Help with features not documented in the online Help, available on XTimer's Apple Menu, due to the 32K size limitation of the online help feature.
XTimer Session Logging
Need detailed reports of your session activity? Now XTimer can log all your session activity in detail!
Including These Items: The Charge Rate Name Total Time Charged
Actual Time Used Total Time Paused (optional)
Total Amount of Charges The Date (optional)
Start Time (optional) Stop Time (optional)
Session Logging continuously logs these items to a file; which XTimer creates in its own folder; called, "XT Session Log". This file will be a text file with the creator you have selected in your General Preferences. You can have XTimer create Session logs in standard or tab-delimited formats. You can also select to have a new log created every day, every month, or choose to continuously log to a single log file. Session Logging is independent of XTimer's standard general Log of your time and charge totals.
If you continuously log your sessions to a single file, the file size will eventually become very large. If you try to view this file with SimpleText (TeachText) or your online service's software's built-in text editor, and the file size is larger than 32K, those applications will not be able to open such a large file. You will have to use an application which can view larger text files, or just move the Session Log file out of XTimer's folder before it gets that big, or rename the file, and XTimer will create a new Session Log.
Whenever you Stop XTimer, the Session Log is updated; when Session Logging is turned on. XTimer expects the current Session Log file to be in its folder. If you move or rename that file, XTimer will create a new one. If you have placed XTimer on your desktop or in your Apple Menu Items folder, in your System folder, you may want to move it to another location to prevent a Session Log file from showing up on your desktop or in your Apple Menu. Make an alias of XTimer (Highlight its icon, then select "Make Alias" from the File menu in the Finder) and place the alias on your desktop, or in your Apple Menu Items folder, instead.
To use Session Logging, configure XTimer's Session Logging settings, via the Settings menu, by selecting the "Session Log..." item.
Example Log Output:
America Online (FREE) 00:01:00 00:00:15 00:00:00 $0.00
1/30/96 8:27:43 PM 8:27:58 PM
In this order; the item above shows: The charge rate name, time charged, actual time used, total time Paused, Amount of Charges, Date Timer was Stopped, Start Time, and Stop Time.
Times shown are in the format: HH:MM:SS. H = Hours, M = Minutes, S = Seconds.
Notice that even though the actual time used was 15 seconds, the time charged was a full minute, because the seconds were rounded off. You will really begin to notice how those short trips online to fetch email eat away at your free time— or when it's not free time— your budget!
If you configure XTimer to create tab-delimited Session Logs, you can import this data to use with your favorite database application.
The fields are output in the same order as above, but separated by tabs instead of spaces, and there is no carriage return at the end of the first line, as shown above.
These are the fields: Format:
Charge Rate Name TEXT
Time Charged TIME
Actual Time Used TIME
Paused Time Total TIME (optional)
Amount of Charges NUMBER
Date DATE (optional)
Start Time TIME (optional)
Stop Time TIME (optional)
Consult your database application for information about how to import data from a tab delimited text file into your database file.
