Frozen Fish 2: PC/frozenfish_august_1995.bin/bbs/d09xx/d0983.lha/TitleClock/TitleClock.doc

Text File | 1994-04-04 | 8KB | 213 lines

                               TitleClock V3
                           by Anders Hammarquist

This is FREEWARE, You may copy this program freely as long as you don't
make a profit by doing so. A nominal copying charge is premissible. Fred
Fish has explicit permission to include it in his collection, as do
Pascal Rullier have explicit permission to include it in the BUGSS PD
collection.

TitleClock is a little commodity (about 4k) that throws up a clock in the
top right corner of a screens titlebar. It may be set up to display itself
on one or more screens, it may be set to follow you default public screen
and also to always display on the frontmost screen.

There have been quite a few changes since the first release. It will now
display clocks on multiple screens, and also on non-public screens. This
has resulted in new options, and some changes in the way that the program
operates. Beware also that the stack requirement has increased (due to the
use of dos.library's pattern matching functions). Since version 2,
support for locale.library's FormatDate() has been added. Some of the
code has been cleaned up, and, by popular demand, you get to see the code.
Part of the problem with proportional fonts present in version 2 has
also been fixed. You should no longer get remnants of the first
character to the left of the string, but the text may still jerk back
and forth as the text changes. Unfortunately, this problem is not easy
to fix, as it would require remembering where on each screen the clock
should be printed. As it is now, the clock does not even remember
which screens it is displayed on from one second to the next.

TitleClock accepts the following arguments, entered on the command line
from the CLI and in the ToolType field of the icon if run from the
Workbench.

UPDATE=

    Number of seconds between clock updates. It's not recommended that you
    make this value 0. Although you can, it will load the CPU enormously,
    as TitleClock won't be waiting. Also, you probably don't want to make
    the value too large, as the clock gets erased every time Intuition
    changes the screen title. Though if you have a program that doesn't
    change the screen's title, it would be no problem to put up a
    TitleClock on it with UPDATE set to 60 seconds. Default is 1 second.
    Please note that it believes wierd values, if you set update to -1, it
    will update every 4 294 967 295 seconds

SHOWDATE

    If present, TitleClock will show todays date in addition to the current
    time.

SHOWDAY

    If present, TitleClock will show the day in addition to the current
    time.

SHORTDAY

    If present, the day name will be truncated to the three first
    characters.

SHOWSECS

    If present, TitleClock will display seconds as well as hours and
    minutes.

FORMAT=

    Sets the format of the date display. It can be one of the following:

    DOS             - displays as dd-mmm-yy
    International   - displays as yy-mmm-dd
    American        - displays as mm-dd-yy
    Canadian        - displays as dd-mm-yy

    Default is DOS.

DATEFORMAT=

    Specify a format string for the date/time to be displayed in the
    screen title. This option requires that you have locale.library
    installed (available with Workbench version 2.1 and later). If you do
    not, this option will simply be ignored. Beware that this option
    overrides any other formatting options you have specified if you do
    have locale.library. You can specify any text you want in the string,
    and insert the current time and day in your default language by using
    the following % sequences:

            %a - abbreviated weekday name
        %A - weekday name
        %b - abbreviated month name
        %B - month name
        %c - same as "%a %b %d %H:%M:%S %Y"
        %C - same as "%a %b %e %T %Z %Y"
        %d - day number with leading 0s
        %D - same as "%m/%d/%y"
        %e - day number with leading spaces
        %h - abbreviated month name
        %H - hour using 24-hour style with leading 0s
        %I - hour using 12-hour style with leading 0s
        %j - julian date
        %m - month number with leading 0s
        %M - the number of minutes with leading 0s
        %p - AM or PM strings
        %q - hour using 24-hour style
        %Q - hour using 12-hour style
        %r - same as "%I:%M:%S %p"
        %R - same as "%H:%M"
        %S - number of seconds with leadings 0s
        %T - same as "%H:%M:%S"
        %U - week number, taking Sunday as first day of week
        %w - weekday number
        %W - week number, taking Monday as first day of week
        %x - same as "%m/%d/%y"
        %X - same as "%H:%M:%S"
        %y - year using two digits with leading 0s
        %Y - year using four digits with leading 0s

    In future versions of the operating system, Commodore may add more
    formatting strings. In particular, %Z may one day be implemented. As
    it is now, %Z does not exists, but %C tries to use it, which has
    rather interesting effects, making the %C formatting string rather
    useless until that time. If you wish to include a single %-sign in
    the display, enter %% into the format string. A few examples:

        DATEFORMAT=Current time: %T

    Yields something like:

        Current time: 15:06:12

        DATEFORMAT=%Hh%M, of %e %B

    Yields something like:

        15h06, of  4 January


PUBSCREEN=

    Tells TitleClock which public screen to appear on. This may be a
    standard AmigaDOS pattern, in which case the clock will appear on all
    public screens whose name matches this pattern. The match is case
    sensitive. Please note that specifying a pattern if you have a lot of
    public screens will affect system performance.

SCREENPAT=

    This tells TitleClock which NON-public screens to appear on. It is a
    standard AmigaDOS pattern, compared to the default title of all system
    screens. The match is case sensitive. Note that the default title of
    a screen may not be the same as that which is displayed. For example,
    the default title for the Workbench screen is 'Workbench Screen'. Also
    note that specifying this option when you have a lot of screens will
    affect system performance.

FRONTSCREEN

    If this option is specified, TitleClock will display a clock on the
    frontmost screen.

DEFSCREEN

    If this option is specified, TitleClock will display a clock on the
    default public screen.

CX_PRIORITY=

    Sets the priority of TitleClock's commodity broker. Default is 0.

TOOLPRI=

    Sets the priority of TitleClock's task. Default is 0.

If you do not specify any of the PUBSCREEN, SCREENPAT, FRONTSCREEN, or
DEFSCREEN options you will not get a clock. Also, the clock will not be
displayed on any screen whose title is hidden, such as on a lot of terminal
programs. Beware that Commodore's screenblanker included with 3.0 does NOT
hide the title, so you will get a clock on it if you specify FRONTSCREEN
(you can't match it's title, since it's NULL. This was discovered the
hard way, via Enforcer).

If you put TitleClock in your WBStartup drawer, Workbench likes to see
a DONOTWAIT ToolType.

That should be it.

Thanks go to:

    Gaδl Marziou - for good ideas, and help with locale.library.
    Pascal Rullier - for the French manual translation.
    All the users who wrote me - for good ideas, and makeing me feel
        happy having done something useful. Sorry if your idea hasn't
        been implemented yet.
    Everyone who makes the Amiga what it is.

Questions, comments, bug reports, et.c. to:

Internet:
    [e-mail]
    -or-
    [e-mail]

FidoNet:
    Anders Hammarquist of 2:203/123.16

Spare harddrives, memory, those Ethernet cards you aren't using, anything
else you feel like donating (and any paper mail) to:

    Anders Hammarquist
    SchottisvΣgen 17
    S-424 38  Angered
        Sweden