[guide-user] Is there any chance someone will pick up the guide 9 update?

[g.blair1 at comcast.net]

Thank you for this considered and detailed "rebuttal", Bill.

I've been a Guide/Charon/Find_Orb user for a lot of years and honestly, the only three things I've ever found truly lacking are:

A. NEO ephemerides as accurate as JPL's. Hardly a show-stopper - I just go to Horizons for accurate times/positions during really close approaches.
B. Saturnian satellite information akin to that for Jupiter.
C. Up-to-date double star information, particularly orbital positions for close binaries, but I suspect that's a limitation of the WDS source data.

I use Find_Orb more than I do Guide these days (and Tycho Tracker has replaced Charon in my toolset), but the suite of tools has been unmatched for decades, in my opinion.

Great work, Bill - and thank you for your service to the community.

Grant  W64.


________________________________
From: guide-user <guide-user-bounces at projectpluto.com> on behalf of Bill Gray <pluto at projectpluto.com>
Sent: Wednesday, May 28, 2025 5:50 PM
To: guide-user at projectpluto.com <guide-user at projectpluto.com>
Subject: Re: [guide-user] Is there any chance someone will pick up the guide 9 update?

Hi all,

    First,  my thanks for the many kind thoughts about the software.
I've been giving a fair bit of thought over the last decade about what
to do with it.  I'm still puzzling it out,  but I hope the following
ramble gives you some idea of what might happen.

    I no longer have any real interest in profiting from Guide.  It was
a delightful way to earn a living for a couple of decades -- more on
that below -- but I've moved on to other projects.  However,  it's still
(mostly) usable software,  and I wouldn't want it to just vanish.

    The ISO itself is available for free download at :

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ynKy_hfbr2duvCXyHDxFj0KPleNaHKC8/view?usp=sharing

    You'll get a warning that no preview is available and that,  at ~3.3
GBytes,  it's too large to scan for viruses.  After that,  however,  you
can download it,  put it on a DVD,  and install it.  (I think you can
put it on a USB drive and install from that,  though I've not tried it.)

    I do want to post the source code,  and expect to do so.  There are
problems,  though.

    As has probably been apparent,  I'm not very interested in
maintaining Guide 9,  and I would not strongly encourage others to try
to do so.  Generally speaking,  I've been perfectly happy to post source
code for all to use :

https://www.github.com/Bill-Gray

    In particular,  the 'lunar',  'sat_code',  and 'jpl_eph' libraries
form some of the underpinnings for Guide,  supplying the functions for
basic astronomical calculations,  artificial satellite positions,  and
high-precision planetary ephemerides.  Find_Orb uses these as well,  and
many people are getting good use of the source code in their own projects.

    I have carefully revised those libraries before posting them.  The
code is commented and makes sense.  If a potential client saw them,
they would be (or at least should be) impressed by them.

    The source code for Guide itself is... well... less impressive.
Actually,  it's downright embarrassing.  This is mostly due to its long
and tangled history.

    In mid-1992,  I quit my job and started writing Guide 1.0.  By early
1993,  I was able to get a batch of CDs burned and could advertise in
_Sky & Telescope_.  Jari Suomela posted a scan of that ad a few years back :

http://clayhole.com/20180121_193520.jpg             [0]

    I may have exaggerated a little when I wrote about the "intuitive
user interface".  I'd stand by the rest of the description,  though.
This was a DOS program;  Windows was in its infancy.  Screenshots :

https://www.projectpluto.com/temp/guide1.png
    (default view of sky around Big Dipper)
https://www.projectpluto.com/temp/guide1_b.png
    (zoomed-in view of Jupiter & Galilean moons)

    Its main feature was having the Hubble GSC,  version 1.0,  as the
basis for star charts.  The program seems almost unbelievably primitive
to me now,  but almost every copy I sent out resulted in a reply saying
the user was dumbfounded at how good it was.  Among other advantages,
Guide 1.0 had ~15 million stars;  I don't think anything before that
went past the SAO catalog's ~250,000.

    Over the subsequent two decades,  I sold enough copies to keep me
fed and indoors.  (I'm good at math and physics and software.  I am not
a good businessman.)  I also had those underlying libraries,  and they
came in very handy when I had the occasional contract for other
astronomy-related software.  Which is what I do now.

    Meanwhile,  I kept developing the Guide software itself.  I added a
Windows 3.1 port,  and eventually a 32-bit port for Windows 95 and
later.  And I added various features,  and still more features... those
of you who have developed software long-term may see where this is going.

    At present,  the source code for Guide 9 is a maze of twisty
passages.  It compiles with Microsoft Visual C/C++,  version 5.0
(really,  _really_ old!).  It uses the Microsoft Foundation Classes
(MFC) for the user interface;  among programmers,  these were widely and
accurately referred to as "Microsoft Frustration Classes".

    Back in 1992,  as a 27-year-old with a steel trap memory,  I saw no
need to document code that only I would ever look at.  As a 60-year-old,
  I look at bits of it and think "well,  that code obviously works,  but
I've no idea what young me was thinking".

    There are vast parts of it that were effectively bolted on over
time,  as if somebody built a wagon,  then decided to turn it into a
car,  then decided it would be nice if the car could float or fly if
needed.  This,  incidentally,  is one reason why much of the user
interface for Guide is less consistent than it ought to be;  the more
recent additions reflect some lessons learned,  but the older interface
items make me recoil in terror.  I wouldn't want a potential client to
judge my coding based on this stuff.

    The insides of the code reflect an overly confident programmer who
didn't check error conditions and had a set of coding practices that
make me wonder how it all ever ran as well as it did.  They would cause
any current programmer to turn pale.

    I managed to keep things going well enough to release Guide 9.  But
after that,  I moved on to other projects.

    I think what I need to do,  at minimum,  is to post the current
Guide source code to GitHub,  with suitable warnings.  (Probably source
code for Charon as well,  which is similarly horrid and embarrassing.)
I would not really expect anybody to take on the task of making any
sense out of it;  the best use of it may well be to somebody who needs
specific bits of the code.

-- Bill

[0] If you're interested in running truly ancient astronomy software...
I've also posted the ISO for Guide 1.0 :

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZYR4Ir9fKpdduObfLTkL6V_tvRB9R-xz/view?usp=drive_link

    It's about 215 MBytes,  and you'll probably need something such as
DOSBox to run it.  Load the CD,  and run the 'install' program.

--
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