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ScopeDriver ©2001–2009 Stephen E. Hutson, All Rights Reserved |
New In Version 2.0
Here are highlights of improvements that made their first appearance in ScopeDriver 2.0. For changes in ScopeDriver 2.2, click here.
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One Program, No Waiting
Reviewers and users alike praised ScopeDriver 1.4.2 for its responsiveness and overall speed. We recognize that users value ScopeDriver’s snappy performance, so we improved upon it. ScopeDriver 2.0 launches almost twice as fast on most machines, and establishes connections faster as well. The results shown at left were obtained running ScopeDriver 1.4.2 and 2.0 on a dual 1 GHz Power Macintosh G4.
Version 2.0 also connects faster, finds sky objects more rapidly, opens files more quickly, and does most everything faster than ever before. We’ve slimmed graphics, optimized communication code, and fine-tuned hundreds of code points to achieve these dramatic results.
This is especially impressive, given that ScopeDriver has always performed more quickly than many competing programs.
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Observations on Observing Lists
ScopeDriver’s Observing Lists have earned accolades for their fast loading, small size, and dynamic coordinate display. In these days of capacious hard drives, we still work to keep file sizes down, in part because people transfer observing lists to their laptops via flash memory devices. And speaking of laptops, ScopeDriver’s license agreement allows installation on your desktop computer and your portable computer.
New in version 2.0 is the ability to tag Observing List entries with time stamps, as shown at right. Another thoughtful addition is a command that adjusts the window size to fit all observing list columns.
Observing Lists are now Unicode-aware, so you can share your files worldwide, preserving international text. This works transparently — just type, save, and share.
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The Open Recent menu is alias manager aware on platforms that support it, so ScopeDriver will be able to find your recent Observing Lists even if you’ve moved or renamed them.
ScopeDriver 2.0 incorporates dozens of enhancements to Observing Lists alone, making them faster and more useful.
The Telescope Connection
Version 2.0 lets you cancel a pending connection at any point in the process. So, if you should realize that your telescope isn’t switched on after all, you can get a few seconds of your life back simply by cancelling the connection process.
And, because some telescopes reject the first connection — especially with long cable runs — ScopeDriver 2.0 now makes five connection attempts before giving up.
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Keep On Top of Things
Users with an Internet connection can automatically keep up with the latest improvements to ScopeDriver. New to Version 2.0 is Internet Update Checking, which may be performed each time ScopeDriver is launched, or manually via a menu selection.
In keeping with ScopeDriver’s design philosophy, nothing is downloaded without your approval, and you may specify the name and location of the downloaded update. Of course, ScopeDriver displays a complete list of the latest release’s changes, so you may decide whether or not to download the update.
If you like to keep up with cutting edge developments, ScopeDriver can also notify you of pre-release (beta) releases when they become available.
What could be easier?
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Find Enhancements Here
One of ScopeDriver’s greatest strengths is the Find Object Window. Its automatic expansion of Greek letters is legendary, as is its rapid access to ScopeDriver’s internal database, user objects, and imported text files.
There seemed little to improve in this window, but we added some refinements in version 2.0.
The two sections of this window are now resizeable via a center divider, and — as is the ScopeDriver tradition — the window “remembers” the size of the window and the position of the divider.
In Version 2.0, Find operations are even faster than in version 1.4.2, which was already very fast.
The Find Object Window now displays the source of the selected object’s data, such as ScopeDriver’s Internal Database or ScopeDriver User Data.
A Multitude of Improvements
Some of the enhancements in Version 2.0 consist of new functionality, such as the ScopeDriver History file, which records all communication between ScopeDriver and your telescope. Useful as a troubleshooting resource, ScopeDriver History is also useful for benchmarking the performance of your telescope’s serial interface, and provides a record of the various objects you’ve studied.
Other improvements were made to existing features, such as the ability to specify the coordinates epoch in the Go To Coordinates Window. Improvements have been made to printing, the Observing Log, the Main Window, and elsewhere.
Try It Out!
Download ScopeDriver and see for yourself why this is such an exciting update!
Has your ScopeDriver 1.x demo period expired? No problem! ScopeDriver 2.0 will give you another 30 days to check out the program.
Thanks for your interest in ScopeDriver!
— Stephen E. Hutson, ScopeDriver’s author