What's new in Chac 2.11.6
Nov 21, 2023
- Configured the main window to appear at the top of the screen, adjacent to the menu bar with no space.
- Fixed a bug that caused the background color of the field with God K/ K'awiil to fill the entire inscription window.
- Made a minor edit to the text in the Help Book.
New in Chac 2.11.5 (Nov 15, 2023)
New in Chac 2.11.4 (Aug 4, 2023)
- I added text in the Help Book describing the 819 cycle as a magic number close to multiples of the synodic periods of the five visible planets.
- I made the text field for special statements include short count completion.
New in Chac 2.11.3 (May 28, 2023)
- I added new information about the 819-day cycle to the Help Book.
- I changed the small options pane in the lower left of an inscription so it will only show options if they aren't the default.
New in Chac 2.11.2 (Mar 28, 2023)
- Maintenance upgrade - small changes to code and Help Book and fixes a bug that caused some dates not to be displayed as a Lunar Eclipse.
New in Chac 2.11.1 (Jan 24, 2023)
- Maintenance upgrade: small changes to the code and Help Book
- Fixed a bug that could crash the program when opening it by dragging and dropping an inscription file (type insc).
- Added file type gif to the list of files types that you can use to save an inscription.
New in Chac 2.11.0 (Sep 4, 2022)
- I built this version for Mac OS 11.
- I fixed a bug that would cause the suggested file name when saving inscriptions to be truncated at the last period in the long count.
- I made minor changes to the panels and their actions and layouts.
- I added a feature: In the codices the cycles of Venus are canonical not astronomical. The first day of the Venus cycle is the heliacal rising. Then there are 236 days as morning star, 90 days of invisibility during superior conjunction, 250 days as evening star and eight days of invisibility at inferior conjunction. I made it a preference to calculate the stations of Venus either way and made the canonical / codex system the default setting.
New in Chac 2.9.8 (Sep 20, 2020)
- Minor upgrade: I changed the text in the text field in the Solstice and Equinox panel and eliminated support for the Encina correlation.
New in Chac 2.9.7 (Sep 11, 2020)
- Minor update: I added the GPE - Encina correlation.
New in Chac 2.9.6 (Aug 10, 2020)
- Maintenance update: small changes mostly invisible to the user.
New in Chac 2.7.10 (Oct 28, 2018)
- I fixed a bug that caused the calendar date to be displayed incorrectly in the Venus Panel.
- I modernized infrastructure in the project. This will not be visible to the user.
- I edited the Help Book.
New in Chac 2.7.9 (Oct 1, 2018)
- I fixed a bug that stopped the app's custom error alert from displaying.
New in Chac 2.7.8 (Sep 27, 2018)
- I fixed a bug in the solstice and equinox panel.
New in Chac 2.7.7 (Sep 4, 2018)
- Minor changes to the Help Book and GUI.
New in Chac 2.7.5 (Aug 15, 2018)
- Initialized the user frame for document windows to the document's minimum size so that even before the user resizes the inscription the green zoom button will work. When a user zooms the window it will zoom correctly. This also enhances the functionality of the green zoom button for other situations.
New in Chac 2.7.4 (Aug 1, 2018)
- Changed to initialization or display of four of the panels.
- Edited the Help Book.
New in Chac 2.7.3 (Apr 10, 2018)
- Some of the images in this application were in a format that requires a lot of space. Replaced these with images in a more efficient format. This will make the application bundle about half as big on disk.
- Replaced the OS X generic alert with a custom alert that allows me show the custom icon more better.
New in Chac 2.7.2 (Mar 19, 2018)
- Added code that improves the handling of the Venus and zenith passage panels.
- Fixed minor typos in the string literals and the Help Book.
- Changed the icon in the program's alert panel.
New in Chac 2.7.1 (Nov 29, 2017)
- Very minor bug fixes, optimizations and edits to the Help Book.
New in Chac 2.7.0 (Nov 11, 2017)
- Added a panel to calculate the zenith passage days for a particular site.
- Various minor bug fixes and optimizations
- Edited the help book to reflect the upgrade
New in Chac 2.6.0 (Oct 24, 2017)
- Added a panel to find solstices and equinoxes.
New in Chac 2.5.10 (Sep 27, 2017)
- Fixed a bug that could cause Chac to skip the last lunar eclipse if it occurred on the day before the date in an inscription.
- Changed the minimum required version of OS X from 10.6 to 10.10.
New in Chac 2.5.9 (Sep 16, 2017)
- Added the Aldana correlation.
- Fixed a bug that could cause the app to crash while parsing text from panels.
- Updated the minimum version of OS X to 10.10.
New in Chac 2.5.8 (Sep 6, 2017)
- Fixed a bug that caused icon previews for inscriptions saved in graphics formats to be rendered incorrectly.
- Disabled drawing the background in document windows. This causes them to draw a light gray background.
- Changed the minimum size of document windows.
- Enabled copying and pasting of inscription data to/from the clipboard between inscriptions.
- Edited the text in the Help Book to more clearly describe the systems of counting lunar days.
New in Chac 2.5.7 (Aug 18, 2017)
- I improved the edit menu to facilitate cut, copy and paste functions between the editable text fields in the panels.
- I added initialization of the file type extension in the suggested file name in the save as... panel so the first file name would include the file type extension.
- I edited the Venus section of the Methods of Calculating Maya Calendar Dates section of the Help Book to clarify this.
New in Chac 2.5.6 (Jan 28, 2017)
- This update contains small changes to the Venus panel and the Help book.
New in Chac 2.5.5 (Nov 24, 2016)
- Fixed a bug that could cause the program to skip an occurrence of the last cosmical rising of Venus.
New in Chac 2.5.4 (Nov 5, 2016)
- Changed the way the Julian to Gregorian calendar panel responds to changes in the current inscription.
- Optimized the calculation of Venus events to speed up the calculations.
New in Chac 2.5.3 (Oct 13, 2016)
- This update contains a minor bug fix and a small change to the text fields in the eclipse and Venus panels.
New in Chac 2.5.2 (Oct 6, 2016)
- Changed the text field that shows eclipses so that the text would not be truncated.
- Added more relevant text to the text field in the eclipse panel.
- Added a similar text field to the Venus panel.
New in Chac 2.5.1 (Apr 19, 2016)
New in Chac 2.5.0 (Apr 16, 2016)
- Added a dialog to find the next or last lunar or solar eclipse. The dialog will display the details of the eclipse, Julian date, calendar date and time of day of the maximum eclipse in 24 hour time in time zone -6 (time zone of the Maya civilization).
- If an eclipse occurs on the date of an inscription, the time of day and details of the eclipse will be displayed in the inscription window.
- Edited the Help Book to explain these features.
New in Chac 2.4.9 (Nov 13, 2015)
- Fixes a bug that caused the wrong illustration to be displayed for two of the 819 cycles when the God K option was selected.
- The help book has been edited.
New in Chac 2.4.8 (Aug 21, 2015)
- Changed the initialization of the Venus dialog so that the popup menus will be initialized to the next rising/setting event for the current front inscription or if one is not open, to the next event after today.
- Expanded the Venus Calculations section of the Methods of Calculating Maya Calendar Dates chapter in the help book to include more information about the calculating the heliacal rising of Venus and the Dresden codex.
New in Chac 2.4.7 (Jan 20, 2015)
- A maintenance update. It includes two minor changes to the appearance of the inscription window and the Venus panel and a few changes to the code.
New in Chac 2.4.6 (Nov 15, 2014)
- Changed the Venus Panel so that the text field will display the visibility of Venus of the front Inscription, or if there is not one open, of the current date.
- Edited the Help book.
- Made minor changes to the graphical user interface.
New in Chac 2.4.5 (Aug 9, 2014)
- Changed the name for inscription windows and the suggested names for saving inscriptions as .insc files and graphic files. The delimiters between Long Count units were spaces. Now they are periods. This reflects the general convention for the notation of Long Count Dates.
New in Chac 2.4.4 (Jun 18, 2014)
- Made maintenance changes to the code:
- Made a minor changes to the code that draws a glyph, the code that calculates the heliacal risings of Venus and I cleaned up some general purpose code.
- Made a minor edit to the help book.
- Made minor changes to the appearance of some panels.
New in Chac 2.4.3 (May 21, 2014)
- made maintenance changes to the code.
- fixed a bug that caused the wrong day popup menu items to be enabled in the Find Date… panel in October of 1582 (julian to Gregorian calendar transition).
- added the ability to display the 819 day count as either K'awil (god K) or the four Chacs. The illustrations of the Chacs are examples from the serpent series of the Dresden Codex.
- changed the code that draws an inscription to use shadows and gradients.
- added the calculations for the heliacal phenomena of Venus. Chac will now display if a date is the heliacal rising or setting or the cosmical rising or setting of Venus. added a panel to allow the user to find the next or last heliacal phenomena of Venus.
- changed the key equivalents in the find menu to make it easier and more intuitive.
- added illustrations to the Long Count, Tzolk'in, Haab' and Calendar Round panels.
New in Chac 2.4.2 (Feb 6, 2013)
- Added a field for the number of days in the Long Reckonings panel.
- Made minor changes to the help files.
- Fixed a bug in the Distance panel.
- Added a field for the number of days in the Distance panel.
- Fixed a bug that could format the number of days field in the Long Reckonings and Distance panels incorrectly.
New in Chac 2.4.1 (Nov 8, 2012)
- Minor bug fixes and minor edits to the help file.
New in Chac 2.4 (May 19, 2012)
- Added a panel to allow conversions between the proleptic Gregorian and the Julian/Gregorian calendars.
New in Chac 2.3 (Mar 16, 2012)
- Added the Smulders correlation.
- Replaced the algorithm for calculating lunar data with one based on Astronomical Algorithms by Meeus.
- Added the option of using either the appearance of the new moon or the disappearance of the waning moon as day zero in the lunar cycle.
New in Chac 2.1.3 (Oct 25, 2011)
- Added a panel to calculate Long Reckonings.
- Edited the User Guide chapter of the Help Book to explain this.
- Changed the About the Maya calendar chapter under the heading "Distance Numbers, Long Reckonings and Inscriptions with Great Dates" to explain this better.
- Fixed a few very minor bugs.
New in Chac 2.1.2 (Mar 2, 2011)
- Fixed minor bugs in the activating or deactivating of the interface elements in the Calendar Round and date panels.
- Added a Distance number calculation panel. This was difficult because the algorithms for Julian day number, Tzol'kin, Haab' , day of the week and Long Count wouldn't work for negative numbers. The calculations can be done as far as 20 + or - 20 bak'tuns but you can only set the current inscription to the date in the panel if it's 0 - 19.19.19.17.19.
- Edited the help book to reflect these changes and made other substantial edits and improvements.
- Fixed a bug which caused maya dates to store their preferred year bearer system improperly.
New in Chac 2.1.1 (Nov 17, 2010)
- Replaced the deprecated NSDocument data accessor methods dataRepresentationOfType: and loadDataRepresentation: in my NSDocument sub-class with the newer methods recommended for 10.4 and later - dataOfType: and readFromData: This should ensure that the program will work if Apple stops supporting the deprecated methods. I cleaned up some other NSDocument code as well.
- Added the option of using all of the different year bearer systems via the preferences panel and added an explanation of this to the help book.
- Deleted unused menu items from the edit and file menus.
- Added more hyperlinking to the help book and did some minor editing.
New in Chac 2.1 (Oct 31, 2010)
- Added the names and constants of more proposed correlations to the program and I added these to the table of proposed correlations in the program's help book. Chac now recognizes and will name 58 different correlation constants.
- Made minor changes to the document 's appearance.
- Allowed users to close changed documents and quit the application without getting a save changes dialog by overriding the NSDocument class's implementation of the method canCloseDocumentWithDelegate:
- Added icons that are previews of the file 's contents to the files that are saved in graphic formats.
- When panels were first opened the menu items were initialized either to the values of the front inscription or if one was not open, to today's values. If they were closed and then opened again the menu items remained the same. I changed it so that when a panel was re-opened the menu items would be re-initialized.
- Created a better help book with an index page and linked sections and illustrations. I also edited the help book for style and content.
New in Chac 2.0.9 (Dec 23, 2009)
- Changed the name of the file-> save as image... menu to the standard save as ... I made the accessory file type panel a pop up menu.
- Added .insc (inscription) file type and several more graphics formats so you can save an inscription as insc, TIFF, PDF, JPG, JP2, PNG or BMP.
- Added window titles. After a file is saved the framework will display the file name as the title. I didn't like "untitled" for new windows so I made it the Long Count of the inscription. The file system complains when you save files with periods in their names so I separated the units of the Long Count with spaces.
- Fixed window cascading. In older versions new inscriptions were superimposed over older ones.
- Enabled cutting to the clipboard using all three standard pasteboard types: PDF, TIFF, and PICT.
- Changed the preferences panel so that hitting the default values button changes the front inscription to the default values as well as the panel. If there's no inscription open it will open one with today's date and the default values.
- Changed my loadDataRepresentation: method to support reverting to saved if the inscription is saved to a file. I added code to activate or deactivate the Revert to Saved menu item. The framework does this badly and this will have to improve in a future release.
- Re-wrote help file. I need to break this up into several files in a future release.
- Remember: No program is ever finished.
New in Chac 2.0.8 (Apr 7, 2009)
- Fixed a typo in the ISIG patron meaning strings for the Haab' month Wayeb' from "4 unlucky days" to "5 Unlucky Days".
- Made minor edits to the Help book.
New in Chac 2.0.7 (Feb 20, 2009)
- Changed the Long Count to use 20 Bak'tuns instead of 13.
- Eliminated Piktuns and used 20 Bak'tuns for the upper limit.
- Edited the help book.
New in Chac 2.0.6 (Jan 10, 2009)
- Edited the help book for this version.
New in Chac 2.0.5 (Mar 24, 2008)
- I changed the base Julian Day Number used in calculating moon numbers so that Quirigua stela E (9.17.0.0.0) is lunar deity 2 as per Teeple.
- I clarified the text about the Supplementary Series and moon numbers.
New in Chac 2.0.2 (Nov 9, 2007)
- Contains minor bug fixes and tweaks to the help file.