Xplanet 0.83

1) Where can I get a good night map?  
2) Can you get Xplanet to work on Microsoft Windows?
3) Where can I get real time cloud images for use with Xplanet?
4) How do I get xplanet working with KDE2?
5) How do I get rid of that silly smiley face?

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1) Where can I get a good night map?  

A good map of the earth at night can be found at 
http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/viewrecord?5826

This map is included with xplanet.

2) Can you get Xplanet to work on Microsoft Windows?

See http://xplanet.sourceforge.net/windows.

Also check out John Walker's Home Planet
(http://www.fourmilab.ch/homeplanet/homeplanet.html) which runs on
Windows and looks similar to Xplanet.  I haven't used it myself but it
seems nice.

3) Where can I get real time cloud images for use with Xplanet?

You can get them at http://xplanet.sourceforge.net.  They're created
every six hours from GOES, METEOSAT, and GMS satellite imagery.

Xplanet can also overlay cloud images from the Space Science and
Engineering Center at the University of Wisconsin.
(http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/data/comp/latest_moll.gif)
These images are updated every three hours.  Use the -cloud_ssec
option with these files.

4) How do I get xplanet working with KDE2?

From: Joe Mirando <jmirando@portone.com>

      - Right-click on the desktop and select "Configure
        background..."  from the resulting menu.

      - Click on the menu list next to "Mode:" and select "Background
        Program".

      - Now click on the "Setup" button and then the "Add" button.
        Fill in the fields with the appropriate information. For
        instance, the setup I use to display a picture of Mars on my
        first desktop contains the following information:

	      Name             Xplanet-Mars
	      Comment          v0.73 by Hari Nair
	      Command          xplanet -image mars.jpg -radius 47 -center 550,368 -output marsdesk.jpg
	      Preview cmd      xplanet -image mars.jpg -radius 47 -center 550,368 -output marsdesk.jpg
	      Executable       xplanet
	      Refresh time     5 minutes

	- Now click on "Okay" to save the setup.  This allows KDE to
          use XPlanet to create a picture every five minutes. Now all
          you need to do is tell KDE what picture to use.

	- Go back to the main background configuration menu (the one
	  that lists the desktops and has the "Background",
	  "Wallpaper", and "Advanced" buttons) and click the
	  "Wallpaper" button.

	- Put a check mark in the "Multiple" box and click on the
          "Setup" button. This will give you a menu that allows you to
          select pictures to display on the desktop. We only want to
          display one picture here, but we want it to update every
          so-often.

        - Since we've told XPlanet to update every five minutes, we'll
          select "5 minutes" as our interval here as well. Now all we
          need is to select the picture that XPlanet is going to
          create for us.

        - Click on the "Add" button and select the picture that
          XPlanet has written. (Since we've already executed XPlanet
          by installing it in the previous steps, it should have
          already written the picture file) and click on "OK".

        - You can elect to have this picture used for each desktop (by
          selecting "Common Background"), use XPlanet for some
          desktops and not others, or you may follow the preceeding
          steps to create a different background for each
          desktop. This is how I configured my desktops, and
          everything works fine.


5) How do I get rid of that silly smiley face?

Look at the marker file for the earth.  The last line reads

0 0 "" position=sun image=smile.png transparent={255,255,255}

Comment it out by putting a # at the beginning of the line.

Hari Nair
hari@alumni.caltech.edu
