For Astrolog32 V1.34, V1.34 CLI version, & Atlases:   southville.net  

For Astrolog32 V2.05, Atlases' bundles:   astrolog32.altervista.org  

For Astrolog32's 'Companion' guide:   astrolog32.altervista.org/linked  

For Astrolog32 V2.02, & some links:   orionsoft.cz  

The program folder called \main in the Astrolog32 install holds several readable files besides the program astrolog32.exe itself: they are:

  KEY: * only in V2.0x releases.

• 
  1) A summary of all the main features which are accessed via command line switches and parameters, along with the single key press commands that can be given to an X Window or PC graphics screen to change the display in various ways (assuming graphics are compiled in) is listed.
  THE LIST OF COMMAND SWITCHES.
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  2) The list of command switches and keys is repeated, but after each option is given a full description of the details of the feature.
  DESCRIPTION OF EACH COMMAND SWITCH, all accessed also from 1) above..
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  3) Descriptions of things that appear in Astrolog text displays are described. This consists of describing how to enter chart information, like dates, timezones, co-ordinates, into the program, and how to interpret what is seen in the standard main display.
  DATA ENTRY AND THE MAIN DISPLAY
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  4) Details of default settings, both in compile time options, and in the default configuration file, are described, along with using Astrolog files in general.
  FILES, DATA DEFAULTS, AND COMPILE TIME OPTIONS
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  5) Next is a description of the different graphic chart displays and how they are organized, and the X Windows features in general.
  DESCRIPTION OF X WINDOW GRAPHICS FEATURES (Looking for a quick display to prove Astrolog was worth downloading and/or compiling? With graphics try: "astrolog -Xn -XG"!)
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  6) Then are discussed the program's graphics features for PC's, how to use them, the ways they are different from X Windows, and the best way to use them if running the DOS version under Microsoft Windows.
  DESCRIPTION OF DOS GRAPHICS FEATURES
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  7) Then is discussed Astrolog for Windows, and a description of the easy to use menu and dialog interface it offers:
  DESCRIPTION OF MS WINDOWS FEATURES ~ Recommended for Beginners
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  8) Finally is a section on compiling Astrolog if you have the source code files, as opposed to an executable ready to run, as well as how to compile and run Astrolog on the Macintosh.
  COMPILING INSTRUCTIONS

This option displays a list exactly like the one given above on the screen. Note: Concerning the list itself, PC users are accustomed to seeing command switches with a leading slash "/" instead of a dash "-". To accommodate this, this list of options available does, if the program has been compiled for a PC, display all the switches with a leading "/" instead of a "-". (On Unix and other systems they will be displayed with the standard leading "-".)

This help switch displays a full page of credits, listing the names of those who programmed Astrolog or parts of it, and important copyright information and other legal items. Every time the program is invoked, the -Hc switch is mentioned to use to see this info.

The -HC switch will display a list of the 12 signs of the zodiac, and the 12 houses, listing their standard and traditional names. This is similar to switches like -HO or -HA below, in that it displays lists of things (objects, aspects, or in this case the signs) that Astrolog uses in its charts.

Similar to the -HA option below, the -HO option will list the planets and other celestial objects used by the program, and their numbers as recognized by the -R restrictions (mentioned later). This list will also show the zodiac signs that planets rule, fall in, are exalted in, and debilitated in. Stars are printed in the list along with their azimuth, altitude, and brightness values. Note that this list shows only those items that aren't restricted when its displayed; if you want to show all 87 objects regardless of restriction status, just use the -R1 switch to activate them all and combine it with -HO.

Concerning objects the program can do, Astrolog can do the position of Lilith, often called the "Dark Moon". This Lilith is the point in space of one focus of the Moon's elliptical orbit around the Earth (Earth itself being in the other of the two), and not the asteroid or hypothetical planet by the same name. Lilith is object number 17 in Astrolog, and in graphics charts its glyph is a small circle with a forward slash through it. If preferred, one can use the -YXG glyph selection switch (described later) to choose the "European" version of the glyph which is like the glyph for the Moon but smaller and flipped horizontally.

Astrolog computes the position of Lilith as provided by the accurate Placalc formula set. This means that the -b ephemeris switch (covered later) needs to be in effect to get Lilith's positions. When the -b setting is off, Astrolog will display the position of the South Node for object 17 instead. We tweak the name of the object to be "S.Node", change its rulerships and interpretation string appropriately, and change the graphics glyph to be the standard "upside down horseshoe" (a third glyph selectable via -YXG), although we won't automatically update everything again if you toggle the -b flag while the program is running.

Astrolog can do the position of the East Point as well, which is technically the same as the position of the Ascendant at the equator for whatever time. This is object number 20 in Astrolog, and its graphics glyph is a simple "EP" abbreviation.

The -HA command switch gives a list of all 18 supported aspects, their abbreviations as used in the aspect grids, their angles, and their orbs. It will list the number of each aspect in addition to all the other info (e.g. conjunct = 1, opposition = 2, etc.) so one can see what number to pass to the -A switch when changing the number of aspects used (see later). Finally, it will print a brief description of what each aspect glyph looks like. This is in case one doesn't know what aspects the weird symbols in the -g -X graphic displays are referring to.

This will display a text table of all the constellations, listing their traditional names, their astronomical abbreviations as used in the graphics above, their English meanings, and even their genitive or possessive form (e.g. "Lyra" is the name of the constellation, but the star Vega in it is called Alpha "Lyrae").

This is a another static table which will display some astronomical information about the main planets (and Earth's Moon) in a simple form. For each planet is shown its distance from the Sun (or Earth) in Astronomical Units (AU), its orbital period in Earth years, its diameter relative to the Earth (Earth being 1), its rotational period (i.e. day) in hours, its mass relative to the Earth (Earth being 1), its average density with respect to water (water being 1), the tilt of its axis with respect to its orbit, and finally the number of known moons or satellites it has. This table also includes Chiron and the four asteroids, at least for the distance from Sun, length of year, and diameter fields.

This will display the general meanings of each sign, each house, each planet, and each aspect, on the screen. This shows more or less the database the program uses to base its interpretations on (see the -I switch setting for charts later).

This switch will print out all ten of Astrolog's static table help listings, like what -e does for actual charts. Specifically, this will show the -Hc copyright screen, the -H switch list, the -Y obscure switch list, the -HX graphics key press list, the -HC sign and house list, the -HO object list, the -HA aspect list, the -HF constellation list, the -HS planet information list, and the -HI core interpretation list, for over 500 lines of informational output.

Usually when Astrolog finishes printing the specified chart or charts, or when we leave a graphics screen mode, the program will terminate. However, sometimes one wants to display or work with lots of charts or options, which would normally cause them to have to invoke the program over and over again from their shell, using many processes, and can be slow loading over and over from a slow disk. Auto-termination is also bad when automatically starting up the program in an X window or DOS box - once the program finishes, the container will exit right away too, not allowing reading of the text charts. The -Q switch causes the program to enter a looping mode environment where (after the first chart is displayed) the user will automatically be prompted to enter a new set of command switches (using the no SWITCHES interface described later) which will be processed. This will go on and the program will run until you enter "." on a line for the switches to really terminate it.

Program errors which normally cause Astrolog to exit right away, will (unless "fatal" errors) return the user back to this outer loop. What's more is that being in the loop doesn't cause all the minor program variables to be reset every time. The main things like what info to use and what charts to display must be specified each time, but minor modes (such as the present -x harmonic factor) won't, so say specify -x 5 once, and you will be casting fifth harmonic charts until you specify otherwise or exit the loop, not having to include -x each time.

This is just like -Q above except that the user will first be prompted for command switches right upon entering the program. Note that these will be in addition to whatever else was on the command line where the -Q0 itself was specified. This is mostly useful when running on a Windows system (see later) where one can have -Q0 as a default switch to pass to the program. Upon activation, the user will be in a loop with Astrolog asking for switches right away before proceeding to generate or prompt for any chart information.

Astrolog has a feature to run "switch macros", or a whole command line with one small switch. The -M switch takes one parameter, which is the number of the macro to run. When encountered, the switches it represents will be processed. This is similar to loading in a generic command file with -i, except macros are limited to one command line. Macros however don't require separate files, and may even call command files themselves with -i.

The switch -M0 is the option that defines a macro. It takes two parameters: the index of the macro to define, and a string representing the command line to assign to it. (The command string probably needs to be in quotes to ensure it's treated as one parameter to -M0, instead of many items which will get processed right away.) There are 48 macro slots available to define or run. Macros may do anything and even call or define other macros. It's possible to get in a infinite loop if you make a macro (or command file) call or load itself; such cases aren't detected and will make the program terminate with some unusual error.

Macros are very powerful and their uses are nearly endless. A bunch can be defined in the astrolog.dat config file for your most common switch sequences, hopefully preventing things such as batch files that would have to be created otherwise. Suppose you often want to see the transits of outer planets only to the house cusps in your natal chart for the current month. The command line for this is "-i yourchart -tn -RT0 6 7 8 9 10 -R0 -RC -C". You can assign this to the tenth macro slot with: -M0 10 "-i yourchart -tn -RT0 jup sat ura nep plu -R0 -RC -C". That line can be put in your astrolog32.dat and you can do this month's transits by just typing "astrolog -M 10".
Here's another example: Suppose you want a feature to bring up the chart of the spouse of whoever's chart you are viewing at any time. You can define a special macro, say in slot 5, in each of your chart info files which does a -i on the file of their spouse, or does nothing if they're unmarried. Now when in graphics mode, you can press 'F5' anytime and Astrolog will bring up the spouse's chart! You could define a bunch of macros to set various color sets or aspect orbs and switch among them quickly using the function keys. You could even make a simple chart database by having each chart file load the next one in sequence in some macro, and then cycle through your charts by running that macro in a -Q loop or from the graphics screen.

This displays a list of available command switches, like the -H option but showing only "less common" switches that would clutter things up if they were in the main list, and are usually only specified in configuration files. Hence almost all of those switches begin with 'Y'.

This is just a formal specification for the standard chart listing of the planetary positions. One will get this chart by default if they don't specify any other chart types, and they will get it along with everything else in the -e option (see below). Although it isn't necessary, it must be included if one wants this type of chart to be displayed along with some of the other chart types described below.

This switch is just like -v except that it modifies the planet velocities fields slightly. (See later for a description of these velocity fields.) The -v switch normally expresses velocity values as an *absolute* quantity in degrees per day that the object appears to have moved through the zodiac. This means that outer planets will generally always have lower values, e.g. although a velocity of 0.010 degrees/day for fast moving Mercury means it's about to turn retrograde, the same velocity value is normal for slow moving Pluto. As it is useful to know when a planet is about to change direction, the -v0 switch will divide the actual velocity values by how fast each planet moves with respect to the Sun, meaning that all planets will have an average *relative* velocity value of 1.000, and in all cases, a velocity of 2.000 means the planet is moving twice as fast as normal, and one of 0.010 means the planet is about to turn retrograde.

Note: The -v0 switch which expresses planetary velocities relative to average speed has a known incompatibility will cause some applying vs. separating aspect orbs to be inverted, i.e. displayed as applying when the reverse is true or vice versa. This affects app/sep aspect grids and aspect lists (-ga, -ma, and -D charts, but not the -T transit influence charts). This is because the velocities are used to determine applying vs. separating to see if one planet is overtaking another. The bug comes with the program thinking that, for example, Pluto moving 2 times faster than normal, will soon overtake Mars, slightly ahead of it in the zodiac, moving half normal speed. When the values are expressed as absolute speed, it's apparent that the outer planet Pluto always moves much slower than the more inner planet Mars even when Mars is moving half normal speed. This problem is at least not likely to come up much since only explicitly combining -v0 with -ga, -ma, or -D will cause a problem.

Display of the chart in a nice wheel format is supported using the -w switch. (If one of the houses gets too "full" of planets, the planet will be put at the beginning of the next house.) The same chart header/footer information as is at the top of the standard -v chart is printed in the middle of the wheel. Some information in addition to this is shown, which is: (1) the day of the week that the date falls on, (2) the Universal Time (UT) of the time of the chart being cast (like GMT in the 24 hour clock), (3) the sidereal time for the chart cast, where sidereal time is vaguely similar to UT except 0:00 for it is approximately when 0 Aries crosses the meridian, as opposed to when the Sun crosses the Nadir for UT, (4) whether the zodiac system is set to tropical or sidereal, and whether the planetary positions are geocentric, heliocentric, or centered around some other body, and (5) the Julian day corresponding to the date and time of the chart. This chart will automatically exclude a house object from being listed if its position is the same as the cusp composing the wheel.

Note that this switch takes an optional parameter to specify the size in text rows of each house printed. By default this is four, but one may increase (realize this will make the chart require more than 24 lines to print) or decrease (don't know why you would want to, but you can) this value to their preference. The parameter may range from 1 to 10, and with this you can nicely generate a text wheel chart with all 87 objects in it, without overflowing all the houses.

In the -w text wheel option, the objects in each house are printed from top to bottom in order from earliest in the house to latest. This looks good except for in houses 5..8 where this would appear backwards (e.g. a planet having just entered the 6th house from the 5th would be displayed right under the Descendant.) Therefore the objects from houses 4 through 9 are reversed and printed in order from bottom to top, making a more flowing looking wheel chart. If however, one always wants each house to be filled from its top to bottom regardless of which house, replace the -w with the -w0 switch.

Aspects and midpoint display are supported: Invoke as astrolog -g and a rectangular grid showing the midpoint locations for each planet, and showing if any aspects are present and how accurate they are, is displayed. The planets are labeled down the main diagonal of the grid, with the aspects to the lower left and the midpoints in the upper right. This is of course often used along with the -A* switches. Both the aspect orbs and midpoints are displayed to the nearest minute, and on the main diagonal (or edges if a relationship aspect grid) is displayed the sign and degree of the planet in question in addition to the planet name itself.

Search through the aspect grid for major aspect configurations, including Grand Trines, T-Squares, Grand Crosses, Yod's, Cradles, and Stelliums, with the -g0 option. (In a Stellium, three objects must all be conjunct with each other; while in a Cradle, four objects form three sextiles forming a chain of sextiles half way around the zodiac.) This option will produce the same aspect grid that -g displays, but afterwards will go through the grid and list any of these aspect configurations and what objects are forming them. (Of course, to see any Yod's, one has to -A 6 or more so that Inconjuncts will be included in the aspect grid.)

For relationship aspect grids, the -g0 switch will display a midpoint grid instead of an aspect grid between the planets in the two charts e.g. "-r0 chart1 chart2 -g0". (See later for descriptions of the relationship charts.)

Ability to determine whether an aspect is applying or separating (is about to happen or just happened) is included in the -g option. Normally the aspect orbs are flagged as being '+' or '-' based on whether they are greater or less than the exact amount (e.g. a 91 degree Square has a +1 degree orb while a 89 degree one a -1 orb.) If one, however, invokes the -g option as -ga instead, an orb printed as 'a' will indicate an applying aspect while an orb with 's' a separating one. (To estimate applying vs. separating, the program examines the planetary positions and their relative velocities at the time in question.)

Astrolog can do parallel and contraparallel aspects. Two planets are parallel when they have the same declination with respect to the equator, and are contraparallel when their declinations are the same amount but on opposite sides of the equatorial plane. The -gp switch will turn on the aspect grid just like the -g option, but will also set it so the grid contains parallel and contraparallel instead of normal aspects. This feature works for the -g aspect and relationship aspect grids, and the graphics versions of them. The graphic glyph for the parallel aspect is two vertical parallel lines, while the glyph for contraparallel are two sets of two lines crossing each other, like a tic-tac-toe grid. In -gp affected charts, the parallel takes the place of conjunction, and contraparallel the place of opposition; all aspect orb settings affecting conjunction and opposition will affect the -gp aspects in the same way. (Note that the best orb for parallel aspects is only a degree or so, hence the default conjunction orb will likely be too high, and should be decreased with the -Ao switch for -gp grids.) The -A and -RA aspect selection switches will also affect -gp, but all aspects beyond the first two are ignored as only the parallel and the contraparallel aspect are considered.

Aspects may be displayed in a nice ordered list, instead of only in the -g aspect grid. Use the -a switch and get a list of every aspect from the aspect grid printed out one per line. The order in which they are printed is based on the total "power" in the aspect, i.e. the influence of the two planets in question, the aspect in question, and the orb. The same info and data from the -j influence charts (see later) are used here, so changing any default influences there will affect this ordering. The two planets are printed, the aspect they make, their orb, and then the power of the aspect used in ordering. Any power number more than 10 is a very major aspect. An exact Sun Moon conjunction can exceed 25. So, if you want to know, say, if that exact Mars Jupiter conjunction is more powerful than that wide Sun Moon sextile, try a -a chart and find out what Astrolog's opinion is.

This is just like the -a aspect list ordered by influence chart, except that summary information will be displayed afterward. The sum of all the aspect powers and their average is printed, the total number of aspects of each type is printed, and the total number of aspects to each planet is printed.

This is a shorthand way to bring up the -a or -a0 sorted aspect chart, with the aspect orbs shown as applying or separating, instead of positive or negative offsets to the exact aspect size. This is like how -ga does the same thing with the -g aspect grid switch. (To get the functionality of -aa without this, one can use the -ga switch itself along with -a, and then include -g by itself again, e.g. "-a -ga -g", to toggle the aspect grid back off but leave the applying vs. separating setting on!)

The -a aspect list can be made to list all parallel and contraparallel aspects if invoked as -ap or -a0p, turning on the same flag as the -gp switch above. When in effect, the parallel aspect setting will also affect -D and -T transit influence charts, having them show their aspects in parallel too.

True midpoint charts are supported in addition to the midpoints that can be seen in the -g aspect grid. Use the -m switch and get a list of all midpoints printed out sorted in zodiac order. This will show both the actual midpoint location, as well as the angular difference between the two objects displayed to the nearest minute. So if you want to see, say, if any important midpoint is close to your Sun, this is a much easier chart to use than scrutinizing the midpoint/aspect grid.

This is just like the -m midpoint list ordered by zodiac position chart, except that summary information for it will be displayed afterward. The average number of degrees spanned between each planet pair is printed, and the total number of midpoints in each zodiac sign is printed.

Aspects to midpoints are supported with the -ma switch. This feature will do the same as the -m midpoint list chart, except in addition to listing each midpoint, a sublist of each aspect in effect from a natal planet to the position of that midpoint, will be shown after it. The orb of the aspect will be printed too, where the orb will be shown as either wide or narrow, or applying or separating, based on the value of the -ga or -aa applying aspects setting.

The text display switch -Z prints out where each object is on the local horizon in terms of altitude and azimuth. For each object, the following is displayed: Its altitude on the local horizon from +90 degrees (straight up) to -90 degrees (straight down), and its azimuth from 0..360 degrees, where 0 = due east, 90 = north, 180 = west, 270 = south. To make visualizing the azimuth easier, an "azimuth vector" with a N/S component and a W/E component is displayed, e.g. (1.00s 0.33w) means that the object is mainly south, with its true angle being formed by an vector component west that's 1/3 the strength of the south component, i.e. the object is about 18 degrees west of south. This along with the altitude should make it easy to physically point to where any planet is at any moment, making it easy to locate planets in the night sky. This feature can also be used to determine the times that a planet rises and sets. Also displayed are altitude and azimuth differences between each object and the Sun and Moon, first showing the number of degrees that the Sun/Moon is "ahead" (or farther east in the zodiac) of the object in question, and then the number of degrees that the Sun/Moon is above the object in question. This feature can be used to roughly predict eclipses! Both the Sun and Moon span about 0.5 degrees in the sky, therefore if both the azimuth and altitude differences are < 0.5 (or 1.0 if the difference is between the Sun and Moon themselves) then the object in question is probably being occulted somewhat by the Sun/Moon. Note that there are three types of planetary position displays: Right ascension and declination showing the object's position with respect to the stars, longitude and latitude showing where on the Earth the object is straight up (as in the astro-graph zenith locations), and finally azimuth and altitude showing the positions of the object relative to the local horizon.

This will do a text chart just like the -Z local horizon switch above except that it will print the location of each planet in prime vertical coordinates, instead of altitude and azimuth. Prime vertical coordinates are measured with its "azimuth" around the 360 degree circle, with 0 degrees due east on the local horizon, going down with 90 degrees straight down, 180 degrees due west and so on; declination "altitudes" are measured with positive values toward the north and negative toward the south.

One can display the rising and setting times of the Sun, Moon, and planets with this feature. Specifically, when this switch is included, the program will, for the entire day specified in the chart information, display whenever a planet rises (specifically conjuncts the local horizon while in the eastern hemisphere), sets (conjuncts horizon in west), reaches its zenith point (or specifically conjuncts the meridian while in the southern hemisphere, i.e. is due south from the observer), and reaches its nadir point (conjuncts meridian in north). Note that some stars may be high or low enough that they will never rise or set, but instead will just "zenith" or "nadir" twice in a day as they spin around the pole.

Solar system space based charts are available with the -S switch, which give the astronomical positions of each planet in terms of x, y, and z coordinates. Although not directly useful astrologically, it does give one a good view of how the planets actually were positioned at the time in question. For example, normal astrology doesn't make the distinction between the four different "forms" of say, a Mercury Venus Conjunction, i.e. they can either be Conjunct on the near side of the Sun, Conjunct on the far side of the Sun, or one can be on one side and the other on the other side. When the chart is actually displayed, for each body the following information is printed: The relative angle of the planet with respect to the central body, i.e. its zodiac position converted to the appropriate number from 0..360. This is followed by the x, y, and z coordinate positions of the object, in astronomical units from the central body. The x-axis increases in the direction of 0 degrees Aries (tropical zodiac), the y-axis increases in the direction of 0 degrees Cancer, and the z-axis is with respect to the Earth's orbit (meaning that the Sun and Earth always have a z-axis value of 0.0). Finally the overall length from the central body in AU is printed, which is just the diagonal as indicated by the x, y, z vectors. (The Earth and Sun are of course always about 1.0 AU from each other.) The Moon circles the Earth and isn't a part of the solar system proper; therefore, it is never in these charts. The -e everything option will include this chart in its listing of all the chart displays. (Note that the Earth doesn't have a formal object index of its own. Hence there's no real way to directly restrict it from these -S space charts either in text or graphics format. Only the -R0 (and -R1) restrict everything switches will affect this body, as they do all the others.)

Astrolog supports Gauquelin sector charts. These are based on the work of Michael Gauquelin, with a sector chart basically a type of wheel chart where the planets are placed in their appropriate Gauquelin sector instead of zodiac sign at a given time. Sectors are numbered from 1 to 36, and indicate proportions of time between rising and setting. Sectors 1 through 18 are above the horizon, and 19 through 36 are below. When a planet rises it goes from sector 36 to 1, when 1/18th of the time until the moment it sets has passed it enters sector 2, and so on. A sector chart can be thought of as somewhat related to a standard wheel chart, except that it's "time based" instead of "location based". In interpretation, certain sectors are known to be powerful. These sectors are called plus zones and are the sectors immediately before and a bit after the four angles. For a more detailed account on interpretation, see books such as Gauquelin's "Cosmic Influences on Human Behavior". To bring up a sector chart, use the -l command switch.

The text mode version of this chart is similar to the standard -v listing. The chart info time and place will be displayed, after which, for each planet, the sector it's in will be displayed, with a "+" indicating a plus zone, and a "-" indicating such is not the case (where with colored text active plus zones will be in red and minus dark green). Then as in the standard listing, the planet's house, zodiac location, retrogradation status, equatorial latitude, and velocity will be printed. Finally will be displayed two alternative sector locations assuming systems where sectors go from 1 to 18, and from 1 to 12 (where for example the beginning of sector 36 will map to sector location 18.5, and 12.75, respectively). After this, summary information will be displayed. The number and percentage of planets that fall in plus zones (as well as the number and percentage of plus zones period) will be printed, and for each of the 36 sectors, the number of planets that fall in it and whether it's a plus zone will be indicated.

Calculating correct Gauquelin sector positions is based on rising and setting times, which require searches, hence computing the chart takes quite a bit longer than regular wheels. It's like the -Zd rising and setting list, where increasing the -d searching divisions value increases the accuracy and calculation time here too. To cut calculation time down to that of ordinary charts, one may do a reasonable approximation of sector positions based on how far each planet has progressed through a corresponding house (specifically house cusps divided using Placidus). To compute charts in this fast manner, invoke the -l switch as -l0.

Another chart type is available - interpretation of influences. This is the simplest part of the general interpretation ability of the program. What this part does is calculate the relative "power" of each planet's placement, giving a general idea of the prominent areas of a chart. When such a chart is printed, each planet is given a point value, larger numbers indicating more strength. Each planet's strength is divided between two fields: the positioning in and of itself, and the power of the aspects it makes with the other planets. In addition to each field, the total of these two areas is printed, as well as the relative percentage of the planet in question with respect to all the planets combined. Each planet gets a ranking for its positioning, aspects, and total power as well, with the strongest getting #1, the next strongest #2, etc. The -e option will include this chart along with all the others as well in it's listing of all the chart displays.

To determine the strength of the positioning of a planet, various things are taken into account: 1) The power of a planet in and of itself, e.g. the Sun and Moon are more powerful then the other planets. 2) The house placement of a planet, e.g. a planet in the 1st house is more powerful than one in the 2nd. 3) Whether a planet is in the sign it rules or is exalted in, e.g. Jupiter in Sag results in more power to Jupiter. 4) Whether a planet is in the house corresponding to the sign it rules or is exalted in, e.g. Jupiter in the 9th house. 5) Planets get more power if the signs they rule are occupied, e.g. a bunch of stuff in Aquarius gives more power to Uranus. 6) Planets get more power if the houses they rule are occupied, e.g. a bunch of stuff in the 11th house gives power to Uranus. 7) Finally, planets get power according to what houses the cusps of which fall in the signs they rule, i.e. the ruler of the Ascendant (and to less extent the Midheaven, and so on) gets lots of influence. Determining the strength of a planet's aspects is much easier, and is basically composed of the sum of the strength of each aspect the planet makes. Taken into account are: 1) The influence of the planet being aspected to, e.g. Sun conjunct Jupiter gives more influence to Jupiter than Mercury conjunct Jupiter would. The planet's placement as described above plays a role, too, e.g. Venus opposition Mars in Aries gives more influence to Venus that it would be if Mars were in Taurus. 2) The influence of the aspect itself, e.g. Oppositions are more powerful then Sextiles. 3) Finally the orb of the aspect, i.e. exact aspects are more powerful than wide ones. (The influence of the orb varies linearly from max power at exact to zero power at the limit of the orb - sorry Maggie M. and Mark K. - no complex aspect wave functions, at least for this version :)

Special thanks goes to Mark K. who initially presented this idea of interpreting overall influences to me. I basically just took his ideas, polished them a bit, and put it into the code. Interestingly, while programming this feature, I had a dream about him, in which he elaborated upon some of the ideas and even gave me suggestions for some of the planets' default power values (astral visitation?) And, while on the subject, I've had a couple of other Astrolog dreams; I had one neat one while working on the -h feature (described later) about a far distant future version of Astrolog that could actually teleport one to the places which they cast charts for :)

The '-L' option will take the standard chart information and generate the astro-graph positions of the planets. In other words, this does the exact same thing that Jim Lewis' Astro*Carto*Graphy maps do. It will display the longitude of where on the Earth at the time in question each object was on the midheaven and on the nadir, and the latitude of where the planets actually appeared at zenith. Also, for latitude increments of 5 degrees, the longitude of where the objects appeared on the ascendant and descendant is displayed. For text screens, one can pass an optional parameter to this -L (or -L0) option to change the default latitude step rate at which the Ascendant and Descendant lines are computed. Again, this value is by default 5 degrees, although one can may increase or decrease it to any integer (subject to the restriction that the number 160 is divisible by it.)

Determination of latitude crossing points is included in the astro-graph routines! The -L0 option will do the same thing as the -L option, except that after displaying the longitude and latitude locations of the Asc/Desc/MC/IC lines, it will then search among the lines and display (in order from farthest North to farthest South) the latitude of any points where lines cross each other. This includes the curvy Asc/Desc lines crossing the straight MC/IC lines as well as cases where different Asc/Desc lines cross themselves. And unlike Jim Lewis' Astro*Carto*Graphy, Astrolog will also display the longitude of the crossing (useful for Asc/Desc crossings) in addition to the latitude (as well allowing more planetary bodies to be included in the scan, and going farther North and South than Jim Lewis' printouts go.) Note however, that there is presently a small (very rare) minor omission glitch in the code, where if a crossing is within a couple of degrees of 180 deg W/E, it may not be displayed.

The -K switch generates a simple calendar for the month specified in the current chart. This is a standard type of chart generatable from a date so the -e everything switch includes this -K chart along with all the others. Note that this is technically a non-astrological chart, but generic calendars are useful and easy to generate with all of Astrolog's date determination features, so the option to create them using Astrolog is included. The calendars are compact, with one text row per week. The day specified in the current chart will be highlighted in green assuming -k Ansi color is active, e.g. "-n -K" will generate a chart for this month, with the number of today's date highlighted.

The -Ky switch is just like -K except that it will generate a calendar for the whole year. All twelve months will be displayed on the screen, each just like the individual monthly calendars above but printed in four rows of three months each.

The -d option can search the entire month for aspects between planets if one so desires. Specifying it as -dm instead of just -d will go through the entire month instead of just the current day. (Combining this one with -R allows searching for important aspects, sign changes, etc.)

The -d option can search the entire given year for events as well, if it's specified as -dy instead of just -d or -dm.

The -d search may also do a range of years all at once. Invoke the switch as -dY, and give a parameter indicating the number of years to span, and it will be done, starting with the year in the current chart. For example, to display the times of all New and Full moons for the rest of the century (1998 through 2000), do "astrolog -n -dY 3 -R0 sun moo -A opp". (This is similar to the -EY and -tY features which also allow doing a range of years in addition to a single year or month.)

Another progression feature allows determining aspect times of progressed planets among themselves. The -dp <month> <year> switch will, like the -d option, display times of aspects and sign changes, for the time around the chart in question, except that they will be progressed throughout the month specified. Progressed planets move very slowly ("year for a day") so therefore there will usually be, if any, only a couple of aspects in a given month. Also, since they move so slow, the accuracy is cut down, so the dates given are probably only accurate about to the nearest day, in spite of the times given to the minute. Note that Astrolog can scan for aspects of: transiting planets among themselves (-d switch), transiting planets to natal planets (-T switch), progressed planets to natal planets (-Tp), and progressed planets among themselves (-dp). Only thing Astrolog can't directly do is do progressed planets to transiting planets, although that may change in a future version :)

Since progressed planets move so slow and only a few aspects in a progressed chart will appear each month, one might want to instead scan the whole year. To do this, use the -dpy switch, which takes only one parameter for the year. This switch is consistent in format to how with the -T and -E switches one specifies an entire year.

Related to above, the -dp option may also be done for a range of years. Invoke the switch as -dpY, and pass in not only the year to search within as with -dpy, but the number of years to scan from then. For example, do display the times of all aspects within your progressed chart for the next decade, do "astrolog -i yourchartfile -dpY 1998 10".

The -dp progression event search option can be invoked as -dpn to search the current month, or -dpyn to search the entire current year. For example, if I want to search for the exact times of all aspects in my natal chart, progressed to any time this month, I simply do "-i mychartfile -dpn".

This switch will display a chart listing all aspects in effect within the chart in question, in order by influence based on their power when transiting. This chart focuses upon and gives precedence to aspects of outer planets with each other, as opposed to common inner planet configurations. For example, at the time in early January 1994 the most influential aspects in effect were the Uranus Neptune conjunction and the Saturn Pluto square. This chart is very much like the format of the -a aspect list chart, except that we are using the transit as opposed to natal influences of the planets. The -a chart is most appropriate for a person's natal chart, in that the inner planets are focused upon, such as a Sun Moon square will be near the top of the list. This -D chart is more appropriate for times as opposed to people, since it focuses upon rare outer planet configurations. This chart is also very similar to the -T transit influence chart, in that it shows the aspect, applying or separating orb, and power of the event with its present orb, except that this does influences of transiting planets among themselves as opposed to aspects to a natal chart. If you want to see what major events are coming up, and don't want things such as Uranus Neptune conjunctions to "sneak by", use this chart and watch the configuration gradually rise to the top of the list as its orb narrows over time. This chart may be combined with others and is included in the -e everything switch.

The -E option will generate a quick ephemeris of the planet positions each day for the month indicated in the given chart, as taken from the standard interface. This is useful if you just want to see an overview of what's happening some month in the sky. Any dots after a planet location in the list indicate the planet was retrograde at the time that day. For example, to see the ephemeris for someone's birth month, one can do the convenient "-i chartfile -E", or to see the ephemeris for this month, do "-n -E" (see -i and -n options later). The -E text ephemeris switch may be combined with the -gp or -ap parallel aspects feature to generate an ephemeris of ecliptic latitudes (or equatorial declinations if the -sr flag is in effect) instead of the normal zodiac longitudes.

Note: The ephemeris listings obtain the time (and time zone) to cast each day's chart for (e.g. noon, midnight) from the chart information given it, instead of always defaulting to something like midnight in the default time zone. This is a bit more flexible since one may want to specify a noon or 6:00am or whatever ephemeris which wouldn't be possible otherwise. The -qm <month> <year> switch (see later) always uses midnight for the time and the default for the time zone, so when using this switch with -E, the results will be a midnight ephemeris in this default zone. However, something like -i yourchart -E to do an ephemeris for your birth month will display the positions each day at your birthtime instead of at midnight.

To display an ephemeris for all twelve months in an entire year, invoke the -E switch as -Ey. For example, to get an ephemeris for all of last year, one can do "-qy 1995 -Ey" (see -qy and -qm options below).

The -E ephemeris list feature may also do an ephemeris for a range of years all at once. Invoke the switch as -EY, and pass a parameter indicating the number of years to span with the ephemeris, and it will be done, starting with the year in the current chart. For example, to do an ephemeris for all this century from 1900 through 1999, do "astrolog -qy 1900 -EY 100".

There are thirteen main different formats of chart display available: The standard listing of planet positions which you get without any switches or with the -v option, the house wheel you get with -w, the aspect/midpoint grid you get with -g, and the charts generated with the -a, -m, -Z, -S, -j, -L, -K, -d, -D, and -E switches. The -e "everything" option will display the chart in all thirteen of these formats for about 1200 lines and 75K bytes of text! Note that one can even include the -t and/or -T transit options below and include yet a couple more chart formats in the list (however transits require a time parameter to do transits for so they aren't really a single chart display and hence aren't included in -e by default).

The '-t <month> <year>' option will scan the entire month specified, and print out any transits that happen, in that month, to the planet positions as listed in the current chart as taken from the standard interface. There will be often be quite a few events, even though fast moving objects like the Moon aren't looked at by default (unless specified in the default parameter file or with the -RT switch), so you might want to use this with the -R option to limit this to just certain planets. The times are displayed in the local time zone, and are generally accurate to within a half hour or so, where accuracy can be increased by upping the value in the -d searching divisions setting; try doing it for your birth month and your own chart - all planets should conjunct their natal positions at about the time of your birth. To determine transits to natal house cusps other than the Asc and MC, i.e. when does a planet change house in your natal chart, include the -C switch described elsewhere. See the -RT option, as well as the -YC "smart cusps" default, described later, for options which directly affect this feature.

Note that even transiting house cusps (and other fast moving objects like the Part of Fortune, Vertex, and East Point) may be included in these transit to natal searches. (To activate transiting cusp objects use the -RT switch.) This allows one to determine the time of events such as when the Ascendant today conjuncts your natal Sun. Note that as the house cusps travel through all 360 degrees of the zodiac during the day, a cusp will make a transit roughly 30 times as often as even the fast moving Moon, the Moon itself making transits 12 times as often as planets like the Sun. So realize you may get a flood of information, and hence probably do want to restrict all planets and aspects you're not interested in. Note also that to get accurate times for transiting cusp events, you probably want a high value for the -d searching divisions setting (I recommend at least 200) which means longer calculations.M

Determining dates of transits of progressed planets to natal planets can be done with the -tp <month> <year> option. This is just like the -t option, except that the exact aspects of progressed planets (rather than transiting planets) to the planets in the chart are displayed. Progressions occur much less often than transits, and there will only be a few, if any, in a given month, so one might to invoke this as -Tpy, as described below.

This switch is a quick and convenient way to compute solar, lunar, and other returns. As a return is when a transiting object conjuncts its natal position, returns are findable using the generic -t transit to natal search. However to only display returns with it and not every transit, one has to restrict aspects to just the conjunction, and restrict objects to just the one you're interested in. (But even that will still show things in addition to returns if more than one object is unrestricted, e.g. with just Sun and Moon you'll still get Sun to Moon conjunctions and vice-versa.) The solution is this return feature, which (without altering your aspect or object restrictions any) works just like the -t switch, but displays only returns in the transit list, i.e. conjunctions between a transiting planet and that same planet in the natal chart.

To display transits for an entire year, invoke the -t switch as -ty (-tpy for progressions), which only takes one parameter, the year. For example, "-i chartfile -ty 1998".

One may also search an arbitrary number of years at once for transits. One uses the -tY <year> <years> switch like the -ty <year> switch above, except that -tY takes an extra parameter for how many years to search. For example, -tY 1998 10 will search the ten years from 1998 through 2007 for whatever transits. With a negative value for the years to scan, it will start that many years before the given year, e.g. -tY 1998 -10000 will scan the previous 100 centuries for transits, starting with 8002 B.C.! Note that this switch may also be invoked as "-tYn <years>", in which case it will start from the current year and be an equivalent shorthand to "-tY 1998 <years>" for this year at least.

This feature is a quick shorthand way to generate transits for the current month. For example, instead of "astrolog -i chartfile -t 4 1998", one can do "astrolog -i chartfile -tn". To do transits for the entire current year, invoke it as "-tyn".

The -T switch is a transit influence chart. Given a date, it will take the transiting planets on that date, and determine how they interact with the generic natal chart specified with -i or however. The information will be printed as a list of transits, sorted in order from most significant to least significant. For each transit in effect, the transiting and natal planets (and the signs they are in) are displayed, along with the aspect and the orb, and whether the transit is applying and going to happen in the future, or just passed exactness and the orb is separating. The computer computed power value of each transit will be printed too - anything over 100 is a very major transit. Any transit that's a return, i.e. a transiting planet conjuncting the same one in the natal chart, will be flagged with a capital "R" at the end of the line.

The things which affect how Astrolog computes the influence of a transit are: The power of the object that's doing the transit, e.g. transiting Pluto conjunct your natal Ascendant is much more powerful than the transiting Moon conjunct your Ascendant. The power of the object being transited affects the power too (but not as much as the transiter) e.g. Jupiter transiting your Sun is more powerful than Jupiter transiting an asteroid. Finally, the orb plays a role as well, in that a transit that will be exact in a couple of days from the given date passed to -y is more powerful than one won't be exact for another month. Note that the power of a planet when transiting is different than its influence in the natal chart: Although Sun conjunct Moon is more powerful in a natal chart than Saturn conjunct Moon, when transiting, Saturn transiting Moon is much more influential than Sun transiting Moon. Hence there are two lists of object influence values in the astrolog.dat file (described later) that can be customized. There's the generic list of standard influences (which have items like Sun, Moon, and Ascendant most powerful), and a parallel list of transit influences (which have the slower moving bodies the most powerful).

Related to the -tr switch above, the -T switch can be invoked as -Tr, which is the same as the general transit influence chart, but will only display aspects between a transiting planet and the same natal planet. (Note unlike -tr it will include aspects other than the conjunction.)

This switch is in compliment to the -t transit search list, and you may find this one more useful. The -t chart prints the times when a transit is exact, which is useful to know, but doesn't really help when you want to know when a transit enters orb enough to be significant, and it won't flag a major year long transit that will be exact next month, listing it among a bunch of less significant aspects for the following month. With -T, you can see a major transit first enter orb at the bottom of the list, and then slowly rise to the top as it becomes more exact through the days. And you can answer the question as to which is more influential: say an exact transit of Mars to a minor house cusp, or a major transit of Saturn to an angle that's still a month away from exactness.

Also notice the resemblance between -T and the -r0 -a combination. Both display aspects ordered by influence. In fact, "-i chart -Tn" will look almost identical to "-y chart -a", except that -T is designed and formated for doing transits to a particular chart. (Doing -T will always use applying vs. separating orbs, generate powers using the transit influences, and allow the transiting and natal planets to be restricted separately with -RT and -R.) Astrolog allows transit charts to be done between transiting planets and natal planets, as well as charts among transiting planets to themselves, both of which can be expressed as searches for exact times, or displays of influences of each aspect at a particular time, as summarized in the following organized list:

• -t switch: Display exact times of transits to natal planets.
• -T switch: Display influences of transits to natal planets.
• -d switch: Display exact times of aspects among transiting planets.
• -D switch: Display influences of aspects among transiting planets.

The -T transit influence switch can also (like the -t transit search) display all aspects between progressed planets and natal planets in influence order, if it's invoked as -Tp instead of just -T. This works like -T in every way except that a switch combination like "-i mychart -Tp 4 30 1998" will display aspects between my natal planets, and those in my natal chart progressed to the end of the month, and their influence and orbs at that time, instead of between my natal planets and the actual positions of the planets at the end of March.

The -Tn switch is a shorthand way to pass the current date today and time now to the -T switch. If you want to see what transits are most affecting your natal chart presently, just do "-i yourchart -Tn".

Astrolog has the ability to display the positions of 177 Arabic parts! The "ARABIC" compile time option in astrolog.h may be commented to leave this feature out if you don't want it. Display a chart with the -P switch to show each part and its position, one per line for the chart in question. The listing contains five columns: First is the full name of the part, i.e. the part of whatever. Second is its position in the zodiac (which will be shown to the nearest arc second when the -b0 setting is active). Third is the house the location falls in.

Fourth is the formula used to compute the part, given so one knows what the program is doing and to aid in interpretation. The formula is expressed in the form <term1> - <term2> + <term3>. Also included is a flag indicating whether the formula should be flipped for night births, i.e. charts where the Sun is below the horizon in houses 1 through 6. For night charts where the flip status is "Y", the real calculation done is <term1> + <term2> - <term3>. Each <term> consists of an "object" plus a "modifier". The object is usually given as the abbreviation of a planet, or it may be a number from 1 to 12 indicating that house cusp. The object may also be "For" or "Spi" meaning it's the position of the Part of Fortune or Part of Spirit, or it may reference an actual degree in the zodiac. The modifier indicates how to get the actual position of the term from the object. It's usually blank meaning the term is just the position of the object. It may be "H", meaning the term is the location of the house the given object is in; it may also be "R", meaning the term is the location of the planet ruling the house the given object is in; it may be "D", meaning the term is the location of the planet that's the dispositor of the given object, i.e. ruler of its position; or it may be "&", meaning the term is 10 degrees beyond the position of the given object.

The last column is the "type" of Arabic part. Most parts are normal psychological indicators like the Part of Fortune, and don't have anything listed here. Seven parts reference elements and weather and are used for charts cast at the time of equinoxes, solstices, and New and Full moons, and are indicated by "Evnt". 21 parts reference crops and are parts used in the commodities market for prognostication, and are indicated by "Comm". Finally 16 parts are specially used for Horary questions and are indicated by "Hora".

The -P switch accepts an optional parameter to indicate how many of the Arabic parts to show. When given, only the first 'n' parts will be displayed. As the special part types are shown after all the standard ones, this may be used to restrict parts you don't care about. For example, "-P 161" will leave off the horary parts, "-P 140" will leave off the horary and crop parts, and "-P 133" will leave off the horary, crop, and event parts. Related to this, standard -R object restrictions will affect the parts shown; if a planet is restricted, than any parts referencing it in its formula will be left out.

If the -P switch is invoked as -P0 (or -Pz0, etc) the output will be identical to before, except that the formula column will exchange the positions of the second and third terms, i.e. instead of showing as <term1> - <term2> + <term3>, -P0 will show <term1> + <term3> - <term2>. This isn't too useful in itself, unless combined with -Pf below, where -Pf and -Pf0 sort differently giving different terms priority. Here's how to conceptualize formulas: if the planets were rotated through the zodiac so that object2 is at the position of object1, then the new position of object3 is the part. For example, with the Part of Fortune being Asc - Sun + Moo, if you rotate your chart so that the Sun is on the Asc, then the Moon's position is the POF, Mercury's position is the Part of Commerce, its formula being Asc - Sun + Mer, and so on. The default -Pf sorting allows one to easily see, if one rotates this planet on the Asc, what parts indicate the positions of the other planets. The -Pf0 ordering allows one to easily see, where is the position of a particular planet, after all rotations where some other planet is on the Asc.

As with the fixed stars, the Arabic part listing may also be sorted in various useful orders. Invoke the -P switch as -Pz and they will be displayed in order of position, with parts in Aries first and Pisces last. Invoke it as -Pn and the parts will be sorted by name, with the part of Accomplishment first and Worldliness last. Finally, invoke it as -Pf and they will be ordered by formula, where the ordering reflects the contents of each term, with Ascendant and early planet terms first, and cusp and other special ones last.

Note that regardless of the ordering, passing a value to -P will still leave off the same parts as in the standard display. Especially with -Pz and -Pf, notice that several parts may have the same position. Some formulas differ only in their night flip flag, meaning they will be the same for day charts, while a few parts of different category types can even have the same formula period.

The -I display an interpretation option is a powerful, expansive feature to generate interpretations of many of Astrolog's charts. Simply include the -I switch to get an interpretation of any particular type of chart that the program would display otherwise. If Astrolog doesn't support interpretations for it, the normal chart will be shown instead.

For example, A brief interpretation of the meaning of the positioning of each planet in its sign and house is supported when the -I switch is invoked with -v (or by itself since -v is the default). If one does this, then instead of the standard -v listing of planet positions, the positions will be listed with a brief interpretation of what they mean. I have to say that this is a pretty limited version of interpretation, being nothing more than a combining of phrases representing the planet, sign, and house in question; nevertheless, people who aren't experts at interpreting charts might find this to be of use (or at least amusing. :)

Another common interpretation one would want is the ability to give a brief interpretation of each aspect in the aspect grid. When the -I switch is combined with -g, the standard -g aspect grid will be replaced with a list of each aspect occurring and a brief listing of what it means. Again, this is mainly just a lookup of the general meanings of each planet and the aspect in question, but still might be found of interest by some. (Note: only the first 11 aspects, out to the Bi-Quintile, will be considered.)

Synastry relationship charts may be interpreted too, with the -r -I combination. Actually, they could be technically interpreted without any special code, since the output of a synastry chart is a technical "chart" with planet and house positions, but it would just be an interpretation of Person2's planets in Person1's houses as if that were a natal chart. This interpretation feature recognizes charts generated with -r as synastry charts and interprets them appropriately. For each of Person2's planets, the interpretation of how and where it affects Person1 is displayed.

Eight more interpretations just as useful can be done: "-r0 person1 person2 -g -I" is a legal combination, and will display meanings of aspects between planets in two charts in a relationship aspect grid. "-i person -a -I" is legal, and will display the meanings of aspects in a chart; this is like -g -I, but the aspect meanings are printed in sorted order based on how powerful Astrolog thinks each aspect is, so this is probably more useful. "-r0 person1 person2 -a -I" is legal, and will display the meanings of aspects in a relationship aspect list, like -r0 -g -I, but in the improved sorted order. "-d -I" is legal, and will display the meanings of aspects among transiting planets occurring during a day, as well as of sign and direction changes. "-t -I" is legal, and will display the meanings of aspects from transiting planets to natal ones. "-T -I" is also legal, and will display the transit interpretations in sorted order by influence. Finally, "-m -I" is a legal combination, which will do an interpretation of a midpoint chart, printing each midpoint in the same order as without the -I, but with each midpoint as an interpretation sentence instead. Relationship midpoint charts may be interpreted in the same manner using the "-r0 person1 person2 -m -I" combination.

In displaying the interpretation text, the program will use the name or title field of the chart (exactly as entered by the user or as passed to the -zi switch) when referring to a person. If this field is empty, the program will use the generic labels "this person", "person1", or "person2" as appropriate.

This interpretation toggle switch accepts an optional parameter to specify the number of screen columns in which to format the interpretation paragraphs, i.e. what column to break lines at when formatting and printing. One may change this from the default of 80 to accommodate narrower or wider screens or printers.

For those with systems who can handle time calls (If your system errors on trying to compile them, simply comment out the #define TIME line at the beginning), the program supports displaying the chart for the time at the current moment! In other words, invoke as astrolog -n and see where the planets are right now. (This is fun - the house cusps change 1 minute about every 4 seconds!) You will need to change the #defines for the default longitude and latitude in astrolog.h, or else specify where you are explicitly by using the -zl switch to change the default location. To figure out the time zone, the program uses the default value in the astrolog.dat file or as defined in the DEFAULT_ZONE constant set at compile time.

Note that the default time zone setting or passing values to -z, won't affect the positions of the planets, as expected since they are where they are "now" no matter how time is expressed. The default zone is merely used to determine what to express the local time to when displaying the current time. It is important however to realize that the time zone setting on your system can affect the actual raw time the program gets internally for "now". If the -n switch seems to always generate times an hour or more off to what you have your time zone set to, it's likely that your time zone environment variable is uninitialized or set incorrectly. You will need to set the "TZ" environment variable, setting it to a value such as "xxxnyyy", where 'n' is the hours your zone is before GMT, 'xxx' is a three character string indicating the abbreviation of the zone (required, but doesn't need to be set to anything more than 'xxx' if you prefer) and 'yyy' is the abbreviation for the zone when/if ever in Daylight Time. For example, if running Astrolog on a PC in Eastern Time, put the line "set TZ=EST5EDT" in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file. Another way to correct your "now" charts if they always seem to be off by a certain number of hours is to use the -Yz switch (described later).

These switches are like the -n generate chart for current moment now feature, except that they will respectively generate charts for the midnight on the current day, midnight on the first of the current month, and midnight on the first day of the current year.

The -z <value> option can be used to change the default time zone to the value in question. For example, you can force the -E ephemeris and -t transit lists to be displayed at midnight GMT time instead of the local time with "-z 0". If Daylight time is in effect, you should set the separate Daylight time default below.

Note that one can technically get by without changing the Daylight setting, by subtracting one from the time zone itself, e.g. for EST where the time zone is "5", you can do "-z 4" or "-z EDT" during Daylight time to properly display transits, aspects in day, and other lists in the local DST zone.

Normally the -z switch takes an argument which will then become the default time zone. If one, however, invokes it by itself, it will subtract one hour from whatever the default time zone presently is. This is useful since it is equivalent to adjusting any times printed to Daylight time, i.e. it will add one hour to any times displayed. Again, this is archaic as it's better to just use the -z0 switch below. Without the -z0 setting, when entering the birth time for charts, one would have to subtract one hour if Daylight time were in effect, or subtract one hour from the time zone which will do the same thing. For example, over here on the West Coast, I have my default time zone compiled to be "8"; when Daylight time is in effect here, I can do -z 7 or just -z to decrease the default time zone when I make say a -t transit list, which will in effect add one hour to the local times displayed, or in effect "Spring ahead" the clock for me. (For a better way of adjusting Astrolog for Daylight time without having to specify -z all the time, recompile the program, or add one hour to times in your head, use the "defaults" file described later to edit the default time zone or the Daylight setting.) Remember that the -z (and -zl) switches should be before any other switches they modify (such as -n) in order for the new default to take effect.

This switch sets the contents of the default Daylight time setting, and sets the value in the current chart as well, taking one optional parameter. When present the parameter will be used for the Daylight hour offset, which will almost always be 0 or 1, but can technically be set to something else for Daylight offsets that "Spring ahead" amounts other than one hour. When omitted, the -z0 switch will toggle the Daylight setting on and off between 1 and 0.

Similar to the -z switch, the -zl option can be used to change the default compile time world coordinates used in certain options, such as the -n cast chart for right now switch.

Note that both the -zl default longitude and latitude, and the -z default zone switches affect the time and location of the current chart in memory in addition to the default setting. Confusion could result otherwise if changing a default after chart info was already obtained, e.g. "-z -n" would be different from "-n -z", where the latter wouldn't change the zone for the chart because it was seen after the -n was processed and the old zone used. The correct thing will happen regardless of ordering. This means you can easily do a relocated chart with this -zl switch, e.g. "-i yourchart -zl 122W20 47N36" will cast your chart relocated to Seattle.

This simple switch will set the time and only the time of the current chart in memory to the given value. For example, to cast a chart for 3:00pm today, do "-n -zt 3:00pm". Without this one would have to cast a whole new chart using the -q switch and respecify the month, day, and year.

Note that placement of this switch is important, as any other switch after it which also sets a time will clobber the setting, e.g. "-zt 3:00pm -i chartfile" will be the same as just "-i chartfile" because the file has its own time value.

This is just like the -zt switch above except that it takes one parameter for and sets the day of the current chart. For example, to see the aspects taking place on the 15th of the current month, do "-n -zd 15 -d", which does the chart for the current month and year but the day scanned is the 15th instead of the current day.

This simple switch will set the month and only the month of the current chart in memory to the given value. For example, to display an ephemeris chart for July of this year, do "-n -zm July -E".

This is just like the -zm switch above expect it will set the year and only the year of the current chart in memory to the given value. For example, to display a chart for your birthday next year, do "-i yourchart -zy 1999".

This switch sets on the command line the contents of the name and city string fields of the current chart.

Note that this switch is actually put into present style chart info switch files generated with -o to reload the name fields. You can convert an old style file created before version 4.20 to new style and add in the name fields for it with: -i file -zi "the name" "the city" -o file.

(Note that you may also want to correct the time or time zone if Daylight time was in effect though.)

The -q <month> <date> <year> <time> option takes the four parameters and casts a chart for the time in question. The time zone and location are taken from the default compiled values. This is just yet another useful shorthand way to quickly make a chart.

Note that the -qa option which takes all seven chart parameters can be duplicated with -q along with the -z <zone> and -l <long> <lat> options.

The -q <month> <day> <year> option can be used to cast a quick chart for 12 noon on a particular date, using the default longitude and latitude, and time zone. One example where this is useful is with the -d option, e.g. to see the times of exact aspects on a particular date, like your next birthday, your finals, etc, without having to specify unnecessary data.

Note that this is just like the -q switch except that -q requires a specific time on the day in question as well.

A quick chart cast for midnight on the first of a month can be generated with the two parameter -qm <month> <year> switch. A chart cast for midnight on the first of January of a year can be generated with the one parameter -qy <year> switch. Both of these use the default time zone and location. These switches are most useful for charts that don't require all the standard information. For example, to get an ephemeris for December, 2000, do "astrolog -qm 12 2000" and avoid having to enter in a day, hour, or location that wouldn't have any effect. These options are in similar to the -qd <month> <day> <year> switch above that will do a chart for noon on the given date, and the -q <month> <day> <year> <time> switch that takes a time as well.

Normally one generates a new chart by entering the data coordinates interactively. A fast typist familiar with the program might prefer to give all the info at once, which can be done with this option. Simply list the seven parameters above, in the exact format as they would be given to the program were the user being prompted for them. (Note that it's probably better to use the -qb switch below because of its extra parameter; the -qa switch will automatically assume Daylight time is off.)

This switch is just like the -qa switch above except that it takes one extra parameter for the Daylight Saving time flag. In order, the eight parameters for -qb are Month, Day, Year, Time, Daylight offset, Time Zone, Longitude, and Latitude. (Like -zi this switch is also put into chart info files by -o.)

This switch will automatically cast a chart for the given Julian Day. Unlike the other -q switches which take standard months, days, and years, this switch takes one parameter for the Julian Day (which may be fractional to specify a time within the day in question). For example, another way to cast a chart for Midnight, GMT, on New Year's Day of 1994 is with "-qj 2449353.5". (Julian Day 0 refers to Noon GMT, January 1, 4712 BC.)

Known bug: If the extended Placalc formulas aren't compiled into the program it will have to use an older version of the Julian day conversion routines which will result in these -qj charts giving incorrect results for dates in the Julian Calendar, i.e. before October 1582, which can be seen by casting a chart with -qj specifying a day less than 2299161.5, in which case the Julian Day displayed for the date of the chart cast will be ten days greater than what was passed to it.

$$ Note that there is a "virtual file" named "set" which can be passed to the -i and -r switches. Instead of looking for an actual disk file, this represents the "last" set of chart information dealt with, and is useful to avoid having to manually enter information in certain cases. (Other "virtual files" Astrolog can use are "now" which means the current time at the default location, and "tty" which means prompt the user for the info.)

This is best used within a -Q loop. For example, you first manually enter the time for a chart and it is displayed. Now, this time in the loop, you want the same chart in an aspect grid, and don't want to have to enter the data again or create a file to read from. Entering "-i set" will use this chart info no matter how it was entered. For graphics charts this "last" chart will be set to the initial chart or whatever animation situation was saved via the 'o' key. Perhaps the most useful ability of the "set" chart however is that it will set itself to times that appear in -t and -d transit and aspect in day searches. For example, if you want to cast a chart for the New Moon the other January, first do a combination like "-qd 1 11 1994 -d -R0 1 2 -A 1", which will scan the 11th for Conjunctions involving the Sun and Moon, and display the time. Before, to get a New Moon chart one would then have to manually specify the time displayed. Now, just "-i set" will bring it up!

The initial contents of the "previous" chart, i.e. what you get by directly doing something like "astrolog -i set" are initialized to the astrological "chart" for the release of this version 5.40 of the program itself, which is the time of the Winter Solstice, specifically for 5:57pm PST (8 hours before GMT) on Monday, December 21, 1998 for here in Seattle, WA (122W20, 47N36).

This is one more "virtual file" that's obscure and only useful in certain circumstances, named "nul" which may be passed to the -i file input or -r switches which take chart info files for parameters. The file "nul" means to not change the chart info parameters any, but rather leave them with whatever current settings they may have or were set to before. This is mainly useful with the -r switches if you don't want to have to create two actual files to pass in, or use the virtual file "tty" and have to enter in data interactively. For example, to see what your biorhythm is like for the beginning of December, do "astrolog -qm 12 1998 -rb nul yourchart" on the command line and no further input is needed.

If the -i chart file load switch is invoked as -i2, it will do the same thing as -i except put the chart info into the "second" chart slot, for use with relationship charts. This does not enter or leave any relationship chart mode. One can set what chart info each wheel ring in the tri-wheel and quad-wheel charts will contain by putting a number after the -i switch to load the chart info from a file into that slot, where -i3 will load into the third slot, and -i4 into the fourth (where -i2 will again load into the second, and -i1 or just -i into the first).

The program supports directing chart information to, and reading output from, data files. The '-o' option will dump all the birth data (the date and location, not the planet positions) to the specified file. The '-i' option will cast the chart based on the info in the file. (This allows you to put your birth data into a specific file, and cast your chart whenever you want to after that without having to reenter your birth data all the time.)

Another file output feature, the ability to concatenate "comment lines" at the end of a data file, is included with both the -o and -o0 options, as you may wish to say keep track of info other than the program supported name and city. After scanning the filename, the -o[0] option will then write any parameter that follows it at the end of the file, until a parameter beginning with a '-' or '/' (the next obvious command switch) is reached. For example: -o <file> "Birth certificate" Family, will add extra info indicating the source of my birth data, and a general category for the chart, in two separate lines at the end of the file. (On most systems, quotes can be used to allow spaces within one parameter.)

Ability to write the actual sign and house positions of a chart to a file (instead of just the time and place) has been implemented via the -o0 <file> option. This option can be used interchangeably with the -o output to file switch. The information written includes the zodiac position of all unrestricted objects, their retrograde velocity, latitude, and distance, as well as the positions of the house cusps. (The chart name strings as set with the -zi switch are written out too of course.) This file information can easily be passed into another program, and can be read back into Astrolog with the -i option. The -i option will automatically determine which type the file is, and will either use the given positions, or else calculate them as needed.

(Note that some switches, such as the -c house system selection, will have no effect for this file type.) Check an example of one of these files to see the precise format (a zodiac position is recorded as three numbers: degree in sign, sign as number 1 through 12 or three letter abbreviation, and floating point minute within the degree.) When the files are read back in, they will be flagged as "having no space or time" like the composite charts in the chart header displays.

This file format can allow one to do things such as transits to composite charts (send the composite chart to file with -o0 option and then read in the file with -i when using the -t switch) composites between two composite charts (use -rc between two composite charts sent to a file) and even, if one is willing to do a small amount of editing, to do transits to midpoints or the 0 degrees Aries point. Note that one can easily edit the positions in the -o0 position file to be whatever they like, so one could replace some unimportant object (e.g. the vertex) with 0 degrees Aries or an important midpoint value. Note that trying to still use the -o time and space output with a chart in memory that doesn't have space/time will confuse the program; it will either say it can't make the file or else will output the time/space of the most recent parameter file it read in.

Note for old style -o0 position files created before version 4.20 that aren't based on command lines (see -Yo switch later): the positions of the eight uranians may be output to those planet position files in addition to the 20 main objects, but only if the uranians are actually calculated with -u in effect. Hence those position files can be of two different lengths, but the program will be able to read in both formats, leaving the uranians uninitialized at zero Aries if they aren't also in the file.

This switch, given a file, will output the contents of a text chart to that file. This is just like output redirection (i.e. "> textfile" at the end of a command line) except that it's implemented within the program. Hence unlike output redirection it will work from within a -Q loop, from the File Run menu in Microsoft Windows, and on systems whose shells don't allow redirection at all. This also has the advantage in that prompts and user messages won't be sent to the file, hence things can be done such as "astrolog -os textfile", where the program will still prompt you on the screen for the chart info, but the chart itself will still go to the file.

The -os switch may also be expressed as ->, which is included as a convenience with its similarity to the ">" output redirection featured in many shells. As with all switches, one may leave off the dash and invoke it as just ">". When just ">" is included on the command line, the system's own output redirection will tend to be used. This switch allows one to also include ">" when prompted for command lines within the program, or when running from MS Windows, where the shell plays no part.

The ability to restrict the transit (-t) and daily aspect (-d) scans to just certain bodies has been implemented with the -R switch. Using -R by itself will prevent the asteroids, Chiron, Lilith, the Part of Fortune, East Point, and the Vertex from being in any of the charts. One may also give a list of one or more numbers representing planets to be ignored (e.g. 1 = Sun, 2 = Moon, 3 = Mercury, etc) or specify planet abbreviations directly, so that a complete custom setup can be obtained (e.g. "-R 1 2 3 4 5" or "-R sun moo mer ven mar" will cause all of the inner planets to be ignored). More than one -R switch can be combined (e.g. -R -R 16 will cause the asteroids, etc, and the North Node to be ignored; the first -R gets rid of the asteroids, etc, and the second one deletes the North Node.) Also, specifying the same particular body more than once will cause it to be included again, or in other words, -R <objectnum> complements the status of whether it is to be ignored or not (e.g. -R -R 15 will cause all of the asteroids, etc, excluding Vesta, to be ignored; the first -R makes causes the asteroids to be ignored, and specifying Vesta in the second -R makes it reappear.)

Note that Astrolog will compute charts faster when objects are restricted, since it doesn't bother to compute locations that aren't needed or used. For example, the search of a year for a Solar Return (-i chart -ty year -R0 sun -RT0 sun) is about twice as fast than when the restrictions are omitted, since we're only looking at Sun locations.

The -R0 option will cause ALL of the bodies to be ignored, which is useful if you are looking for just the transits/aspects of a few planets (e.g. -R0 6 7 will cause everything but Jupiter and Saturn to be ignored.) Combining all these methods can cause whatever you are looking for in transits and aspects to be quickly found without having to wade through lots of stuff you aren't interested in.

This will unconditionally UN-restrict all planets and other objects used by the program, a compliment to the -R0 switch above which restricts everything.

Note that this will also set modes, in that it does automatically activate the -C, -u, and -U sets of objects.

These three switches are similar to the -R0 option in that they initially restrict objects, i.e. all the minor cusps, Uranians, and stars, (described below) respectively from appearing. For example, if you want to include only the star Sirius in an X window chart without having to also include all the other stars (or having to enter a very long restriction list), do: "astrolog -U -RU 48 -X", which will include the stars, and then restrict them all except Sirius, before making the chart.

Transiting planets may be restricted from charts independently of those planets being transited to. In -T charts, the -R option only affects the natal planets. To restrict transiting planets, one must use the -RT option. The -RT option is exactly like -R, and any subswitches of -R can be used with -RT as long as the 'T' immediately follows the 'R'. For example, -RT by itself restricts transiting asteroids from appearing in -T charts, -RT0 restricts all transiting bodies, -RTu restricts the Uranians, and so on. This is a really useful feature, and allows one to pretty much be able to generate exactly and only those transits one is interested in. For example, if you want to see if anything is transiting your natal Jupiter or natal Saturn this month, do: "astrolog -i yourchart -T 3 1993 -R0 6 7". If you want to see if Chiron is transiting anything this year (excluding asteroids), do: "astrolog -i yourchart -Ty 1993 -RT0 11 -R". If you are only interested in transits of outer planets to your Sun or Moon, do: "astrolog -i yourchart -T 3 1993 -RT0 6 7 8 9 10 -R0 1 2", and so on. By default, only the transiting Moon is restricted. To get it back, merely unrestrict it with "-RT 2". These default transit restrictions are in the astrolog.dat defaults file described later, and are right after the standard restriction table, both of which may be modified however you please.

The -RA switch will restrict the given aspect or list of aspects from appearing in charts, like how the -R switch does for objects. Technically, an aspect will be restricted if it's given a negative orb. The -RA switch just gives the specified aspects negative orbs, and is a shorthand for having to explicitly use the -Ao orb setting switch. (This means that -RA won't toggle an already restricted aspect back on however.)

This option must be indicated to include the 12 actual house cusps (i.e. Ascendant, et al) in the various chart options, such as the -g aspect grids, -t transit searches, the graphics wheel chart, etc. This option of course won't have any effect on certain charts where only physical bodies are shown (e.g. -Z, -S, -L) or where all house cusps are already indicated in the chart (e.g. -v, -w). The house cusps technically have actual object indexes like the planets, and are objects 21 through 32 in order (add 20 to a house to get its index). You can deal with and restrict these individually for transit and other charts, e.g. to turn on just the Ascendant and MC, do "-C -RC 21 30" Concerning rulerships, each cusp object is set to "rule" the sign corresponding to it (e.g. Ascendant "rules" Aries) while each cusp "exalts in" the next sign after it of the same element (e.g. Ascendant "exalts in" Leo).

Display the locations of the "Uranian" planets with the -u switch. Transneptunian or Uranian planets are an interesting subset of astrology which includes various objects alleged to be beyond Pluto. (Do: astrolog -u -O to list the eight Uranian bodies.) Anyway, Astrolog will display the zodiac positions of these planets as well if one includes this option, and will print their positions after the main planets, or include them in the other chart types.

Astrolog has the ability to display the positions of 47 of the brightest and most important stars in the sky. To include these stars in a chart, use the -U "universe" option. The 43 brightest stars, i.e. all those with apparent magnitude values < 2.0 are included, in addition to four dimmer "stars" which are considered significant, i.e.: Polaris the North star, the Pleiades (specifically the star Pleione within it) star cluster (home of our extraterrestrial cousins), Zeta Reticuli (home of the Grey aliens), and the Andromeda (M31) Galaxy (closest galaxy to our own Milky Way, and home to various extraterrestrial hierarchies.) One bright star is called "Orion", which is formally Alnilam, the middle star of Orion's belt. Since stars are fixed in the sky, they will never change position in the -s sidereal zodiac, although they will slowly precess forward in the normal tropical zodiac. The -R restriction option can be used to determine which stars are actually included, although the -U option still needs to be included to get any stars at all. (With on screen graphics, the stars are labeled by three letter abbreviations, and are colored according to their brightness: orange for stars brighter than (less than) magnitude 1.0, and dark red for the dimmer remaining stars with magnitudes greater than this value.)

In the -v standard chart, -Z horizon chart, and in the -O object list, where all the stars are printed sequentially, it can sometimes be confusing to locate the star you want among 42 others. The -U option can be modified to sort the stars in various ways. If one uses -Ub instead of just -U, the stars will be listed in order from brightest to dimmest. Doing -Un instead of -U will alphabetize the stars by name. -Ul will sort them by their altitude from highest in the sky to lowest, while -Uz will sort them by their zodiac position.

Note that any star ordering will have no visible effect in X windows, and on must still use the default ordering when passing numbers to the -R option to restrict various stars.

If you like many aspects, or only desire the major ones, to be included in the aspect grids, specifying -A <number> will limit or extend the number of aspects (e.g. -A 2 will make charts with only conjunctions and oppositions listed in them, while -A 18 will include all 18 aspects that Astrolog supports.)

Change the default orbs of the various aspects with the -Ao <aspect> <orb> switch. Do you not like the 7 degree orbs for conjunctions that are in there by default? Given an aspect number and an orb value, the orb used for that particular aspect is updated accordingly. Non-integer orb values are allowed of course. Use negative orb values to completely eliminate an aspect from ever appearing. For example: astrolog -Ao 2 4 -Ao 4 -1 narrows the orb for Oppositions, and completely eliminates Trines, leaving all the other aspects at the default values.

Note that for very wide orbs more than one aspect may apply for a particular angle, in which case the more fundamental aspect is chosen. Also for wide aspects the fractional value of the orb may be lost in the -g text grid (due to too many characters) and their might be some slight overlap in the X window -g cells.

Ability to explicitly specify maximum orbs that any aspect can make to a particular planet is supported with the -Am switch. This is used for objects like the North Node which require narrower orbs than what the aspects themselves normally allow. The -Am switch takes two parameters: the first to indicate the index of the object, and the second to indicate what the maximum orb allowed to it will be. By default, the only objects with restriction are the Node, Part of Fortune, Vertex, and stars, which allow a 2 degree max orb to them. With this option, one can change these limits or impose restrictions for other planets too. The astrolog.dat file (described later) will read in these default planet orbs for the first 20 objects.

Ability to widen an aspect orb for any planet is supported with the -Ad switch. This is used for objects like the Sun and Moon for which one might want wider orbs to them than what the aspects themselves allow. Like the -Am switch, this -Ad switch takes two parameters: the first to indicate the object, and the second to indicate how much wider orbs allowed to it will be. By default, the only objects which have orbs widened for them are the Sun and Moon, each of which adds one degree to the orb of any aspect to it. With this option, one can change these additions or allow other objects to have them, too. The astrolog.dat file will also read in defaults for these orb additions for the first 20 planets.

(Note that these object orb additions can be added to a negative orb for an aspect making it valid, so if you really want to restrict an aspect with -Ao, it should be a large enough negative value so that the sum of any additions between two objects won't make it go positive.)

This option is used to change the actual angle of a particular aspect. This is useful if one wants to search for some unusual angle not already available in Astrolog's aspects or accessible through the -x harmonic charts. For example, if I want to know when any planet enters a 2.5 degree orb of any planet in my natal chart, I would do a transit search along with "-Aa 1 2.5", where "1" is the index of the conjunction aspect, and "2.5" means the "conjunction" is now exact when any two objects are 2 degrees and 30 minutes apart.

Astrolog has a set of calculation routines which are much more accurate than the standard Matrix software routines that are usually used by default. One may choose between these calculation methods with the -b switch. With -b, Sun through Pluto, the North Node, Chiron, and the four asteroids will be computed more accurately (although it will take slightly longer). The other uranians, stars, and house cusps are always generated with the Matrix routines.

This advanced calculation uses ephemeris files for some planets which must be in a directory specified at compile time or covered by one of the environment variables in order to be found. The advanced routines are valid based on how many of the ephemeris files one has. With all of them, the formulas will cover and deliver accurate positions for nearly 8500 years from -5260 BC through 3237 AD! There are 95 ephemeris files total. Each file covers a range of 100,000 days, or about 273 years. Altogether they take up 4.8 megabytes of disk space, but each segment of 273 years only takes up 150K. For each time segment, there is an ephemeris file named "LRZ5_n" containing the positions of Jupiter through Pluto (at 80 day increments), a file "CHI_n" containing the positions of Chiron, and a file "CPJV_n" containing the positions of the four asteroids. The 'n' refers to the span of Julian Days covered by it (divided by 100000). For example, Julian Days 1,200,000 through 1,300,000 are in the files "LRZ5_12", "CHI_12", and "CPJV_12" (the 'm' character in some files refers to negative/minus Julian Days). You don't need all the files to use -b, just those that cover the dates you want to use. If you try to use -b with a date not covered by an available ephemeris file, a warning message will be printed and the Matrix positions will be used. The files "LRZ5_24", "CHI_24", and "CPJV_24" cover the years 1859 through 2131 AD, which is good for most modern purposes and only take up 150K of space. (These three files are included in the standard zip archive release file of Astrolog. For Unix users who want any ephemeris files, and PC users who want to cover more years, the complete set of files is at anonymous FTP sites such as ftp.magitech.com.) The following is a list of the precise dates covered by each ephemeris file:

Astrolog uses the formulas from the "Placalc" program package to generate its precise positions. Placalc's accuracy is about the same as Mark Pottenger's "CCRS" routines, and those used in Nova (it even fixes some accuracy problems Nova has, in some of its earlier versions at least). Placalc's integrated outer planet positions represent the standard of the Nautical Almanac, the international astronomical standard, as published in the Astronomical Almanac, for its computations as computed before 1984. (Since 1984 the standard has been the DE200 integrations by JPL.) The Sun's position implements the Newcomb theory for all terms > 0.01", the positions of Mercury through Mars are done to all terms > 0.05", while "Brown's improved lunar ephemeris" is used such that the Moon is within 3" of DE200. For the asteroids, at the conclusion of the integration process computing their files, the uncertainty error had reached 8.0E-11 AU after CPJV_29, and 4.9E-10 AU after CPJV_m2. Placalc's fraction of second precision, is of course much more accurate when compared to the Matrix positions, which are only accurate to about one minute (and several degrees for Chiron, as well as the four asteroids) for this century only. For example, at 1800 AD, the Matrix positions for the outer planets are off by 2 degrees, and about 1 degree for 2100; by 1500 AD, Matrix is off by 14 degrees for Pluto while Chiron is barely in the right hemisphere any more.

There is a flag to "Use ephemeris files" in the astrolog.dat file, which when set, will always use the Placalc routines and is the same as just including -b all the time, in which case -b will toggle them back off. There is a compile time option #define PLACALC in the astrolog.h which can be commented out to disable the -b switch and the new formulas.

Note that because the asteroid ephemeris files were first introduced in a version after those for the other planets, meaning one may not yet have CPJV_n files for dates they have the other files for, there is an "undocumented" switch called -ba, which is like -b but will still compute the asteroids using the Matrix formulas.

Note that this calculation method is not compatible with allowing the -v0 switch to express planetary velocities relative to average speed work with it, and nor will central planetary bodies other than the Sun or Earth (standard Geo and Helio centric charts) via -h work. It will however display velocities for the Moon and the Node, which aren't available with the Matrix routines.

Note that the requirements for use of these asteroid files are similar to that of the rest of Astrolog, in that they are freely available for non-commercial use but unavailable for commercial use.

The ability to display zodiac positions to the nearest degree second is supported with the -b0 switch. Normally all positions are displayed just to the minute (which was all that is useful due to the accuracy available in the Matrix formulas). With the Placalc routines accurate to within seconds, this switch, in addition to turning on the more accurate formulas like just -b above does, will also turn on the more accurate display.

When this setting is on, the planet and house positions in the -w text wheel chart, and the sidebar positions in graphic wheel charts, will be to the nearest second. The -Z local space chart will display the altitude and azimuth to the nearest second, while the other three vector columns will be displayed with an extra digit of precision. The -S orbital position chart will have all five of its columns displayed to an extra four digits of precision. The -L0 astro-graph chart with latitude crossings will display the latitude crossing intersections to the nearest second.

Finally the standard -v listing will display the zodiac positions and latitudes to the nearest second, and the velocity values will have an extra four digits of precision.

Note however this doesn't leave room to the right anymore for the house cusp positions and element table normally shown. They will be left out for -b0, however when the -C switch is in effect, the house cusp positions will be displayed in their own separate rows, which normally isn't ever done since there's always the list to the side. (One more thing is that -b0 combined with -v will display an extra column at the end showing the decan positions of each object, allowing viewing of each planet alongside its decan without having to actually change positions with the -3 switch.)

Fifteen different house systems are supported in the program: Invoke as astrolog -c <number> to change the system from the default of Placidus. Note that certain house systems (i.e. Placidus and Koch) aren't defined for locations inside the Ant/arctic circle. If the user attempts to cast a chart using them with a latitude beyond about 66 degrees N or S, the program will display a warning, and then change the latitude of the chart being computed to the closest legal latitude allowed (i.e. move it from the pole to the edge of the Arctic or Antarctic circle) during the computation of the chart. Certain house systems are still defined at extreme latitudes (inside the Arctic or Antarctic circles) but have the condition where the natural formulas for the MC and Asc at those locations would put the Asc in the 180 degrees before instead of after the MC. In such a case Astrolog preserves the Midheaven, and flips the Ascendant if need be to ensure the other house cusps will remain sane.

House system number 10 is the Midheaven based Equal house system. This is just like the more common standard Equal house system (-c 2) except that we start with the 10th cusp being the same as the MC and disassociate the 1st cusp from the Ascendant, instead of starting with the 1st cusp being the same as the Ascendant and disassociating the 10th cusp from the MC.

House index 11 is the Neo-Porphyry system of house division. This is a new system similar to Porphyry houses except that it's "smooth" around the zodiac with the MC/Asc difference being spread in a continuous sinusoidal manner from expanded to compressed quadrants.

House index 12 is the Whole system of houses, where the first cusp is at zero degrees of the sign of the Ascendant, and the others are all at the beginning of the succeeding signs. This is basically the same as the Equal system with all positions shifted back to the start of their sign. Thanks to Andy Gray for telling me about this system and how it's computed.

House index 13 is the Vedic system of houses, or more specifically the modern India style of Equal houses. In this system, each house covers 30 degrees, and the Ascendant is always in the middle of the first house, i.e. the 1st cusp is always 15 degrees before the Ascendant. (For contrast, the ancient or traditional India style of equal houses are already supported in Astrolog by the Whole house system above, where the first house cusp is always the start of the sign the Ascendant is in.)

House system 14 refers to no houses at all, or in other words where the Ascendant will always be 0 degrees Aries, the Nadir 0 degrees Cancer, etc, which is useful for the extended chart animations as described later, where having houses at all can tend to get in the way; one can even observe the precession of the equinoxes with this system if used in conjunction with the -s sidereal chart option.

With this option, the chart will be just like the normal charts as most commonly used in Western astrology, except that all the zodiac positions will be shifted (to be about 24 degrees earlier). This is because the option casts sidereal charts which are based on the positions of the fixed stars (i.e. Aries starts at the constellation Aries) rather than the seasons (i.e. Aries starts at the Spring or Vernal Equinox.) Due to the "precession of the equinoxes" the position of the Sun at the Equinoxes has been gradually happening at an earlier point in the sidereal zodiac each year (taking about 2100 years change signs.)

This switch accepts an optional parameter of an offset for the start of the zodiac. This value, when non-zero, will be added to all zodiac positions, and effectively allows one to choose any starting point for the sidereal (or tropical) zodiac, which is useful for Hindu or other systems whose sidereal zodiacs have zero Aries at a different location than the standard Fagan-Bradley sidereal zodiac the program uses by default. For example, "-s 10.5" will add 10 degrees and 30 minutes to all zodiac positions. This value is initialized to a zodiac offset value setting in the astrolog.dat initialization file, which is by default zero.

This will display planetary positions relative to the Earth's equator instead of the ecliptic i.e. Earth's orbit. This is the way more commonly used in astronomy, and results in real right ascension notation, especially when combined with the -s sidereal zodiac and -sh hours and minutes display format. This switch makes the declination values in the standard -v listing also relative to the equator, instead of the ecliptic latitude displayed by default, where "Declination" will be printed at the head of the column instead of "Latitude". (Without this the only way to get such information is from the zenith latitudes in the -L astro-graph chart which show the same thing.) Note that this setting isn't fully integrated with all of Astrolog's charts; specifically it will distort the values in the -Z local horizon, -S orbit, and -L astro-graph charts which assume ecliptic positions, and hence -sr shouldn't be combined with these options.

For astronomers out there, the -sh switch will express all planetary positions in the right ascension hours/minutes format instead of the sign/degrees/minutes astrologers are accustomed to. This will affect how the objects are listed in the -v display, and how star azimuths are displayed in the -HO list. For example, 0 degrees Aries is represented as 0 hr, 0 min; 0 Cancer goes to 6 hr, 0 min, and so on through the 24 hour clock. The -sd switch will cause zodiac positions to be displayed as a simple degree value in the 360 degree circle. To return to the default of displaying as a degree within a zodiac sign, use the -sz switch.

Normal astrology charts are based on the positions of the planets relative to the Earth. However, this option allows seeing of the zodiac positions with respect to the Sun's (or any other planet's) point of view. The -h option when invoked by itself will display a heliocentric chart: the Sun in the original listing will be replaced with the Earth's position as seen from the Sun in the heliocentric chart, with the other planets' positions modified accordingly. For bodies other than the Sun, the option takes a parameter to indicate which planet to center the chart on, e.g. do -h 5 to cast a Mars centered chart. (Moon centered charts aren't allowed; in fact, note that when the -b ephemeris setting is off, the -h option won't ever affect the Moon, which will always be displayed as seen from the Earth, no matter what the center body is set to, since it's not a formal planet.) Note also that the Earth has its own object index, which is position number zero, meaning 0 is a valid value to pass to switches that take an object like -R. Charts such as the local horizon chart which don't include the central planet, will automatically leave it out even if that planet is unrestricted.

A secondary progression chart for a particular date can be cast using the '-p <month> <date> <year>' command switch. (Note: I'm not sure if the house cusps are progressed correctly for all methods of computation, but they are reasonably close to what is expected using most of them.) The precise time within the given day progressed to is midnight in the default time zone.

Hackers note: this setting to progress charts to the specified time, may be turned off by invoking the -p switch as "_p" with the underscore reset prefix. Unlike the standard -p switch, _p take no parameters. This is a command switch trick only useful when doing multiple charts in a -Q loop, or when passing extra command lines to a graphics screen with the return key or through macros.

Solar arc progressions are supported in addition to secondaries. Invoke the -p <month> <day> <year> switch as -p0 instead, and a chart will be generated with all planets and house cusps progressed forward an amount equal in degrees to the number of years that have passed between the specified date and the chart in question. The -pd option here (see below) specifies the number of days that have to pass per zodiac degree to progress forward; by default this is 365.25. To generate a solar arc chart for the current moment now, invoke the -pn switch as -p0n.

The -pn switch is like the -p <month> <date> <year> switch except that (like the -n switch) it assumes the current moment now to cast the progressed chart to. This is just another shorthand convenience to see what ones progressed chart is like presently; just do: astrolog -i file -pn.

User definable progression rates can be specified with this option. When using the -p progression option, Astrolog assumes you want the standard "year for a day" rate of progressions. By passing different values to the -pd switch, one can change the default "365.25 days for a day" to any value they want for some less often used method of progression. For example, one can do "-pd 7 -pn" to do a week for a day, "-pd -365.25 -pn" to get negative year for day progressions, and so on. For tertiary progressions, do "-pd 29.530588". (Note that "-pd 1 -p..." would be the same as if no progression were done at all.)

Harmonic charts (i.e. where all the planet positions are multiplied by a factor and the chart recast) are supported via the "-x" option (e.g. "-x 3" will make all trines conjunct in the chart displayed.) The parameter passed in may range anywhere from 1 (i.e. no harmonic factor) to 30000 for those who want to explore extreme harmonics.

The -1 <obj> option can be used to change the houses to force a particular object to be on the ascendant. This is useful in casting Solar charts or for when the time of birth is not exactly known. For example -1 2 will case a normal chart, but the house cusps will be rotated so that the moon is on the ascendant.

Just as the -1 option is used to cast a chart with an object on the Ascendant, the -2 <object> switch will cast a chart with the specified object on the Midheaven. The house cusps will be rotated so that the object in question is conjunct the 10th house cusp. As with the -1 option, if <object> is not specified, the Sun will be assumed by default.

Decan displays are supported in Astrolog, and one can display a decan influenced chart with the -3 switch. The decan theory is that each sign in the zodiac can be divided into three parts: The first 10 degrees (i.e. the first decan) is mainly influenced by the sign in question, the second 10 degrees (second decan) although still influenced by the sign in question is also somewhat influenced by the next sign of the same element, while the last decan is influenced by the third sign of the same element. The -3 switch applied to a chart will move each object into the sign of its decan. For example, if the Sun is at 29 degrees Aquarius and the Moon at 5 degrees Virgo, in the resulting chart, the Sun will go to Libra (26 degrees) and the Moon will remain in Virgo (although be at 15 degrees now since it was previously in the middle of the first decan of Virgo.)

The -f option can be used to "flip" the signs and houses, i.e. display the house as a sign position and vice versa. For example having the Sun at 26 degrees Scorpio, 2/3 way though the 10th house, will cause the resulting Sun under the -f option to be at 20 degrees Capricorn, 26/30th the way through the 8th house. This can be used to determine how far a planet is through a particular house, as well as for domal chart analysis that Mark Kenski has informed me about. Domal analysis is based on the fact that for synastry comparisons, for example, a planet in Gemini and one in the 3rd house can be considered related in a way similar to a conjunction.

This switch generates a special type of locational analysis chart, called a geodetic chart, in which the house cusps are computed from a different source, i.e. as a function of only the longitude and latitude. This basically gives every spot on the planet a different unique set of house cusps, and can be used to analyze the characteristics of different areas, and their influence on you if you insert your own planets in the houses. This type of chart was described in the January 1992 issue of Dell Horoscope magazine, from which I learned how to generate these charts. Basically, the Midheaven is approximately the longitude value converted from degrees into the appropriate zodiac sign; for example 0 degrees E goes to 0 degrees Aries, 30 degrees E goes to 0 degrees Taurus, etc.

Astrolog can display wheel charts in Hindu or Vedic format. This will affect both the text -w wheels and the graphic wheels. A Vedic format wheel is identical to a standard Western wheel except: (1) The signs and houses increase as you go clockwise instead of counterclockwise, so the entire wheel is flipped over. (2) The chart is rotated so the left edge is always the start of Aquarius instead of the Ascendant, putting Pisces in the upper left corner, meaning the Ascendant is placed wherever in the wheel is appropriate. For Vedic astrology one will probably prefer to combine this with the -w house focused wheel chart switch so all the houses are the same size, or even display that chart in text mode so the wheel will be a square.

This command switch will display the chart in the navamsa format used in Vedic astrology. The navamsa or marriage chart is formed by applying a formula to each planet position to get a resulting new location. This is similar in operation to the -3 decan feature, however this divides each sign into ninths. Specifically, to convert a position, see which ninth of a sign a planet falls in, e.g. a planet from 0 degrees 0' to 3 degrees 20' of a sign is in the first ninth, a planet from 3 degrees 20' to 6 degrees 40' is in the second ninth, and so on. Take that number, and count one less than that many signs ahead in the zodiac to get the resulting sign. The starting sign should be Aries if the original sign was Fire, Capricorn if the original sign was Earth, Libra if the original sign was Air, and Cancer if the original sign was Water. A formal navamsa chart only considers signs, hence only the sign of each planet will be changed; the degree within each sign will be

The -F option is used to force a particular object's position to always be a particular location in the zodiac. This feature can be used as an easy way to manually include things Astrolog normally doesn't in various charts. For example, this can be used to force the position of some minor thing, like the Vertex, to always be the location of whatever you prefer, like the 0 degrees Aries point, or an important midpoint. Then you can do an aspect grid, transit search, or whatever, and calculate aspects to midpoints or transits over midpoints. The -F switch takes three arguments: first is the index of the object to replace, next is the sign from 1..12 to force it to be, and third is the degree within the sign. For example, if I want to see if anything is making an exact aspect today with my Sun Moon midpoint at 6Sag28, I could do "astrolog -n -d -F 16 9 6.28", which would replace the North Node with my Sun Moon midpoint in the aspect search.

The -+ <#ofdays> option will cast a normal chart, but one for #ofdays in the future (or past if a negative value is given). One use for this is in combination with the -n and -d options. For instance, I often invoke the program as "astrolog -n -d" to see the exact times of today's aspects. However, just before midnight I might want to see what's going to happen in the following day, so I would do "astrolog -n -d -+ 1" to see the exact times for tomorrow's aspects. The #ofdays parameter is optional, and will default to one if left off, so the above command can be done as just "astrolog -n -d -+".

Note that for such a chart, the chart header will show the correct date of the actual new chart, instead of the original one. For example, today (9-11), if I do "astrolog -n -+ 2" I will get the chart for two days from now, and the chart header will display 9-13. This has some special uses. For example, if you want to know what the date was/will be when you are 10000 days old, do "astrolog -i yourchart -+ 10000" and see what the date in the resulting chart header is.

This "dash minus" option is just like the "dash plus" (-+) option described above, except it subtracts instead of adds the specified number of days from any chart cast. This is only for convenience, in that "-- 1" is the same as "-+ -1".

The -+m switch is just like the -+ switch above except that it will add one month (30 days) to whatever chart instead of one day. The -+y switch will add one year (365 days) to whatever chart. The -- "dash minus" switch is extended in a similar manner, in that --m and --y will do as expected. These switches also have the optional parameter to specify how many months or years to move forward or back.

Computing the relationship between two charts is supported. Invoke the program as 'astrolog -r <file_of_person1> <file_of_person2>' and the program will give you the relationship between the two charts. In other words, the program will use the positions of person2's planets and person1's houses. Use this with the -w option to get a wheel chart and you can do synastry. Note that transits can be computed with this by comparing your chart with the positions of the planets at the current moment (as in -n switch). To make this easier, you may specify the filename "now" for any file and the computer will use the current planet positions instead of looking for a like named file. (e.g. 'astrolog -r me now' will compute transits for file 'me'.)

Hackers note: if the -r switch is invoked as "_r" with the underscore reset prefix, whatever relationship mode will be canceled. Unlike the standard -r switches, _r takes no file parameters. This is a command switch trick only useful when doing multiple charts in a -Q loop, or when passing extra command lines to a graphics screen with the return key or through macros. Astrolog's -r relationship chart switches set relationship chart mode, and without this there's no easy way to return to single chart mode. Yes when a graphics screen is up, the 'c' key will toggle relationship comparison mode, but that's not available from the command line.

The '-r' option can be used to generate composite relationship charts. Simply invoke it as '-rc <person1> <person2>' instead of just -r and a composite chart (i.e. composed of the midpoints of the planets, etc. of the two charts in question) will be generated. (Note: when the house cusps in the two charts are nearly 180 degrees apart, simply taking the midpoints of all the cusps may result in them being out of order in the resulting composite. In such a case we give priority to the composite midheaven, and invert the midpoints of any of the other cusps or the Ascendant by 180 degrees if leaving them that way would have things out of order.)

Time-space midpoint relationship charts are supported: Doing "-rm chart1 chart2" will calculate the time and location exactly half way between the times and locations as indicated in the two files. Unlike all other types of relationship charts, this one actually exists in space and time, and therefore can be treated like a single chart and can be output to a file with the -o option.

The -rc composite and -rm time-space midpoint relationship charts may be weighted to give more influence to one of the charts. When the switches are invoked as -rc0 or -rm0 they accept two additional parameters which are the ratio weights to give to the two chart files in question. For example, the sequence "-rm person1 person2 2 1" will still do a time space midpoint chart, but the time and location that the chart is cast for will be biased at a 2:1 ratio toward person1, i.e. will be 2/3 of the way from person2's chart info closer to person1's info.

Note that the -rc0 switch can be used to generate multiple composite charts between more than two people! A composite chart between two people can already be done and saved to a file with "-rc person1 person2 -o0 composite12". A third person can now be merged in by doing a composite between it and the composite of the first two, but giving the first result a 2:1 ratio because two charts have already gone into it, by "-rc0 composite12 person3 2 1 -o0 composite123". A fourth person can then be merged in at a higher ratio with "-rc0 composite123 person4 3 1 -o0 composite1234" and so on. Actually this method won't always generate a 100% correct multiple composite chart in cases where the objects are spread out over 180 degrees and the initial composites put the current midpoint in the wrong half, e.g. if the Suns of person1 through person3 are 1Can, 29Sag, and 0Ari, then the true composite Sun is at 0Ari, but composite12 is at 0Lib and hence the final composite is at 0Leo or 0Sag, in the wrong "quadrant" biased toward the earlier results. Still the results are useful and the method can be used with -rm0 to get the correct average between multiple chart locations.

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! <

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.)

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 -Y8 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 -a 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 -a 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 -a" and see the influence given to each aspect.

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 now -X". (There is no easy way to do this otherwise, short of using -o0 position files, since the -p progression switch will affect all charts.) The -rp switch may also be invoked as -rp0, which will do the same thing but as a solar arc progression instead of a secondary progression.

Astrolog can do tri-wheel and quad-wheel graphics charts. These are like the standard and bi-wheel charts, but with a third and/or fourth ring of planets. The standard or first chart in memory is placed on the outer wheel, next in is the second chart in memory, where the third and/or fourth charts are on the inside. (Note this is different from the bi-wheel graphic which has the first chart on the inside and the second on the outside.) The house cusps and the graphic sidebar if showing will correspond to the info in the first ring. There is never any aspect display in the middle of the wheel, but when the -Xi alternate chart display flag is set, the program will draw dotted lines from each planet in the outer rings to the inner one, as is always done in the bi-wheel chart. The -r3 switch, taking no parameters, puts one in tri-wheel mode, and the -r4 switch puts on in quad-wheel mode. (You can also do -r2 to enter bi-wheel mode, and -r1 or _r to return to the standard single wheel.)

The command switch '-y <file>' can be used as a shortcut way to compute the current transits for the chart in <file> (unless the TIME features are compiled out), which saves you from having to mention the "now" in the -r0 option.

The -y option is extended based on the -rb and -rd features. The -yb <file> switch will display the person indicated in file's biorhythm for today. The -yd <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 "-yd yourchart". Do the same command again right away and see that you are now a couple seconds older than the first time! There are also switches -yp[0] and -yt which similarly behave like -rp[0] and -rt above but automatically compare to now.

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 graphics 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 configuration 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! I highly recommend this setting be made on by default in the astrolog.dat file if your system will support it, especially for PC users who display text charts on the screen more often than they print one out.

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.

This minor switch is just like the -k switch, however it only toggles whether the high Ascii graphics characters are used, as opposed to -k which toggles both that and whether Ansi colors are used. A system with a black and white monitor may want to use high graphics but not color, while a system with a foreign character set may prefer color but not graphics characters.

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. Note that for Astrolog builds made using the Borland compiler, only the 25 and 50 line modes are available; attempting to enter a 43 line mode will go to 50 rows.

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.

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).

Bitmap files may be generated at any size without running out of memory. If any particular sized bitmap it too large to fit in memory all at once, Astrolog will generate it in multiple stages, using available memory to do one section at a time, writing each piece to the file as we go along. (This is similar to the banding method often used to print large images to printers.) For versions of PC Astrolog before 4.20, there was barely enough memory in the 640K available to generate even the standard 640x480 color bitmap. Now one will always be able to do any size allowed, even the maximum of 2730 by 2730 yielding a file nearly four megabytes in size! We do however have to draw the chart once for each band, so if a bitmap is done in two stages, it will take nearly twice as long to generate. Larger bitmaps require more stages and more time, but we can at least always make them. This banding is only done for the Windows bitmap format; the other formats still need to be done in one shot, however the other formats are usually done on non-DOS systems where memory isn't limited to 640K.

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.

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 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, created by Kenneth Hirst, is available from the Magitech FTP site in the directory /pub/astrology/fonts in the file 6ttfont.zip. It's also available at Kenneth Hirst's Web site at http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/kenneth_hirst/download.htm. 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 the -YXf "use actual fonts" setting 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.

Like bitmaps, creating metafiles is also efficient in how it uses memory. Astrolog will attempt to allocate a large buffer for them, and keep decreasing the amount until it succeeds. (Note that the related PostScript charts don't need any memory buffers because they're written to disk while being generated.) 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.

This switch is used in conjunction with the -Xb, -Xp, or -XM options, to specify the name of the file to write the graphic image to. If not included the program will prompt you for the filename before writing to disk.

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!

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.

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.

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. 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. PC graphics charts may be automatically sized to the dimensions of the screen by passing zero to either or both parameters of the -Xw switch. (Without this, to fill the screen or prevent clipping, one would have to find out the dimensions of whatever graphics mode beforehand, or manually press the 'B' key to do the same thing.) If -Xw is passed zero under X Windows, it will use the compile time default window size.

Astrolog has its own internal character set definitions for the glyphs which it just draws at a higher scale based on the -Xs setting. This can make glyphs at higher scales look slightly blocky. To help prevent this, there's a second alternate "internal font" of double sized glyphs for planets, signs, aspects, and house numbers, which allow the 100% or small scale, and the 200% or medium scale glyphs, to appear smooth to the nearest pixel. (The improved larger glyphs are also used at the 400% or huge scale, and when printing.)

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:

• 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.
• 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.)
• 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.
• 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.
• 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 initial 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). This info can also be brought up by accessing the "-i nul" virtual chart straight from the command line before any other switches.
• For the -XP polar globe view, this will show the southern hemisphere instead of the northern.
• 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.
• 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.

This switch toggles off the border setting that is also interactively toggled by pressing the 'b' key when a graphics screen is up. This switch allows one to toggle the border for graphics files as well as set the default for this in the astrolog.dat file.

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.

This switch will toggle on a flag which will cause the graphics screen to not be cleared on new chart draws. Pressing the 'j' key interactively will toggle the same setting. This feature is used to draw "jet trail" streaks on the screen for some charts, such as the -S orbit and -Z local horizon. If you bring up one of these charts, turn on the setting, and then animate forward, a "time exposure" can be done showing the orbits of planets or an object's path across the sky. (When this is active, entering animation won't automatically jump to the flicker free mode on PC's, because that would make us flip back and forth between two pages breaking the continuity of our "streaks".)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.)

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.

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.

A graphics chart showing all 88 of the astronomical constellations is available with the -XF switch. When this mode is active, the -XW world map and -XG and -XP globe chart modes will draw the outlines of the constellations on the celestial sphere instead of continents on the Earth. Pressing the 'F' key when a graphics screen is up will toggle this setting on. (If you aren't already in one of the map graphics modes, -XF and the 'F' key will switch to one.) The constellation maps may be rotated, tilted, and animated and can do everything else just like the world maps, and depict the sky as if you were looking up at it from Earth. In the -Xi display modification mode, the locations of the planets in the current chart will be shown among the constellations. The constellations are labeled with their correct abbreviations, and you can see the familiar image outlines such as the Great Bear, Cygnus, and all the others, as well as the constellations named after the twelve signs of the zodiac, and how these astrological signs compare with their corresponding constellations. I happen to have four planets in my own natal chart in the constellation Ophiuchus, while there are several other constellations very close to the ecliptic which planets (other than the Sun) often enter, e.g. the Moon will technically be in Orion on September 27th. As with Astrolog's map of the world, I entered the data describing the irregular shape of each constellation myself, and the boundaries are accurate although rounded to the nearest degree. This is a unique feature that isn't in any astronomical programs that I know of much less astrological! For a demo of this, do "astrolog -i yourchartfile -XF -XG -Xi -Xn -U" and see a rotating celestial sphere of the constellations and stars, and where the planets in your natal chart are located within them.

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.

This switch prints out the list of keys one can press when a graphics screen is being displayed. This list may also be obtained by pressing the '?' key interactively when graphics are actually up. With -HX, this may be done anytime and be printed out or sent to a file like all other Astrolog tables.

For the Windows version only, this obscure switch allows one to invoke a menu command from a command line, taking one numeric parameter indicating the item to run. Values 40001 through 40229 are valid menu commands, where the list of what number corresponds to what command is in the resource.h source file. An example use of this is to put "-W 40040" in your astrolog.dat file which will start the program with the "Chart Resizes Window" setting on by default. Another example is having "-W 40214" on the command line of the program's icon to have the Chart Info dialog come up on startup.

For the Windows version only, this switch specifies the animation delay, taking one parameter indicating the number of milliseconds between the start of screen updates. This is the same as the "animation delay" edit control in the Graphics Settings dialog, and exists here as a switch so one may set a default value for it in the astrolog.dat file.

For the Windows version only, this switch allows one to customize the menu text for the macro running commands, taking two parameters, the macro from 1-48 whose menu item to change, and the new text to put on the menu. An ampersand "&" may be used to put an underscore under the character following it, which will be used as the standard Windows menu shortcut for the command. For example, doing -WM 12 "Best friend's chart", will edit the last item on the "Edit Run Macro (Normal Set)" submenu to read "Best friend's chart". After it will still appear "F12" as this doesn't change the direct keyboard shortcut. (One should of course also use the -M0 switch to assign a macro to slot 12 here to actually display your friend's chart when the macro is run.)

For the Windows version only, this switch toggles it so that the window will not redraw its contents until you force an update (with the Redraw Screen command or by pressing space). Normally the screen updates after every command or whenever a section of the window gets uncovered. However this constant redrawing may cause unwanted waiting on a slower system, especially if one is tweaking various minor settings in say a large transit search, and doesn't want to wait after each modification.

This switch was described in an earlier section.Look up

This switch allows you to set whether the North Node in Astrolog (object number 16) is the Mean or the True node of the Moon. The mean Node is the default, but toggling on the -Yn flag will do the True node. (The default may also be set at compile time via the TRUENODE #ifdef.)

This is a switch which determines whether dates are displayed in Month/Day/Year order or in the more "European" Day/Month/Year format. Toggling on or off this flag will specify the DMY or MDY format everywhere in the program from text wheel charts to transit charts to the chart info displayed in graphics charts.

This is another option which is just like the above except that it affects how times are displayed throughout the program. When clear, times will be printed in am/pm format, while when set they will be in the more "European" 24 hour clock.

This option toggles on a useful flag to automatically prevent display of irrelevant or redundant aspects involving house cusps, processing them in a more intuitive manner. This affects charts such as -t transit search lists, -T transit influence charts, and -a aspect lists. First, aspects other than conjunctions to minor cusps will be ignored, e.g. a sextile to the 12th house cusp is redundant and isn't really useful, as we are more interested in the conjunction to the 2nd house. Minor aspects to the angles such as the Ascendant and Midheaven are left alone. The setting also prevents redundant aspects to two items that are always opposite each other, e.g. if a transit list shows a trine to the Midheaven, it won't show a sextile to the Descendant right next to it.

This setting when active will stop printing lines of text within charts if they're long enough to go beyond the right edge of the screen. This can be used to prevent text from wrapping around the screen to the next line. By default, with all objects unrestricted, certain charts will have rows more than 80 columns wide, which can break up the chart making it difficult to read, e.g. the -r0 -g relationship aspect grid, the -E ephemeris listing, and the -L astro-graph columns when uranians are included. With this option on however, these and any other charts that can go beyond column 80, will always be displayed on one line, with columns that would go beyond the 80th not getting printed. Note that this setting can actually clip at any column instead of just the 80th, where the screen width value used is the same as used for interpretation formatting, i.e. the optional parameter to the -I switch.

This feature gives you the option to have Astrolog automatically stop whenever the screen gets filled with text and prompt before scrolling to the next page. It takes one parameter to define the number of rows to print before prompting the user to press return to continue. If set to zero, the feature will be turned off and Astrolog will print continuously until done. This helps those who may be concerned about the program scrolling things off the screen before they can read it. Without this one would have to press Ctrl-S to have the system pause printing, send output to a file, or be on a system with scrollbars to see everything. This feature is on by default and set to 24 lines, although this can be changed easily in the astrolog.dat file. When the program is paused, one can type a couple things before pressing return: Entering 'q' will terminate the program, entering 'Q' will turn off the feature and scroll until done, '8' will toggle the right hand column clipping setting, and 'k' will toggle the Ansi color setting.

Astrolog can still read in all old style -o info and -o0 position chart files generated by previous versions of the program without problem. Not only that, but it will write out these old formats too if the -Yo switch is put into effect. When set, it will output -o and -o0 files exactly as in version 4.10 and before, in simple lists of numbers in fixed fields instead of in generic command files.

This obscure switch determines whether the angular house cusp objects (i.e. indexes 21, 24, 27, and 30) contain the position of their respective house cusps, or the positions of the Ascendant, Nadir, Descendant, and Midheaven. These positions are always the same except for certain house systems, e.g. in the Equal house system the position of the 10th cusp is different from the Midheaven. Normally the angular house objects always contain the positions of the Asc, MC, etc, however this feature gives the user the option to have the objects' contents be the positions of the cusps as defined by the house system in use.

This obscure switch, taking one parameter for the number of minutes, allows one to offset forward or backward the time considered to be the current moment now. This is useful if your -n now charts always seem to be a few hours or whatever off, as seems to be the case on certain Mac or Amiga systems. For example, if -n says it's 3:30pm when it's really 1:30pm, doing "-Yz -120" will back up the clock appropriately (and change the planetary positions slightly too). It's important that this switch be used as a last resort instead of first, where one should first check their system time, the system time zone setting such as may be set with the TZ environment variable, and Astrolog's default time zone. A line for this setting appears in the default astrolog.dat file.

This command switch is used with the -l sector charts and sets whether a sector is a plus zone sector or not. Taking one parameter of a sector number, it toggles the plus zone status of it. Like the -R restriction switches, the "_" prefix may be used to make a sector minus and the "=" prefix to make a sector plus.

This is an obscure option allowing one to force whether night chart formula inverting is done in the -P Arabic part chart list, since sources differ on which parts are best inverted. This option takes one parameter, either -1, 0, or 1. Zero is the default setting, meaning the program will invert only those parts that have the flip flag set, for charts cast at night. If the setting is 1, then no inverting will ever be done for any part, even in night charts. If the setting is -1, then inverting will always be done for every part, even in day charts. Note that the POF does appear both in the -P full part list, as well as being the only part that's also a standard object (object #18) meaning it's the only part one may automatically do aspects or transits to. Note also that the -P list POF inverts for night charts, meaning the standard object in the main list does too.

This switch, taking one parameter, specifies how many days to include in the biorhythm charts. It will control the number of days spanned in the text biorhythm listing, and number of days plotted before and after the given day in the graphic biorhythm chart.

This feature allows one to "define their own planets", by changing the orbital elements of one of Astrolog's objects. This switch takes 17 parameters, which specify all the data needed for any elliptical orbit around the Sun. The parameters are as follows: First is the object to redefine; second is the semi-major axis of the new orbit, in AU; next are three parameters for the eccentricity of the orbit's ellipse; next are three parameters for the inclination of the orbit with respect to the ecliptic, in degrees; next are three parameters for the argument of perihelion, which is the "rotation" of the orbit in degrees or how far away its perihelion is from zero Aries; next are three parameters defining the ascending node, which is the "tilt" of the orbit or how far away the point where the orbit intersects the ecliptic is from zero Aries; finally are three parameters for the "mean anomaly" which is basically where on the orbit the planet is at a reference time and how fast it moves along it. Many of the above element settings take three values when it seems like only one is needed. The second and third values are used as linear and quadratic error factors to the first, and can be zero unless every last bit of accuracy that can be provided outside of ephemeris files is needed. Note that these parameters basically replace the same elements as used in the old Matrix formulas. This means the -YE switch settings are ignored when the -b ephemeris flag is in effect. Note also that the Matrix formulas have special error factors applied on top of their main elements for Jupiter through Pluto, hence it's recommended to only redefine asteroids, uranians, or inner planets. The following example will roughly move Venus into Earth's orbit: "-YE 4 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 23000".

This is like the -R switch except that it explicitly sets the restrictions for a range of Astrolog objects instead of just one. The first two parameters specify the lower and upper object bounds, and are followed by zero or one flag parameters to clear or set the restriction status of each object within the range.

This behaves exactly like the -YR switch above except it affects transit restrictions, like how the -RT switch is to -R.

This sets the restriction status for sign and direction changes. It takes two parameter flags, with the first setting for sign changes, and the second direction changes. This affects the -d daily event searches, and works like the -R restrictions but for all types of these special events, instead of all aspects or all events containing a particular object.

This switch allows one to determine which events appear in the -Zd rising and setting time chart. It takes four parameters, which respectively control whether rising events, zenith transit events, setting events, and nadir transit events are included in the chart. A zero value indicates to include that event, while a one means to restrict it. For example, to include only rising and setting events in the -Zd chart, do "-YRZ 0 1 0 1".

This is like -Ao but sets the orbs for a range of Astrolog aspects instead of just one. The first two parameters specify the lower and upper aspect index bounds, and are followed by a list of orb values for each aspect in the range.

This is like -Am but sets the maximum aspect orbs allowed to a range of objects instead of just one. Again, the first two parameters are the lower and upper object indexes, followed by the list of max orb values.

This is like -Ad but sets the planet orb addition values for a range of objects instead of just one. Again, the first two parameters are the bound indexes, and are followed by the list of planet orb additions.

This is like -Aa bor each aspect in the range.

This sets the powers or influences of the given range of planets, when considered in a natal chart, as used in charts such as the -j influence chart, -a aspect influence list, and -T transit influence list.

This sets the influences for the given range of houses, as used in charts such as -j.

This sets the influences for the given range of aspects, as used in charts such as the -j influence chart, -a aspect influence list, and -T and -D transit lists.

This sets the influences of the given range of planets, just like -Yj, except here for when the planets are transiting, as used in charts such as the -T transit and -D external planets influence lists.

This switch takes four parameters and sets respectively, the extra influences given to a planet when it's in the sign it rules, when it's in the sign it exalts in, when it's in the house corresponding to the sign it rules, and when it's in the house corresponding to the sign it exalts in. These values are used in examples such as the -j influence chart.

This switch allows one to customize the rulerships of a given planet. It takes three parameters, the object to modify, the zodiac sign for it to rule, and a second sign for it to co-rule. Pass in the value zero to make a planet not rule any sign. For example, Jupiter by default rules Sagittarius and co-rules Pisces. If you'd prefer it to rule Cancer and not have a co-rulership, do "-YJ Jup Can 0".

Similar to the -YJ switch, this allows one to customize the zodiac sign a given planet exalts in. It takes two parameters, the object to modify, and the new sign to exalt in (with a zero value meaning no exaltation). For example, to make Pluto exalt in Aries (and hence implicitly be debilitated in the opposite sign Libra) do "-YJ0 Plu Ari".

-YI <obj> <string>: This sets the meaning for the given planet or object, i.e. the part of one's mind the planet represents. For example, the default setting for Jupiter would be: -YI 6 "enthusiastic, faithful, wise, expansive, spontaneous nature".

-YIC <house> <string>: This sets the meaning for the given house, i.e. the area of life that house presents. For example, the default for the first house is: -YIC 1 "establishment of personal identity".

-YIa <sign> <string>: This sets the characteristics for the given sign, i.e. adjectives describing it. For example, the default for Gemini is: -YIa 3 "inquisitive, witty, perceptive, adaptable".

-YIv <sign> <string>: This sets the desires for the given sign, i.e. verbs describing what something characterized by it seeks. For example, the default for Virgo is: -YIv 6 "works toward perfection".

YIA <asp> <string>: This sets the meaning for the given aspect, i.e. the type of interaction going on when the aspect is in effect. For example, the default for the Trine is: -YIA 4 "is in harmony with". Special note for hackers: If the optional characters "%s" appear in the given string anywhere, Astrolog will replace them with an appropriate adverb indicating how strong the effect of the aspect is (and include the trailing space). For example, the real default for Trine is: -YIA 4 "is %sin harmony with", where the "%s" will is replaced with "always ", "somewhat ", etc, as appropriate.

-YIA0 <asp> <string>: This sets the conclusion for the given aspect, i.e. an additional sentence about it. For example, the default for the Opposition is: -YIA0 5 "Adaptation is required by both sides".

-YkC <col1> <col2> <col3> <col4> switch: This switch defines the colors used for the four elements, and takes four parameters, for fire, earth, air, and water, in that order. The colors used for planets are based on the element of the sign they rule, so this affects the colors of the main planets too. For example, to make earth be green and air yellow, instead of the other way around as Astrolog used to always force, do "-YkC 9 10 11 12" or "-YkC Red Green Yellow Blue" or just "-YkC red gre yel blu".

-YkA <asp1> <asp2> <colors> switch: This defines the colors used for a range of aspects. The first two parameters are the lower and upper indexes of the aspects to modify, and are followed by one color parameter for each aspect in the range. For example, to highlight Trines by making them white and all the other major aspects dark blue, do "-YkA 1 5 dkb dkb dkb whi dkb".

-Yk0 <val1> <val2> <colors> switch: This sets a range of colors used other places in the program (excluding elements and aspects) whose default colors are one of the colors of the rainbow. The first two parameters are values from 1 to 7 indicating the lower and upper bounds of the default colors to redefine, and are followed by new actual colors to use instead. The seven indexes represent the colors Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Cyan, Blue, and Purple. For example, if you want to change the color used for the Uranians from their default of purple to orange, do "-Yk0 7 7 orange" and you've effectively "redefined the color purple".

-Yk <val1> <val2> <colors> switch: Like -Yk0 above this also sets a range of colors as used many places in the program, except this allows one to redefine all the standard or obscure colors (i.e. the other nine that aren't one of the rainbow colors covered above). Again the first two parameters indicate the range of colors to change which are from 0 to 8, and are followed by the new colors to use. The nine indexes represent in order the colors Black, White, LtGray, DkGray, Maroon, DkGreen, DkCyan, DkBlue, and Magenta. For example, to change the highlight color as used in graphics charts to draw borders and the like from LtGray to Yellow, do "-Yk 2 2 yellow". (Note that you can use this to even "change" the colors Black and White to draw graphics on whatever background color you want.)

-YXG <0-2><0-2><0-2><0-3>: Select among different graphic glyphs for Capricorn, Uranus, Pluto, and Lilith.

Astrolog has the ability to choose between different common glyphs for various astrological symbols. One may optionally display charts with the "European" version of the Capricorn glyph, instead of the more twisty "American" type glyph. One may display charts with the "astronomical" version of the Uranus glyph using a dotted circle with an ascending arrow, instead of the more astrological "Herschel" glyph with the crescent bounded cross over a circle. One may display with the "astronomical" version of the Pluto glyph as the "PL" initials, instead of the more "astrological" version with the circle over crescent over cross. Finally one may choose to display Lilith as a small reversed crescent instead of as a circle with a line through it.

The -YXG switch changes the glyphs to use for these signs and planets that may be drawn in more than one way. It takes one parameter, a four digit number specifying the glyphs to use for Capricorn (1000's place digit), Uranus (100's place), Pluto (10's place), and Lilith (1's place). For each position, the digit "0" means to leave a glyph alone, while "1" means set to what's generally considered the "American" form, and "2" means to what's generally considered a "European" form. (For Lilith only, one may also choose the digit "3", which is the "U" shaped South Node glyph.) For example, "-YXG 0120" leaves the glyphs for Capricorn and Lilith at their present setting, sets Uranus to be the "Herschel" glyph, and Pluto to be the astronomical "P" glyph. The default selection is "1111", but many astrologers on the Eastern side of the Atlantic may prefer "2222".

This sets the size of the graphic -g aspect and midpoint grids, i.e. the number of cell rows and columns available to draw items in. Aspect grids by default are always 20 by 20 cells (21 by 21 for the -r0 relationship comparison grids counting the index row) to account for the default number of objects active. If this size value is too high (or objects are restricted), there will be unused rows at the bottom, while if it's too low (or objects are added), rows will be clipped off the bottom.

This sets whether or not actual system fonts (instead of Astrolog's vector graphics) are used for glyphs and text in PostScript and Windows metafile graphics files. Zero means no system fonts, while one means use Courier, Wingdings for metafiles, and the Astro font. (This can also be set to the hack value of two if you don't have the Astro font, which means don't try to use this system font but do use all the others.)

This allows one to set the page orientation for full PostScript graphics files as generated with the -Xp0 switch. If the orientation parameter value is positive, that means the chart will be printed in portrait mode, while if negative, it will be in landscape mode. If the orientation value is set to zero (the default), then the program will decide based on the size of the current chart, with charts with wider horizontal sizes (e.g. astro-graph charts and wheel charts with sidebars) being in landscape, and charts with horizontal sizes less than or equal to the vertical (e.g. aspect grids and wheel charts without sidebars) being in portrait.

One may also choose the paper size of full -Xp0 PostScript graphics charts. There are two parameters given which specify the horizontal and vertical size in inches of the paper to be printed upon. By default this is 8.5" x 11". If you have say 8.5" x 14" legal size or A4 paper in your printer it can be used just as easily. (Note: It's possible that at least some systems or drivers may clip all graphics beyond 8.5" x 11", but excluding any external restrictions Astrolog's PostScript should allow one to go beyond these limits.)

For PC's with graphics only, this sets the two graphics modes as used when displaying charts on the screen. The two parameters specify the mode number to use as the default "hi-resolution" mode, and the "flicker-free" mode used for animations.

This obscure switch is invoked in one of four forms: -0o, -0i, -0q, or -0X, where more than one of the subswitches may be combined, e.g. -0oiqX to do all four forms at once. Each subswitch disables a section of the program. The four areas of file output, file input, program termination, and graphics mode charts, may be respectively turned off by the four subswitches above. Once a section is disabled, it is that way permanently and can not be turned back on until the program quits. Attempting to access a restricted feature will display an appropriate error message or at least do nothing. This switch was meant to be used when Astrolog is being run from a chart server, a BBS, as a demo, or related situation. For example, if one set up Astrolog on the Net to be able to receive chart requests including arbitrary command lines where the result is e-mailed back to the user, the administrator probably wants to prevent the client from using the -o switch to create or potentially overwrite files on the server, in which case -0o can be put in the astrolog.dat file to prevent file output before the client gets a chance to do anything. Similarly, -0i can be used to prevent the client from using -i to read in private files on the server. If the server only e-mails text back to the user, you probably don't want the server copy of the program going into interactive graphics mode waiting for someone to pass it keystrokes, in which case -0X can be used. Finally, -0q might be useful in demo situations where people can play with the program but you don't want them exiting it. In this last case, the only way to stop the program is to kill the process; a Control-C should stop the DOS or Unix versions, but you'll probably have to exit Windows to terminate Astrolog if a -0q is done in the Windows version.

The -; "dash semicolon" switch when encountered causes all the rest of the switches on a command line to be ignored and not processed. This allows the semicolon (usually used by itself without the optional dash prefix of course) to be used to begin comments and for comment lines in the various command files.

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 this to pause all automatic updates to the window or screen. This is mainly used to temporarily freeze any animation (see below) so a particular chart can be looked at without interruption. When animation is on but temporarily paused with this key, the mouse (inactive for the purpose of scribbling during animation) will come active again. Related to this, the number keys which set the rate of animation, but for PC's scroll the chart when not in animation mode, will do the scrolling instead of setting the rate when animation is paused then.

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.

For color displays, pressing this key will toggle in and out of monochrome mode.

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.

Pressing the 't' key will toggle whether or not the chart parameters are printed at the bottom of the window or in a sidebar. This corresponds to the -Xt switch mentioned earlier.

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 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.

This key toggles on the "jet trails / time exposure" flag which will cause the graphics screen to not be cleared on new chart draws. See the -Xj switch which affects the same setting for more info.

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.

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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.)

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Of these switches, only 'U' now works, toggling in Fixed Stars in Default Mode.

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 'g' 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). Press the 'z' key to toggle whether wheel charts are displayed in Vedic format. Press the 'y' key to toggle whether charts are displayed in navamsa format or not. These keys of course correspond the -s, -h, -f, -3, -J, and -9 options, respectively.

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 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.

For PC systems, the 'B' key does a different function that the feature shown above. See PC graphics section for its description.

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.

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.

'[', ']' 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.

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). When animation mode itself is active, these keys will jump by the current animation step, instead of only an amount in days.

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.)

Animation! This key will toggle in and out of a mode where the chart is continually updated in the window. Entering the animation mode
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 'p' key will cause the globe to rotate for an impressive display! Note that when a comparison relationship chart is up, animation will forward the chart in the "second" slot rather than the "first". This is more intuitive when animating bi-wheel transit to natal charts, where the transiting, i.e. second, chart will be the one forwarded.

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 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.

The nine number keys are used to set the relative "rate" of animation to "1" up to "9" 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 9° for each update.

For PC systems only, see the section on PC graphics for this additional feature accessed through the number keys. Note when pressing numbers to set the animation rate or the section of a PC graphics screen to view, the numeric keypad will work for PC's even if numlock isn't on. It would be annoying to press a number on the keypad only to pass some random characters to Astrolog because you forgot to turn on numlock.

There are basically twelve main modes in which the graphics screen can be in: There are the nine main charts (wheel, aspect grid, local sky, space view, Gauquelin sector, calendar, dispositor, astro-graph, and ephemeris) as well as the three world displays (the simple map by itself, the globe view, and the polar projection). These twelve keys can be used to switch between these 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.

The Biorhythm listing and graphic appears only as a two-chart comparison covering a span of time, the difference expressed as sine-waves. It allows to you to compare a natal chart, (chart#2), and a given time, (chart#1), according, potentially, to a three-fold assessment of Physical, Emotional & Intellectual power, - over fourteen days in text mode, - over two fortnights in graphical.
To dismiss this chart, press 'c' to clear one chart, then press 'v' for Standard Wheel.
See 'X' WINDOWS Graphics' Features, seeking '-rb -x', for more.

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.

This key toggles on the constellation charts where the map and globe modes show the celestial sphere instead of the Earth's continents. See the -XF switch which affects the same setting for complete info.

For PC's, pressing the function keys F1 through F12 will execute macros when graphics are being displayed. Pressing F1 through F12 will run macros 1 through 12. Pressing Shift+F1 through Shift+F12 will run macros 13 through 24. Control+F1 through Control+F12 will run macros 25 through 36. Finally Alt+F1 through Alt+F12 will run macros 37 through 48. Executing a macro that hasn't been defined yet (either with a function key or the -M switch) will do nothing.

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).

Pressing the delete key when a graphics screen is up will clear the screen, but not redraw the chart right away unless animation mode is on. This is most useful for the -Xj "timed exposure" streaks in horizon and orbit charts if you want to start a new "jet trail" while animating.

This feature is only available on PC systems. See PC graphics section for its description. More

Pressing the return key when a graphics screen is up will pause and prompt you for a command line. This command line will be processed after which you will be returned back to the graphics state you left, allowing the changing on the fly of any setting that isn't already covered by pressing whatever key, without having to drop all the way back to a -Q loop or out of the program altogether. This can be used to redisplay the -H switch list too. (There are a couple of rare things you can't do in the middle of graphics, e.g. you aren't allowed to suddenly switch to one of the graphics file modes.)

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Pressing this key will exit the graphic, or terminate the window (and leave the Astrolog program itself.)

Now, 'q' terminates the program.

• Conjunctions = Yellow, Sextiles = Light Blue, Squares = Red, Trines = Green, Oppositions = Dark Blue. For the minor aspects we have: Inconjuncts/Semisextiles = Pink, Semisquares/ Sesquiquadratures = Orange, (Bi/Semi)Quintiles = Blue Grey, (Bi/Tri)Septiles = Maroon, (Bi/Quatro)Noviles = Violet.