[time-nuts] Lady Heather

[John Miles]

> I am just starting out using Lady Heather.
> 
> I am trying to create a .cfg file to set the program to COM 3 at startup.
> 
> I created the file and saw the instructions to put it in my “Documents” folder.
> The only documents folder in Windows is “My Documents.”
> 
> I created a text file and called it “Heather.cfg” and put it in the My Documents
> folder, but it does not work.  I just put “/3” to change the COM port to COM 3.
> 
> I also tried putting in the “Heather” program folder.

It works OK at this end.  But having just checked, I've noticed that things can get complicated if you want to use a config filename other than HEATHER.CFG, or if you want to put it in a directory other than the one Heather suggests in the '?' help dialog.  Heather allows you to specify a .cfg filename other than the default HEATHER.CFG with the /h= option, but if I run a command like:

"c:\program files (x86)\heather\heather" /h="my config file.cfg"

... it doesn't treat the quoted string as a valid pathname, even though it ought to.  So, there are at least two things to check if you're still having problems:

1) If you use a filename other than HEATHER.CFG, make sure your /h= argument doesn't contain any spaces.  Just use the filename itself, with no directory prefix.

2) Make sure the .cfg file goes in the directory that Heather suggests in the '?' help screen.  Again, it doesn't have to be called HEATHER.CFG (if you use the /h= option) but it does need to go into the directory where the program expects to find it, because there's currently no robust way to force it to read the file from another directory.

> Also, I have read and re-read the list of commands and don’t see any to change
> the display to show the “sky” view of the satellites, as is shown on the Lady
> Heather web page.

I see the line that turns it on "plot_signals = 4", but I'll be darned if I can see how the code gets there.  Mark?

-- john, KE5FX
Miles Design LLC