[amsat-bb] PREDICT-2.2.3 Release Announcement

[John Magliacane <kd2bd@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Folks.

The latest of PREDICT, an Open Source satellite tracking and orbital prediction
program for the Linux/Unix operating system has been released and is currently
available through the AMSAT-NA ftp/web site at:

ftp://ftp.amsat.org/amsat/software/Linux/predict-2.2.3.tar.gz

and:

http://www.amsat.org/amsat-new/tools/software.php

New features of version 2.2.3 include:

* PREDICT now handles -u, -t, and -q command-line options
  (hopefully) better than before.  When these options are used
  and no default TLE and QTH files are found under the user's
  home directory, PREDICT is no longer placed into "new user"
  mode.  This should ease the use of PREDICT in non-interactive
  applications (in automated scripts, etc.) where a $HOME
  environment is lacking or not desired.  Only if a user
  has no QTH and TLE files under their home directory, and
  has passed no -q and -t arguments to PREDICT will that
  user now be considered a "new user".

* New command-line options were added to PREDICT.  The -east
  option causes PREDICT to display longitudes in degrees east
  rather than in degrees west.  The -south option displays
  latitudes in degrees south rather than in degrees north.
  -west and -north options, which are the normal defaults,
  are also included for completeness.  (Tnx: Takeshi-Okazaki,
  MTSAT-1R Chief Aeronautical Mission Engineer)

* RS-232 output in PREDICT and Moontracker has been improved
  to prevent the transmission of extraneous bytes past the
  end-of-line characters.  (Tnx: SP7HAA)

* Since the bzero() function is being deprecated, all bzero()
  function calls were replaced by memset() in all affected code.

* The accuracy of PREDICT's real-time clock displays have been
  improved.

* A problem was corrected where the GET_SAT_POS socket command
  would return results as if the GET_SAT command were also
  sent to PREDICT.  (Tnx: David Hutchinson, G8SQH) 

* PREDICT now returns a response ("Huh?") to clients that send
  unrecognized commands via the UDP socket interface instead
  of sending nothing.

* The GET_DOPPLER socket command now returns Doppler shift
  information even if the satellite in question is below the
  local horizon.

* A keyboard interactive socket interface demonstration program
  was added ("demo-i" under clients/samples).

* "earthtrack" was updated to handle changes in xplanet version
  1.0 and later.

* A small bug in the orbital prediction [P] and visual calendar [V]
  modes of PREDICT was fixed.  Before the fix, the sunlight/visibility
  symbol (*, +) displayed in these modes would sometimes list the
  point of LOS as a '*' when it should have been a '+' at the
  conclusion of a visible pass.

* Array overflow conditions in predict.c's Print() and Daynum2String()
  functions were identified and fixed.

* Several very minor coding changes were made to allow warning-free
  compilation under GCC 4.x.x.


Further information on PREDICT software is available at:

http://www.qsl.net/kd2bd/predict.html

Happy Tracking!


73, de John, KD2BD


Visit John on the Web at:

	http://kd2bd.ham.org/
.
.
.
.
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com 
----
Sent via amsat-bb@amsat.org. Opinions expressed are those of the author.
Not an AMSAT member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program!
To unsubscribe, send "unsubscribe amsat-bb" to Majordomo@amsat.org