Delphi and astrolib 1.03 for PalmOS
Unlike most everything else currently on this site, this stuff is by someone other than myself. I did not write these wonderful programs, or the documentation for them. I am merely hosting them here with the permission of their author, Delphi Twentine, whose website is located at www.exactphilosophy.net.
For these pages, I did a lot of copying, pasting, and editing, and thus nearly all the text is not my original writing - the majority of it is by Delphi Twentine, with some modifications and additions by me.
Si vous parlez français, vous pouvez aller à http://www.astroguide.net/logiciels/delphi.htm.
Translation: If you speak French, you can go to: http://www.astroguide.net/logiciels/delphi.htm
 | Delphi by Delphi Twentine is a free, accurate and intuitive astrology program for Palm OS devices running Palm OS 3.5 or later. It lets you create, view, organize and beam birth charts and view synastry charts.
astrolib 1.03, also by Delphi Twentine, is an open source library that calculates planetary positions with an accuracy of the order of an arc second and calculates time zones based on UNIX time zone data, even back to historical dates.
|
Delphi
|
|
|
The final version of Delphi is 2.01, which supports Palm OS version 3.5 and later.
It is downloadable here: delphi201.zip (340 KB)
Among other things, this file contains the manual in HTML format with lots of screenshots; and the binaries delphi.prc, astrolib.prc, and mathlib.prc. (MathLib is an an open source mathematical library which is independently available free software. Information about MathLib can be found here: http://www.radiks.net/~rhuebner/mathlib.html. It is being provided with Delphi as a convenience, as it is necessary for Delphi to work).
You can view Delphi's manual online, with renovated formatting, or the original formatting (which might print out better). You can also download the renovated version of the manual: delphi_manual.zip (92 KB). The original version is already included with Delphi.
Delphi (and astrolib) do not work if they are installed on an "extension card" of any kind. Delphi (and astrolib
and MathLib) must be installed on the main memory of the Palm OS device. If not, Delphi crashes.
Delphi 2.01 works on all devices except the most recent ones running PalmOS 5.4.9 and maybe slightly older versions - namely Palm TX, Zire Z22 and Treo 700p. This is caused by a bug in PalmOS 5.4.9, more precisely in the emulation of the previous PalmOS <5 architecture.
The bug has the effect that glyphs for planets and star signs are not drawn on the chart wheel (are left blank). In the list of planets right to the right of the chart, planet glyphs are drawn correctly. There are some clumsy workarounds. By changing the color profile of your Palm (there are apparently some utilities that can do that), you can replace black "ink" for text by a very dark gray.
In that case, reportedly, glyphs for star signs (but not for planets) are drawn again. To make planet glyphs visible, too, draw a synastry chart between a birth chart and itself and choose a very dark gray (but not black) for the "partner chart". Of course, in synastry, clicking on items on the chart behaves somewhat differently and there is the extra effort to select synastry.
The person who reported this bug said that he would contact Palm regarding the bug, so that maybe in future devices Delphi will work fully again. That person also contributed also the following interesting option:
Delphi 2.01 reportedly also works on Windows CE Pocket PC handhelds with the ca. US$ 50 commercial PalmOS 5.2 emulator called "Styletap platform" (www.styletap.com).
Since the 68k platform that Delphi was written for does not exist natively since PalmOS 5 anymore, and is since then emulated, Delphi should (except for bugs, like the one mentioned above, in the emulation) continue to work for possibly a long time into the future.
The source code to Delphi is unfortunately lost, so there will most likely be no future development of this program.
One earlier version of Delphi is available as well - Delphi 2.00.
It is downloadable here: delphi200.zip (336 KB)
It has identical features, except that it runs on earlier PalmOS versions, namely 2.0 to 4.x.
astrolib 1.03
The astrolib library calculates planetary positions and time zones.
Positions of sun, moon, and planets up to Pluto are calculated with an accuracy of the order of one arc minute for dates less than a century away from now. Time zones and other information for about 350 locations on earth are retrieved from UNIX time zone data. About 2000 additional locations are linked to UNIX time zone locations.
The source code is distributed under the GNU Lesser General Public License.
It is downloadable here: astrolib103.zip (196 KB)
This contains the C source code, but not a fully buildable project (used to be CodeWarrior for PalmOS on Mac OS <X).
The documentation for astrolib 1.03 is viewable online here.
astrolib (and Delphi) do not work if they are installed on an "extension card" of any kind. astrolib (and Delphi and MathLib) must be installed on the main memory of the Palm OS device. If not, Delphi crashes.