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util/time/AboutClock.lha

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Short:Little workbench clock showing you approximately the right time
Architecture:m68k-amigaos
Date:1993-11-18
Download:http://aminet.net/util/time/AboutClock.lha - View contents
Readme:http://aminet.net/util/time/AboutClock.readme
Downloads:6334

uploader: Danny Amor <amor at student.uni-tuebingen.de>
Author: Stuart C. Davis
Uploaded: 18/11/93
Type: utils/misc


*****************************************************************

                        AboutClock V3.00

                   Copyright 1993 Stuart Davis
                       All Rights Reserved

*****************************************************************

Contents
                           Distribution
                           Description
                           Usage
                           Development
                           Author Details

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Distribution

     AboutClock  V3.00 is Shareware  and  NOT  Public Domain, and
as  such  a  small  registration  fee  of 5  pounds  sterling  is
required  if  you  decide  that  AboutClock V3.00  should  be  in
your software collection. This will entitle  you to  a  disk with
a collection  of otherwise  unobtainable programs  by me  and the
next major upgrade.

     Payment should be in the form of a crossed cheque drawn from
a UK mainland bank payable to the author.

     The  distribution  of   AboutClock  V3.00  MUST  be  intact,
unaltered, and include the following files :

                    AboutClock
                    AboutClock.info
                    AboutClock.doc

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Description

     Do you remember the good old days when you asked someone the
time and they  said, "It's nearly five" and not "It's 4:57 and 28
seconds" ?

     Well now there is a Workbench clock that does just that! 

     AboutClock  V3.00  is  an  unobtrusive  clock  that  nestles
neatly at the top  of Workbench, telling  the time  in words in a
window  that  re-sizes  itself  to  account  for  the  length  of
message required. It is now  able to tell the time in a number of
different European languages thanks to the efforts of Daniel Amor
who provided the idea and translations.

     Also,  for short-sighted Amiga users, there is the option to
have AboutClock V3.00 speak the time!

     Not  only  is  AboutClock V3.00  simple  and functional, but
it is compatible with all versions of Workbench!

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Usage - CLI/startup-sequence

     type "run" like this to run the program in the background:
     
     run <nil: >nil: path:AboutClock
     
     To enable  AboutClock  to  read  it's  preferences, the icon
     must be present in the  same  directory as the main program.


Usage - WorkBench
      
     Double click the icon. That's all there is to it.
     

     AboutClock  V3.00  will by default appear  in  the  top left
corner of the Workbench screen.

     AboutClock  V3.00  has  three  menus,  Project,  Speech  and
Language.

     The Project menu gives  the options of ABOUT and QUIT, which
give details of the author, and quit the  program respectively.

     The  Speech  menu  has TIME?... and  SPEECH. Selecting Time?
will  make  AboutClock V3.00 tell you the current time, using the
Amiga's incredible  built in speech  facility, where as selecting
Speech will force  AboutClock V3.00 to tell you the time whenever
it changes. This will be indicated  by a tick next to the option.

     In order to use  the speech option,  it is required that the
following files are present on your Amiga setup:

    DEVS:narrator.device
         audio.device (WB1.2/1.3 only.)
            
    LIBS:translator.library
         icon.library
      
If the program fails to  find  these  files it won't allow speech
after telling you the problem. WB2.x users will find all but 1 of
these files on their  original  WB  disks. The audio.device is in
the ROM for these machines.

   * WB3.0 users note :- Commodore have  deemed in their infinite
                         strangeness  not  to  include  the files
                         narrator.device  and  translator.library
                         on the  WB disks!?  Why?  Well I suppose
                         that they decided  they  have power over
                         the Amiga voice  and  wanted  to silence
                         it. (Ahhh...shame on you CBM!)
                         So I have therefore started the anti-CBM
                         RAVe motion, (Return the Amiga's VoicE).
                         This is to persuade  the big C to return
                         the lost library and device files to the
                         poor deprived WB3  users  who have never
                         heard sexy!?!? Paula speak.
                         If you are a  WB3  owner  then the files
                         will work on  your  machine  and all you
                         have to do is get  them from a friend or
                         a PD library. Then you can hear Paula in
                         her proudest moment!(PC owners suck...!)

     The Language menu is  used to  select the  language you want
time to be displayed  in.  It consists  of  a number  of mutually
exclusive menu items  each with  their own  keyboard shortcut. By
selecting one of these languages, AboutClock will change the text
used for the  menus and  the time  text. I  am not  multi-lingual
myself and so  if you  see any  blatant  errors or silly mistakes
then let me know and  I'll fix  them. Also, if  you would like to
see your own  language or  any other  featured then  write  to me
regarding the translation & we'll see about getting it included.

                            *****************
I would be particularly interested in hearing from Scottish,Welsh
or Irish speaking people  about doing  the translations for these
languages - please write to me !!!!!!!!!!!!
                            *****************

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Icon Tool Types

     AboutClock now checks it's icon for the following recognised
tool types:

        POSX=x        This can be set  to  any number but for the
                      program to open its window, the coords must
                      reside somewhere within the screen.
                      Default=0

        POSY=y        Ditto..

        SPEECH=ON|OFF An "ON" or "on"  will  turn on regular time
                      updates  whenever  the  time  changes.  Any
                      other string value will be ignored.

     
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Development

V1.00 31-12-92
     My own very  personal  and non-PD  version. Ooo-err missus?!
This is my very  first  attempt at  programming  a utility on the
Amiga and it shows! It works fine on my machine but not on anyone
elses!?

V1.12
     Some  errors  related to  telling the  time occur at certain
times  of the day.  When  AboutClock  resizes  itself, all active
processes receiving user input on Workbench are  resized, notably
ED  and  SID V1.06, when used under Workbench 1.3 which can prove
to be annoying, but not dangerous.
     This version NOT released to the public.

V1.14
     Tells the correct time without errors.  About and Quit menus
added.  Opens too  large  a  window, and crashes the machine when
About is selected,  under  Workbench 1.3.  No  problems noted for
Workbench 2 and above.
     This version released  prior to testing on Workbench 1.3 and
distributed on Amiga User International's April'93 issue.

V1.14b
     Window  size  corrected,   and  selecting  About  no  longer
crashes  the machine,  but  text  is  not  visible   (applies  to
Workbench 1.3 only).

V1.15
     About  text  is  now  visible.  Error corrected in  telling,
the time around 9am which was detected in V1.14b.
     This version released on Amiga Computing's April'93 issue in
which they reported that it was written in Pascal! Open your eyes
guys  - since  when  have 'move.w 12(a0,d2.l),d3' or 'bmi.s' been
Pascal commands?

V1.16
     About requester may be selected as often as you wish with no
delay in updating it. Another error corrected in telling the time
which was detected around 6pm.

V2.00
     AboutClock is alive! Version 2.00 includes speech. Also, the
about  requestor  has  been  improved.  It also  works on WB3 but
requires a copy of a narrator.device to be in the Devs directory,
which is not supplied with WB3.

V2.01
     Another attempt was made to get the icon tool types to work.
I can do this from 'C' but in assembler I just can't get the hang
of it!? It will now work so long as  you run the program from the
CLI and from  the same  directory as  AboutClock. I will probably
fix it properly soon.

V2.02 16-7-93
     After getting bored with some other programming I was doing,
I decided to fix the  problem  of  window  width for non-standard
fonts on Workbench  which WB2.04  and better machines can use. It
only worked before  if WB was  using  topaz-8 font. This has been
solved now and will resize correctly whatever font is used.

V3.00 31-8-93
     Major revision  here to  include  different languages.  Many
thanks go out to my friend  Daniel Amor in Stuttgart for the idea
and doing the translations.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

     AboutClock V3.00 was  developed  on  a  HiQ Tower containing
an  Amiga 500  Plus,  4Mb  of  16 Bit Fast RAM, 2Mb Chip RAM, SSL
68020 Accelerator Board with 4Mb  of 32 Bit Fast RAM,twin 3½ inch
disk drives, a 5¼ inch  disk drive, a 105 Mb, 11ms  Quantum  hard
disc drive, a Citizen Swift 24C printer, two Zipstick  joysticks,
a Technosound Turbo sampler, a Naksha Mouse and a ProGen Genlock.
It was  written in  100% assembler  using the  most excellent and
bodacious HiSoft Devpac V3.04.

     For Workbench  1.3  compatibility, it was tested on an Amiga
500 with 4.5Mb 16 bit Fast RAM  and 0.5Mb  Chip RAM switchable to
4Mb 16 bit Fast RAM and  1Mb Chip  RAM(dodgy connection though!),
twin 3.5 inch disk drives,  42Mb  GVP hard disc drive,  SSL 68020
Accelerator Board with  1Mb of 32  bit Fast RAM  and a 68881 FPU,
a KCS PC Emulator and an Argos screen filter(well it looks nice).

     For  Workbench 3  compatibility, it was tested on  an  Amiga
1200,  2Mb Chip RAM,  4Mb Fast RAM, 68881 FPU, twin 3.5 inch disk
drives, and a 60Mb hard disc drive. (not any more though Mel eh!)
and Danny's Amiga 4000.

     Although  not  every  possible configuration of hardware has
been  tested, (send me an A4000T and I will test AboutClock V3.00
on it!), it  is  extremely  unlikely  that  AboutClock V3.00 will
not work on your machine.

     Please report  any errors / problems  to the author when you
register your copy of AboutClock.

     [ If you don't register, you can't moan ]

     Thanks  go  to  Howard  Manwaring  BEd  MSc  MBCS  CEng  and
Liz Warriner BMus Dip  Microprocessors  & Prod Des  of West Herts
College for assistance with  the  debugging of the original code,
Melville Carrie for  support and for the use  of  his Amiga 1200,
and Colin(gorgeous sister)Etwell for the icon,  documentation and
beta testing on his 1.3 Amiga 500(revision 1.0aß motherboard with
V2.04 Rom from Ron-ha! it's out now!!).
     BTW-Thanks again to Daniel Amor(when's the 24-bit version of
                                      Clouds coming out?!)

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Author Details - that's me

     Stuart(Abdu) Davis, (nickname from Djamodiline Abdoujaparov-
     132 Rempstone Road,   the blinding Tashkent cycle sprinter!)
     Merley,
     Wimborne,
     Dorset,
     BH21 1SX
                                //
     England                  \X/ PC's are crap,
                                    Archimedes are amoebas,
                                      There's only one choice,
                                        And that's the Amiga...

*****************************************************************


Contents of util/time/AboutClock.lha
 PERMSSN    UID  GID    PACKED    SIZE  RATIO     CRC       STAMP          NAME
---------- ----------- ------- ------- ------ ---------- ------------ -------------
[generic]                  340    1272  26.7% -lh5- 386c Oct  7  1993 AboutClock.info
[generic]                 4445    8092  54.9% -lh5- 7059 Oct  7  1993 AboutClock/AboutClock
[generic]                 4804   11752  40.9% -lh5- 2445 Oct  7  1993 AboutClock/AboutClock.doc
[generic]                  254     514  49.4% -lh5- 4886 Oct 15  1993 AboutClock/AboutClock.doc.info
[generic]                  624    1781  35.0% -lh5- dccd Oct  7  1993 AboutClock/AboutClock.info
---------- ----------- ------- ------- ------ ---------- ------------ -------------
 Total         5 files   10467   23411  44.7%            Nov 18  1993

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