Chinese Lunar Calendar v1.03

[Download] [Home Page]

A bilingual program showing a monthly solar (western) calendar view with corresponding Chinese lunar calendar dates. It spans the period from Feb 1900 to Dec 2049. Also provides single-date conversions between western and Chinese lunar dates.

This program was developed in Visual Basic 5.0 and inspired by the earlier work done by Fung F. Lee and Ricky Yeung written in C using the same data-encoding format. Chinese calendar data is held in the external files "YearInfo.dat" and "fest.dat" . This can be edited to extend the usability of the program beyond the current limit at 2049 (data can be added beyond 2049 but cannot be removed). For those interested in how calendar conversion is done, the "Lunar 2.1" C source code package by Fung F. Lee and Ricky Yeung is available at multiple sites on the web and is the definitive work most accessible in this area.

Requirements

Windows 98. I do not have resources to test it under other versions of Windows.

Optional Chinese support software, such as NJStar Communicator, Richwin, CStar, etc, if you want to run this under English Windows and also see the Chinese characters. You can run the program without Chinese language support if you replace the "language.dat" file with the "en_language.dat" file.

You have the necessary VB runtime component files already if you are running Windows 98 but you may have to find and install a VB5 runtime library if you are running much older or newer versions of Windows. Don't worry if the program runs ok.

Installation

Uncompress the zip archive and place all the files included in a single folder.

Replace the file "language.dat" with "b5_language.dat", "gb_language.dat" or "en_language.dat" depending on your preference or your localized version of Windows. The first is for systems with Traditional Chinese support, the second for Simple Chinese support and the last for English systems without Chinese support. The current "language.dat" file is a copy of "b5_language.dat". If you are running it under a non-Chinese version of Windows, you will need to fire up your Chinese Language Support software (e.g. NJStar Communicator) for the Chinese characters to show up.

"Chinese Lunar Calendar.exe", "language.dat", "fest.dat" and "YearInfo.dat" MUST be in the same folder. They would not work if placed directly on the desktop. Double click "Chinese Lunar Calendar.exe" and off you go.

Now double-click on "Chinese Lunar Calendar.exe".

If your system complain about Grid32.ocx (an unlikely occurrence if you do have it in your installed folder), you may need to let your system register the Grid32.ocx file before it can be used. You only need to do this if the program did not fire up and this will only need to be done once:

1. Drop Grid32.ocx into the C:\Windows\System directory (or whichever directory you have installed Windows) if you don't already have a copy there.
2. Open a MS-DOS widnow through Start menu -> Programs -> MS-DOS prompt, which should land you in C:\Windows.
3. Type [cd system] without the square brackets.
4. Type [regsvr32 Grid32.ocx] without the square brackets.

Usage

Calendar: Paging through the calendar is pretty intuitive. Use the slider bar for long jumps across years.

Conversion:

• Enter the date for conversion in the text boxes in the lower right corner.
• If this is a lunar date, check the "lunar" box.
• If the month is a lunar leap month, check the "leap" box as well.
• Then, press the "Convert" button. The Lunar date is given in [year month day hour (animal)] format.
• The lunar year is in Romanized phonetic format in the English line.

Special Note: The Chinese day starts at 2300 hour, NOT midnight, and the program is precise in that. When the program starts up, it will use the current time and date as default for the conversion entry box and give the Lunar date based on this. Therefore, if you call up the program between 2300 and 2400 hours, it will give the technically correct "next" Lunar day. Beware of the default time entry also when you do conversions.

Notes for non-Chinese users:

Chinese years are named differently from western calendar years which is a series of increasing numbers. Chinese years are named by taking incremental members from two series of characters, one with ten members and the other with twelve members. If you cannot display Chinese characters and choose to use a copy of the "en_language.dat" file for your "language.dat" file. The two Chinese characters for any Chinese year on the third line in the report box will be replaced by numbers from [01-10] for the first series and [:A-:L] for the second series. Example, [01:A] is followed by [02:B], [10:J] is followed by [01:K], [02:L] is followed by [03:A] etc. As you can see, the names cycles back to [01:A] every sixty years. The second line still gives the Romanized phonetic name of the year. The twelve animals are each symbolic of each of the second series of twelve.

Another difference if you use the "en_language.dat" file is the special seaonal days (jie-chi) of each month are marked only with an asterix instead of their Chinese names. There is not enough room for English names. I don't know their proper translation anyway.

Technical notes

Uninstalling: Simply remove the directory you have installed the calendar files.

Included files:

• Chinese Lunar Calendar.exe
• YearInfo.dat
• fest.dat
• language.dat
• b5_language.dat
• gb_language.dat
• en_language.dat
• lunar.htm
• Read me.txt
• Grid32.ocx

YearInfo.dat

Year encoding format explained:

• The file can be edited with any text editor.
• Each number in the file is the hex encoding of the months of a lunar year.
• The first data item is data for 1900 and the numbers are listed in sequence up to and including 2049.
• Add after this if you want to expand coverage.
• If you delete data from the end of this file, the years of coverage will decrease proportionately.
• If you delete from the front or middle of the file, the entire lunar calendar will be in error.

• The leap month, if exists, is a long one if M = 1.
• The next 12 bits represent the twelve months of a year, 1 for a long month, 0 for a short month
• L (the last 4 bits) gives the leap month of the year; there is no leap month if L = 0.

fest.dat

The file can be edited with any text editor.

The file contains the day-of-solar-month for each consequetive jie-chi. The first for the initial lunar year falls on February 4, 1900. The last number in the file is for January 5, 2050 (actually outside the limits of the data for YearInfo.dat and not used).

[Download] [Home Page]