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WinEarth


Port of Xearth to Microsoft Windows

WinEarth sets the screen background to an image of the Earth, as seen from your favorite vantage point in space, correctly shaded for the current position of the Sun.
The program has a variety of options, which are accessible from a dialog box. Some of the options are shown in this screenshot:

WinEarth Properties Dialog

The current Version

The current version of WinEarth (1.02) for Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 95 is available as zip file here (1.7MB).
The setup program installs the binary and optionally the source files.

Upcoming...

Quoting Kirk Johnson, the author of Xearth: "There are a number of improvements that I'd love to make, but I really should be working on my thesis instead of hacking on this". I am working on a screen saver version of WinEarth (thanks to Zem Laski for the idea). Actually, it is running on my PC as alpha version already, but it still needs some improvements before I'm comfortable with releasing it.

Credits

WinEarth was ported from the well-known Xearth program. I am grateful to Kirk Johnson to come up with this great program. Kudos also to all the other guys who contributed to Xearth.
I borrowed some Windows code from Paul DiLascia's excellent C++ column in Microsoft System Journal (now called Microsoft MSDN Magazine.)

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In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. Therefore ... in the Old Silurian Period the Mississippi River was upward of one million three hundred thousand miles long ... seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long. ... There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesome returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact. -- Mark Twain
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