xearth program

[Mark P. Line]

On Fri, 18 Mar 1994, N R A wrote:

> Any idea where you can get this 'xearth' program - sounds nice. 

The original xearth program is by Kirk Lauritz Johnson
<tuna at cag.lcs.mit.edu> and is available by anonymous FTP from his site
cag.lcs.mit.edu under /pub/tuna. I hear tell that it's also available from
export.lcs.mit.edu under /pub/contrib. 

There's an expanded version of this original for Linux by Scott Heavner
<sdh at po.cwru.edu> that is probably available from the usual Linux FTP
sites, like sunsite.unc.edu under /pub/Linux (I got mine on my Linux
CD-ROM).

For those unfamiliar with xearth (that I mentioned in a previous
message), here's some of what it says in the original README file:

    Xearth sets the X root window an image of the Earth, as seen from
    your favorite vantage point in space, correctly shaded for the
    current position of the Sun. By default, xearth forks a child
    process that runs in the background, updating the displayed image
    every five minutes to reflect changes in the Sun's position.
    Xearth can also render directly into PPM and GIF files instead of
    drawing in the root window. See the man page for details.

    The map information used in xearth was derived from the "CIA World
    Data Bank II map database," as taken from some "cbd" files that
    were apparently originally generated by Brian Reid at DECWRL.

-----

Having a realtime picture of our planet (the only one we have for the time
being) on my screen sure has helped when I found myself writing a shell
script to help print out the documentation for some software I wanted to
download in order to be able to print out the documentation for some other
software I already had that I wanted to use in order to be able to systems
integrate certain packages so that I can help users use the computer when
they're doing environmental impact studies.

Sometimes you sort of lose track of what you set out to do.

This has been an unpaid political announcement. :)

-- Mark

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Mark P. Line                       Phone: +1-206-733-6040
Open Pathways                        Fax: +1-206-733-6040
P.O. Box F                         Email: markline at henson.cc.wwu.edu
Bellingham, WA 98227-0296
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