═══ 1. Crazy Clock ═══ Crazy Clock Version 1.0 (C) 1994 Nicole Greiber N&O Design This program is Postcardware! Hello! Are you looking at this in a puzzled way, thinking: "What's all this good for?" At least you are curious enough to have a look at the helpfile, good! Come on, don't give up that early, try to figure it out yourself! Play around with it, turn the seconds on and off, adjust the colors and try to discover the system! Oh, you did this already? And you don't have a clue? Well then, let me help you: It's a clock! And it tells you the time! Hmm, you still look confused. All right, if you really want to know how it works, have a look at the page What are these coloured circles good for? Crazy Clock will create an .INI file in the current working directory. When you exit the program, it stores all settings in this file and restores them at the next start. You will notice that the display refresh will sometimes take a short while (e. g. after you uncovered the window). This is not a bug, it's a feature :-) Since some or all parts of the display are refreshed every second, I don't refresh the window every time when it's necessary but simply wait for the next second where the window will be painted nevertheless. This is my attempt to minimize painting overhead. For an explanation of the menus please refer to Options Menu Help Menu Last not least, you should be aware that this program is distributed WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY of any kind; not even with the implied warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. You are allowed to copy and distribute the program as long as you don't charge more than a nominal fee for handling etc. and as long as all copyright notices are kept within the program and the documentation. ═══ 1.1. What are these coloured circles good for? ═══ For those of you who haven't guessed it yet, it's a clock! Now that it's clear, you may ask: How does the clock work? I assume that all of you have seen a clock with a digital display, also known as 7-segment-display. You can enumerate these seven segments like this: For every number that is displayed, each of the segments is either on or off. Now you can arrange the segments in any order you like, and they will still have the same information (the on/off code for each number is unique, otherwise you'd have two numbers in the "normal" digital display that looked the same). And that's what I did: I simply reordered the segments like this: Then I stacked the numbers on top of each other, so that the 1-second indicator is the lowest, followed by the 10-second-indicator, the 1-minute-indicator and so on, up to the 10-hour-indicator. For example, when it's 12:34:56, the time will be displayed like this: You don't believe that anybody will be able to tell the time from this crazy display? Uh, don't be so pessimistic! Give it a try, and in a few weeks you'll be able to read it like any other clock. When you remember how the segments are coded, you can always count them and thus figure out what they display. ═══ 1.2. About the author ═══ This crazy little program was written by Nicole Greiber. It was inspired by a real Crazy Clock that I've built out of a radio alarm clock. Since this clock is not able to display seconds, and since I'm very fond of funny nonsense programs lying around on my computer and wasting my precious CPU cycles, I felt the urgent need to create a software Crazy Clock. And here it is! When you also like this program (and also when you hate it), if (not when) you find any bugs or have complaints, wishes or any ideas on how to improve it, please contact me via eMail (InterNet): greiber@wrcs2.urz.uni-wuppertal.de or via SnailMail (that's also where you can send your postcard to): Nicole Greiber Brueningstr. 6 42119 Wuppertal GERMANY ═══ 1.3. Postcardware - what is it? ═══ This program is released as postcardware. That means, when you like it and want to use it, I ask you to send me a postcard with a nice picture of your home town. I have two reasons for this: First, I like to get mail (well, who doesn't?) and second, I'm curious to see whether there is anybody who likes and uses this program (apart from myself). For my address see my address. ═══ 2. Options Menu ═══ The following menu items can either be accessed via the options menu in the menu bar or via the popup menu. Seconds With this option you can toggle the seconds' display. When this menu item is checked, seconds are displayed. Colors Selecting this menu entry opens a window where you can choose the colors of the four clock elements Lights On, Lights Off, Frames and Background. Simply click on the desired color for each of these components, and it will be applied after having pressed "Ok" in the dialog window. When you leave the window by pressing "Cancel", the colors will not be changed. Show / Hide Frame This option lets you hide or unhide the titlebar and menu bar, respectively. To make all entries of the menu bar accessible when the frame is hidden, a popup menu is available. It can be displayed by clicking on the clock with the second mouse button (normally this is the right button). The popup menu is available even when the menu bar is visible. Exit This option is only available in the popup menu. It was added because when the titlebar is hidden, the system menu cannot be accessed, so there were no possibility to exit Crazy Clock. ═══ 3. Help Menu ═══ The menuitems of the help menu are: Help index Here you can get an index of all help entries. General help This option shows general information about Crazy Clock. Using Help A system help page is displayed which explains how to use the help. Product information Selecting this option will open a window that contains some information about Crazy Clock and its author.