AZ_PROJ History

v1.1.6 
Nunavut added thanks to David VE7NDE. David also alerted me that the MO/AR
border was missing.

Fixed TV stations so that names of multiple stations at the same site
would be listed under each other (thanks to W1QA for prompting this).

Added US counties. Thanks to the people at the US Census for help
here and to Pete KS4XG of PVRCNC for prompting this.

n_amer.wdb v1.07 9 Jun 00. Made L. Ontario into closed loop.

v1.1.4 5 Jun 00 
bug fix, not all *.dat files were being read correctly.

v1.1.3 Jun 00 - allow input of lat/lon in any of the following formats
		lat:lon
		lat,lon
		gridlocator

gridlocators are changed to uppercase, and NSEWnsew suffixes on lat/lon can be used
instead of +/- signs. Only decimal lat/lon is allowed.

thus these lines are all equivalent

qra:50:NA3T qra 6m:FM05lw:comment
qra:50:NA3T qra 6m:FM05LW:comment
qra:50:NA3T qra 6m:35.94N,79.03W:comment
qra:50:NA3T qra 6m:35.94n:-79.03:comment
qra:50:NA3T qra 6m:35.94,-79.03:comment

This has been implemented for
qth,city,AM/BC/TV/FM,rover,mountain,repeater,beacon,label,annotation 

This has not been implemented for anything that has a 4char 
gridsquare to indicate an area (eg to be filled)
(this includes worked grids, qso...) 

v1.1.2 May 00 - (code not released)
added extra positions (eg below-right) for station_strings identifiers
for repeaters and other transmitters.

Added a dictionary so that multiple transmitters at one spot (read commercial TV stations)
will have their station identifiers (callsign/channel/freq) printed as a list below
the station symbol, rather than on top of each other. (Thanks to W1QA and VE2DC for suggestion).
(Code demo only - not finished till v1.1.3)

strings from these will not overwrite, but will be stacked according to the symbol_string_locations
in az_ini.ps for each symbol. Thus if 5TV stations and a beacon are plotted (in that order) all
at the same location then 5 consecutive TV station symbols will overwrite each other, but the
identifying strings will be stacked below each other. Next the beacon symbol will be drawn at
the location and the beacon strings will be drawn as if 5 beacons had just been plotted.

This has been implemented for
AM/BC/TV/FM,rover,mountain,repeater,beacon,label

This has not been implemented for
annotation,city or anything that has a 4char gridsquare to indicate an area (eg to be filled)
(this includes worked grids, qso...) 

v1.1.1 Apr 00 - population centers. Code on website, but source code not released.

v1.1 Mar 00
beta11:
fixed logic for compasses and distances_circles, so that can turn both off with
/distance_circles (none) def , rather than having to turn both off separately.

added /ignore_bands so that can plot etopo5 and qra-density filled grids, no matter
what band is chosen for plotting (these data types have a frequency parameter in the
line, so that you can select data by freq).

changed "qra_density" to "density" in all files

beta10:
added elevation data 5min resolution

beta9: 
changed to unix carriage control (saves me rebooting into DOS)

also bug fix for beta8, 
images for different papersize (A3,4,5, halfletter,letter,ledger) are now rendered
in a box of the correct size in the webpage (the file you downloaded was the correct size). 
can now turn off political states (eg states in USA, Australia; provinces in Canada). 
The MO-AR state border in USA has been returned after and absence of 18-30 months. 
There are some bugs that are a bit hard to track down. If I make a map from my QTH (FM05lw) on
a Linux 2.0.36/libc5 machine, at a scale of 2250km/cm, plotting only eurasia and oceania (in 
any order), then gs261 will crash. If I change any of these (move my QTH by a few 100m, change
the scale to 2251km/cm, use another version of gs, or run the program on a Linux 2.2.x/glibc-2.1 
machine), then everything is fine. I would expect there will be other anomolies to be found.

beta8: 
draws maps from the antipodes, with the local continent superimposed on the antipodes
(special request of w3ep). The local continent is drawn by a .pod file (eg n_amer.pod, 
a file derived from n_amer.wdb file, by adding 180 deg to the longitude and inverting
the latitude - only the country borders are included).


beta7: 
Draws new borders in Europe (new from ca. 1990). 
Print files can be e-mailed to you (webpage server code).

beta6: 
Plots density of 6m operators/gridsquare. 
Border between E- and W-Germany removed (by popular request) (Bosnia etc to be fixed later). 
Border between California and Nevada restored (for the 2nd time).

beta5: 
Can use gridlocator or lat/lon to descibe location. 
Fixed bug in routine that places a "+" at center of map. 
Added call areas for VE,VK,ZL. 
Bit-rot fixed in rover and mountain routines.

beta4: 
Added MF/LF beacons and 6m QRA list. 
Fixed bug in distance circle labelling routine.


beta3: 
Bug fix in greyline code that gave sunset/rise lines for 12 days later. 
A cross has been added at the QTH, for people who don't include a compass. 

beta2: 
An option to _not_ plot high resolution data for maps covering large 
areas of the earth. This speeds up large scale maps by a factor of 2.

beta1: 
minor upgrade from v1.04 allowing plotting of city names on the map.
This is to help decorate small scale maps (for UHF users) in areas with little
ohter information (coast lines, rivers or lakes). I did this
after spending a a weekend on top of a mountain in EM85 operating
on 432 and 1296MHz with a very boring map that had only gridsquares on it.


Changed name of next version 1.1 rather than 1.05, to make name
more compatible with DOS8.3 filenames.

(Feb 00, I've lost track of what I did and when here). Somewhere
in the 1.1beta series I did

Can use gridlocator or lat/lon to descibe location.

Added call areas for VE,VK,ZL.

MF/LF beacons

6m QRA list (call signs of 6m operators by gridsquare
- this is not particularly useful as the QTH is described by only
the 4char gridlocator and all the operators in the gridsquare
have their call sign plotted on top of each other. Now if they
used their 6char grid locator, then each operator would have his
own dot).

Density of operators,contacts/gridsquare (for 6m qra list and for contents logs).

Enable plotting of the density of US hams. This required plotting of a box from 
a 6char gridlocator.

Fixed broken code for various grid: dat files

v1.04 Nov 96

	1. Orthographic orientation option (South at the top of
the page). Needed for people in the Southern Hemisphere (-:

	2. ARRL grid square labelling style added. The ARRL
style has much smaller labels for the grid squares and puts the
letter square labels in the bottom left of the square. The grid
square labelling style used in v1.00-v1.03 is now called az_proj
style.

	3. Several different options added for shading worked
grid squares (different colors, different cross hatching
methods) so that it's possible to mark grid squares worked by
two (or more) different people. See the sample grid.dat file for
more info. You can also use the same options for marking the
grids at the ends of a qso (see qso.dat for examples). Only one
type of grid data line now used.

	4. Plotting broadcast stations. A list of USA
(and some Mexican and Canadian stations) stations (MW, FM, TV)
in machine readable format has been produced by Colin K4SSO
(aa0yt (at) mo (dot) net, http://walden.mo.net/~aa0yt). Further lists
are expected (e.g. Australia). A separate file consisting
of only the North American Channel 2 stations (55.25MHz
useful as 6m propagation markers) has been added. A list of
European TV stations (from Geoff Brown and Emil W3EP) has been
converted to machine readable format, for 6m propagation
markers.

	5. DAT file formats are still changing (sorry).
Anything which is a transmitter (TV station, rover, beacon,
repeater) all have the same format. The only thing which changes
is the symbol displayed. Please note the changes detailed in
each .DAT file (at most you will have to add an extra colon or
two to your old files if you want to update them).

	6. GRID.DAT file format of v1.03 (there called grid2) is
now standard (now called grid: format). The old format
from v1.00 has been dropped.

	7. An install.bat file has been added to install AZ_PROJ
and Ghoscript onto a DOS machine with a VGA or SVGA monitor.
Sample batch files for testing both Ghostscript and AZ_PROJ are
included.

	8. Easier method for choosing when to draw grid square
borders and compass (in az_ini.ps). (Also clearer explanation
of what's happening, I hope).

	9. Display of USA by call areas (0..9) rather than
(or as well as) by states.

	10. Labelling feature. The center of the line on which
the label sits, is at the lat/lon (cf annotations where a blob
is at the lat/lon). This feature can be used for labelling
continents, countries... The size of the characters can be
chosen differently for each entry, and the size chosen scales
with the map scale. You can try this feature out, by labelling
the US call areas with the file us_call.dat when the numbers
0..9 will be drawn in each call area. The borders of the call
areas can be drawn by turning on /draw_USA_call_areas in
az_ini.ps.

	11. Can convert output from the contest logging program
CT to AZ_PROJ format.


v1.03 27 Aug 96

	Fixed main bug in v1.0.

	Added features:

	1. qso.dat file. Draws great circle route between
	two QTH's anywhere on earth. For plotting contacts
	during propagation openings (eg Es), to show
	center of Es cloud.

	2. comment fields added to grid2.dat, qso.dat

	3. .wdb files edited so that consecutive paths have
	different path descriptor numbers. Paths now have about
	1000 points or less. THese modifications simplify the code
	which reads the .wdb files.

	4. dxcc country names/callsigns can now be drawn around the
	circumference of the map


	5. Greylines can be drawn for sunset and sunrise at
	your QTH for any date(s).

	6. In the personal .dat files (mountain, rover, grid...)
	a comment field, ignored by az_proj, has been added.

	7. Config files added. You can use a small preconfigured
	file to make a map, in which only a small number of options
	is ever changed. Thus you can have a config file for HF,
	or VHF (or each VHF band, with a different scale).
	For examples, see hf_conf.ps and vhf_conf.ps



v1.01,1.02 Jun 96 - not publically released

	grid2.dat file: enables selecting worked grid squares
	by propagation mode (designed to supercede grid.dat file).

	Greyline routine improved so that the nightime part of the
	earth can be shaded.
Map Server at http://www.xray.duke.edu:1080/ - Apr 96

	Machine kindly provided by my work. A node that doesn't get
	much use, mine :-), is being used.



V1.0 released Jul 95

	Quickly found to have a bug when running in postscript
	mode (sending to printer, or using ghostscript
	feeding one big concatenated file). If a grid.dat
	file was sent to the printer before the .wdb files
	the printer would lock up. Funny that was working
	only a few weeks before ;-). Ran fine if using
	ghostscript with command line parameters



V0.9a, 0.9b (beta)

	released at VHF conferences in Memphis TN, Jul 94, and
	Vernon CT, Aug 94, for non distribution.


	Joe Mack NA3T jmack (@) wm7d (dot) net

	and

	Michael Katzmann NV3Z, michaelk (at) ieee (dot) org

	Sept 98

