What's New

What's new?

Apart from the fact that WTides looks like a Windows program, rather than a Unix program, the only other significant differences between WTide 2.1.4 and XTide 2.4 are:

Wtides creates an index on the harmonics and offset files to speed startup
WTides uses the Windows scroll bars for time navigation
WTides can display an icon depicting the phase of the moon
WTides can show in a status bar the x and y graph values corresponding to the mouse position.
The status bar and a line showing the current time are updated as time passes.

David Flater (http://www.flaterco.com) has released XTide 2.5. The main change from 2.4 to 2.5 is the addition of routines provided by Jan C Depner to display shoreline data on a world map. I have incorporated these routines into WTides 2.1. In addition I have:

Modified the graph window so that the graph bitmap and a plain text display share the window
Added an extra calendar style, separating astronomical events from tideonomical events.
Improved the mechanism that searches for missing harmonics files
Modified Dstr.getline() to cope with crlf - enables crlf pair in offsets and harmonics, thus allowing the Windows notepad to be used for editing offsets
Modified coastline code to allow coastline image to show on either globe or map at user choice
Modified coastline display to use a bitmap for the initial display, to speed execution
Added the facility for all text displayed by the program to be translated and distributed as a dll
Developed WTL0809.dll, containing UK English spellings for meter, color and favorites (metre, colour, favourites)
Fixed it so that if the Windows User language is English but NOT USA, then it uses UK spellings.
Changed the default settings to better match the new capabilities.
Increased the granularity of date/time display on the graph face.
Added a registration check
Changed to using .wtide.xml from .xtide.xml for saving persistent information
Added the ability to:

shade the graph for 'twilight' and speckle it for moonshine
display the Sun's altitude and azimuth
display the Moon's altitude and azimuth
display the times of moonrise and moonset
display tidal range
display time before and after a min/max, a mark, and a slack event
select the number of days to graph, and the 1st hour to display
turn off the + at the graph creation time
select the globe dot colour separately for reference and subordinate stations
make the globe default longitude match the system timezone
select station from globe and location list by typing in name
allow user to resize the status bar items, and take extra lines if desired
display a toolbar
print the graph or chart
copy the graph and/or chart to the clipboard
ignore daylight saving time
select short, long, or no descriptions for tide events (helps get calendar on page)
send html text windows to web browser automatically.
prepare calendars one month at a time, without having to fiddle with time spans etc.

David Flater (http://www.flaterco.com) has released XTide 2.6. The main change from 2.5 to 2.6 is the addition of routines provided by Jan C Depner to replace the harmonic and offset data files with a new database.
I have incorporated these routines into WTides 3.0.0. In addition I have:

Retained the previous method so either or both forms of data file can be used
Added a graphical display to correspond broadly to the Maori Fishing Calendar.
Improved the Help facility - all options now have context help.

Release 3.0.3 of WTides has:

a few minor errors corrected
a very slight performance improvement over 3.0.0.
modified the structure of the program to separate the tide calculation routines into a separate dll.
a new program, MDRTE.DLL added to the setup program for registered users. This is a COM object, that can be called from other programs such as Word, Excel etc.
Instructions for MDRTE.DLL added to distributed files

Release 3.0.5 of WTides has:

a few minor errors corrected
a significant performance improvement over 3.0.2.

Release 3.0.6 of WTides has:

the ability to adjust the importance of incoming versus outgoing tide in the "good fishing" graph overlay.

Release 3.0.7 of WTides has:

Corrected the bug that corrupted the predictions for reference stations in the case of multiple windows open simultaneously. This error was introduced in v3.0.5.
Modified calendar printout to interpret html output and print nice table, not just the html source.

Release 3.0.8 of WTides has:

Removed invalid characters from UK location name used as default SaveAs filename. No previous location names had invalid characters (/).

Release 3.0.9 of WTides fixed the following problem with MDRTE.:

Unreasonable selection of Lat/Lng for creation of subset station index could create zero length index which would then cause the program to crash if the calling program did not notice and delete it. Correction applied is to automatically delete zero length subset indexes.

Release 3.1.1 of WTides has the following changes:

Updated MDRTE to be able to set almost all the options available to WTides.
Corrected a bug in the MDRTE Settings object that would cause a crash when the Settings object was accessed other than through a second pointer.
Modified the fishing guide to make the graph for the tidal flow attribute more 'humpy'.
Updated MDRTE to add tie-breaker so as to avoid variable results when loacting 'closest' station.
Corrected a bug in libxtide that surfaced when multiple TCD files were present.
Changed the way WTides calls the web browser to display html output to avoid strange behaviour with fast processors and Win-XP and Internet Explorer, and Mozilla browser at all times.
Changed from using Installshield and WinZip to Inno-setup for the distribution and update system.
Added help menu items to get and set registration via setup.
Changed libxtide to seek wtide.ini first in application folder, then in Windows folder.
Changed MDRTE to allow station listing to be performed without providing location name
Changed MDRTE to add get StationCount routine and all other Station details
Added MDRTE report type 19, to put a graph into the clipboard.
Fixed the bug in libxtide that would cause a crash on the first execution after creating a new index.

Release 3.1.2 of WTides has the following change:

All references to mdr.co.nz have been changed to wtides.com.

Release 3.1.3 of WTides has the following change:

Ability to see all text in Portuguese has been added.

Release 3.1.3 of MDRTE has the following change:

4 extra chart types added

Release 3.1.6 of MDRTE,
Release 3.1.4 of libxtide,
Release 3.1.5 of WTides have the following changes:

Icelandic language added
Timezone files updated

Release 3.1.6 of WTides, is a minor bug fix.

Release 3.1.7 of WTides, is a minor bug fix.

Release 3.1.8 of WTides, addresses the changed default location of program data introduced with Windows Vista. No program logic has changed, however MDRTE was modified to add the ability to extract the program version information from the Settings object, and the timezone database was updated to the latest available version. With this version, the ability to install on "Dos based" versions of Windows - before Windows 2000 - was removed from the installer. The programs will still work, but installation will be manual.

Release 3.1.9 Timezone database update

Release 3.1.10 - change of installation method to remove requirement for internet connection during install.

Release 3.1.11 - incorporate data from David Flater's latest tcd data for the USA (2014-12-24) and latest timezone data (2015g)

Release 3.1.12 - incorporate data from David Flater's latest tcd data for the USA and latest timezone data (2017c)

Release 3.1.13 - incorporate latest timezone data (2018c) and a bugfix to MDRTE