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About

Earth Plot is an application for tracking objects in Earth orbit.

It is coded in C++ and uses the following libraries:

Download

Attention Mac Users

Earth Plot is not a signed app. You can only run it if your Mac allows running apps that are not from the Mac App Store.

Your Mac may report "Earth Plot is damaged and can't be opened. You should move it to the the trash." This is simply not true and just another game Apple plays to get users to only trust their app store. You can remove Earth Plot from Apple Purgatory with the following command entered into a Terminal window:

	xattr -d com.apple.quarantine "/path/to/Earth Plot.app"

Be sure you replace /path/to/ with the correct path to Earth Plot on your computer.

Earth Plot requires the SDL2 Framework, version 2.24.1 or later, to be in one of the Frameworks folders:

The download for Mac does not include the SDL2 Framework. If you do not already have it in a Frameworks folder then you can download it from the SDL Releases page on GitHub.

Earth Plot has been tested on the following versions of Mac OS:

Screenshot

Mac 10.12.6
Winkel tripel projection

Windows 7
Equirectangular projection

Pop!_OS 22.04 LTS
Natural Earth projection

Help

Settings

Settings are loaded from and saved to a file named EarthPlot.ini. This file is in your application data folder.

Windows:
C:\Users\YourUserName\AppData\Roaming\Joyful Coder\EarthPlot\

Mac:
/Users/YourUserName/Library/Application Support/Joyful Coder/EarthPlot/

It is recommended you use the Earth Plot Console to change settings instead of editing the settings file.

Coastlines File

The coastlines file contains the data used for drawing the coastlines on the map. EarthPlot looks for a file named world.dat in the same folder as the executable file.

With the Earth Plot Console you can tell Earth Plot to use a different file.

TLE Manager File

The TLE Manager File is a text file used to tell Earth Plot which TLEs you want to load.

You can create this file with any text editor and then use the Earth Plot Console to tell the application where the file is located. The following explains the TLE Manager File syntax with examples.

The file can simply be a list of full path TLE file names.

# Comment lines begin with a '#' character.
C:\Users\joyfulcoder\Documents\Earth Plot Data\iss.tle
C:\Users\joyfulcoder\Documents\Earth Plot Data\pegasus.tle

In the above example you will notice both TLE files are in the same path. The '>' character is used to indicate you want to use the same path for a list of files. Put each file name on a separate line. The above example can be rewritten using the '>' character. 

> C:\Users\joyfulcoder\Documents\Earth Plot Data\
iss.tle
pegasus.tle
# Stop using the specified path with a '<' character.
<
It is not uncommon to download a TLE file that contains multiple TLEs. If you do not want to load all the TLEs in the file then you can prefix the TLE file name with a '*' character. The '*' character works on TLE file names similar to how the '>' character works on paths. Put a '*' character before the file name and list the catalog numbers of the objects you want to load from that file. Put each catalog number on a spearate line. 
> C:\Users\joyfulcoder\Documents\Earth Plot Data\
* SpaceStations.tle
# Only the objects listed below will be loaded.
# Specify the objects by their catalog number.
25544
49044
# When we have listed all the objects we want to load
# put a '*' character on a line by itself.
*
<

Information Panel

The Information Panel displays details about the selected object.

Press I to show and hide the Information Panel.
Press Shift+I to dock the Information Panel to a different side of the window.

Selected Object

Select an object by clicking on or near its point. The object closest to where you click will be selected.

Press Tab to select the next object.
Press Shift+Tab to select the prior object.

The next and prior object is determined by the order in which the objects were loaded. The loaded order is determined by your TLE Manager file.

Labels

Objects are labeled using the optional title line from the TLE. If there is no title line then the catalog number is used.
Press L to cycle through the label choices.

Map Projections

The data can be plotted in the following map projections: Press M to cycle through the map projections.
Press Shift+M to cycle through them in reverse order.

Console

The console window is in Earth Plot release March 2, 2023 and later. It provides a friendlier way to change data, fonts, colors and other settings without having to quit Earth Plot, edit the settings file, restart Earth Plot.

Press ` (back tick) key to show and hide the console window. If the console window is already shown but not the active window then it will become active instead of hidden.

Command:ver
Syntax:ver

The ver command displays the version or release date of Earth Plot and the libraries it uses.

Command:set
Syntax:set [<variable> [<value>]]

This command allows you to change the appearance of and the data used by the application without having to restart the application. Both the variable and value arguments are optional. If no value is provided then the value of the specified variable will be shown. If no variable and no value are provided then the values of all variables will be shown.

When you quit the application all values are saved and used the next time you run the application.

Each variable expects a value according to the Type column in the above table. The table below describes the different types.

TypeDescription
boolean These are really integers with the values 0 or 1. You can enter any integer value but all non-zero values will become 1.
color Color values are three or four positive integers with each ranging from 0 to 255.
Their meanings are: <red> <green> <blue> [<alpha>]
The alpha value is optional and not used at this time. If not provided it will be set to 255.
file name A valid file name according to the host operating system. A file name may include a file path and it will be treated as an absolute path. If any part of the file path or file name contains a space then the whole value needs to be enclosed in double quotes.
file path A valid file path according to the host operating system. All file paths are treated as absolute paths. If any part of the file path contains a space then the whole value needs to be enclosed in double quotes.
integer Variables of type integer will indicate their valid values. All integer values, including color components, can be entered using decimal, hexidecimal (0x prefix), or octal (0 prefix) notation.

The font files and the coastlines file are considered support files. When a support file name variable does not include a path then the application will look for the file in:

  1. user.app.path
  2. app.base
The TLE Manager file (obj.data) is considered a user data file. When a user data file name variable does not include a path then the application will look for the file in:
  1. user.data.path

History

2023-04-05:

2023-03-28:

2023-03-06:

2023-03-02:

2022-10-17:

2022-10-13:

2022-01-16:

2022-01-10:

2021-10-12:

2021-01-07:

2020-12-29:

2020-12-17:

2019-10-12:

2019-08-28:

2019-03-10:

2019-02-25:

2019-02-24:

2019-02-19:

2019-02-18:

2019-02-17:

2017-01-12:

2017-01-11:

2016-12-18:

2016-12-16:

2016-12-09:

The End