Palm Globe, version 1.10 13 Nov 1998
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The View menu

The View menu is used to select a standard viewpoint from which the globe is seen, change movement settings, or to enter or select a custom viewpoint. It lists the following choices:

Set viewpoint...
Opens the Viewpoint dialog which lets you select a particular point on the globe's surface.

Find viewpoint
Places the custom viewpoint at the center of view.

Movement settings...
Opens the Movement settings dialog which lets you change settings that affect movement of the view of the globe.

Europe & Africa (0°)
Places the Intersection of the Equator and the Greenwich Meridian (0°N, 0°E) at the center of view.

Americas (90°W)
Places 0°N, 90°W at the center of view.

India & Asia (90°E)
Places 0°N, 90°E at the center of view.

Pacific (180°)
Places the Pacific ocean (0°N, 180°E) at the center of view.

North Pole
Places 90°N, 0°E at the center of view.

South Pole
Places 90°S, 0°E at the center of view.

Snap to equator
Centers the view at latitude 0°N and leaves the longitude at the center of view unchanged.

Snap to Greenwich
Centers the view at longitude 0°E and leaves the latitude at the center of view unchanged.

All menu choices may be selected by the Graffiti short cut shown next to the choice.


The Viewpoint dialog

The Viewpoint dialog lets you enter the coordinates (latitude and longitude) of a point on the surface of the globe. If a valid point is entered, the Done and Tap buttons will be visible and you can then save the point (by tapping Done) or both save and select the point by tapping Tap. The latter has the same effect as tapping the globe directly with the stylus, with the advantages that:

A coordinate may be specified in degree°minutes'seconds" format, or in degree.decimal format, as described in detail in Formats for specifying degrees.

The Paste button is used for directly pasting coordinates into the dialog. For instance, if you had a list of cities and their coordinates in a Memo Pad document you could use the Palm Find button (at the bottom right of the screen) to find the line:

  37°48N  122°24W  San Francisco
The two coordinates (or the whole line) can then be selected by dragging the stylus across the line, and then copied to the clipboard using the Copy function from the Edit menu (command /C).

On returning to Palm Globe and the Viewpoint dialog, the coordinates can simply be entered by tapping the Paste button. This special paste button takes the first two candidate words (words that start with a sign or a digit) and puts the first into the latitude field and the second (if any) into the longitude field.

At any time, the Undo button may be used to revert the fields to the values they had when the dialog was entered.

Like all the Palm Globe dialogs, tapping on the 'i' icon on the title bar of the dialog gives tips on using the dialog.


The Movement settings dialog

The Movement settings dialog lets you change settings that affect movement of the view of the globe. Any changes take effect when the Done button is tapped. The settings are:

Move globe to tapped point
When this setting is checked, tapping on the globe (whether by using the stylus directly, or using the Tap button of the Viewpoint dialog) will cause the view to be changed so the tapped point becomes the center of the view. It is useful to uncheck this setting when measuring distances.

Rotate with sun
When this setting is checked, the view of the globe will rotate in synchronization with the sun. That is, when the globe is refreshed automatically the longitude of the current viewpoint is adjusted by the amount that the longitude of the sun has moved. The latitude of the current viewpoint is not changed.

At any time, the Undo button may be used to revert the settings to the values they had when the dialog was entered.


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Copyright (c) IBM Corporation, 1998. All rights reserved. ©
Author: Mike Cowlishaw, mfc@speleotrove.com