Dear Fer: A friend helped me to download and set up your ZONWLAK program on Saturday and I spent nearly the entire weekend playing with it. It was much easier than I thought it would be, once I got started! Not only did I succeed in coming up with the analemma and declination lines that we discussed last week, but I was able to design other types of dials as well. I think the most important part of using the program is knowing exactly what you want in a sundial and being able to provide the program with the proper design specifications. Harold Brandmaier's HELP file was very useful. Thanks Harold.
Even though the dial plate line drawings look crisp, smooth, and beautiful on the computer screen (especially in color!), we have been having some trouble getting a good quality printout that doesn't have those anoying little step lines. Any suggestions? I'm going to take the program to Alphagraphics, a high-end photo copy shop here, to see if they can give me a better printout on a CAD system. By the way, I noticed that your data input for "step hours" goes to only two decimal places. How would I do a step hour of five minutes? Would it be 5/60 = .08333... = .08 Wouldn't rounding down this repeating decimal cause problems? I know that my dialing career will never be the same now that I have the fabulous ZONWVLAK. No more of those horribly tedious sessions with my dad's old Navy trig tables and my calculator! I'm free! Thanks for giving Independence Day a new meaning, John Carmichael http://www.azstarnet.com/~pappas >
