress options (version 4.10): (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 updates to the window. This is mainly used to freeze any animation (see below) but also has an effect even on 'still' windows. Key presses will still be accepted in pause mode but their effects won't be apparent until one presses 'p' again to continue. This can be used to temporarily freeze a chart in animation so that it can be looked at without interruption. 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. 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 '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', 'F' 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 'F' 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). 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! 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. Press 'V','L','A','Z','S','E','W','G','P' to switch to normal (-v), astro-graph (-L), grid (-g), local (-Z), space (-S), ephemeris (-E), world map (-XW), globe (-XG), and polar (-XP) modes. There are basically nine main modes in which the graphics screen can be in: There are the six main charts (wheel, astro-graph, aspect grids, local sky, space view, and ephemeris) as well as the three world displays (the simple map by itself, the globe view, and the polar projection). These nine keys can be used to switch between these nine 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 '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 'tab' to toggle between graphics resolutions. This feature is only available on PC systems. See PC graphics section for its description. 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 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 drawing will have little effect or be disabled when in animation mode.) The middle mouse button 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. For the three 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 acts just like the 'q' key, and will terminate the window. 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. (e.g. for here in Seattle right now for the seven prompts I would enter [for June 11th, 1992 AD at 10:22pm, with daylight time in effect - if daylight time were *not* in effect, I would have entered 22.22 for the fourth value instead]: 6; 11; 1992; 21.22; 122.20; 47.36) The program then calculates and displays the positions of all planets, Chiron, the four main asteroids, as well as stuff like the Part of Fortune and the Vertex. (The Uranian bodies and fixed stars can also be listed if one includes the appropriate command switches described earlier.) This user interface where one manually inputs the chart information is "smart" in a few ways. First, the true names of months or their abbreviations may be entered (case doesn't matter) instead of the corresponding number if you prefer. At most, the first three letters of the month are needed; some months (like February which is the only month starting with "F") may be abbreviated all the way up to their first letter. The second enhancement is that the time value may be entered with a "pm" or "am" (or just "p" and "a") suffix in addition to the standard 24 hour clock. For example, instead of entering "18.30" for "6:30pm", you can enter "6.30pm" or even "6.3p" and the program will process it the same. Similarly, "12.30am" can be used instead of "0.30", and so on. The final enhancement is that colons may be used instead of decimal points for the time and location values. For example "6.30" may be entered as "6:30" instead, and longitude values like "122.20" may be entered "122:20", which is more intuitive than those decimal points. 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 "4:0525am". Note: To enter years B.C. enter negative years. As there was no year 0 BC or 0 AD (i.e. the year 1 BC was followed by 1 AD) one needs to add one to the negative BC value entered, e.g. to specify 500 B.C., enter the year as -499. Note: 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 10/4/1582 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 information in addition to these locations are shown: (1) Whether or not each planet is in its ruling sign, or fall, as well as displaying the same information for ruling or debilitating houses. (2) The sum of the signs in each element and mode and their totals is displayed in a grid form. Also, planets in their exalted and debilitated signs are noted. In addition to the (R) indicating a planet in it's ruling sign, and an (F) for a planet in it's 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). 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 positive/masculine and 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 "positive" objects (i.e. in Fire or Air signs); "-" is the number of "negative" objects (i.e. in Water or Earth signs); "M" is the number of objects above the horizon (i.e. in the hemisphere of the Midheaven); "N" is the number of objects below the horizon (in the 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). 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.